Monday December 16, 2013
High Street retailers have long remarked on the deficiencies of digital content when it comes to Christmas present-buying - "You can't gift-wrap a download," they point out.
This week's albums market brings a ringing endorsement of that view with physical's market share soaring as mums, dads, brothers, sisters hit the stores to buy their gifts.
Year-to-date sales of Top 40 albums are of course overwhelmingly dominated by physical with a 69.7% share of sales, according to Official Charts Company Data, compared with digital's 30.3%.
But in the past week (Week 50), physical's share of Top 40 sales has jumped to 88.5%, meaning downloads accounted for less than an eighth of the market.
Were it not for the surprise release of Beyonce's currently digital-only new album, physical's share would have been even higher at 92.1%.
It is a long-standing fear of physical retailers that the three major record companies would like to be shot of the CD entirely, a suspicion that their suppliers could certainly do more to quell.
For the moment at least, however, even the most resolutely pro-digital record company executive would be hard-pressed to justify axing a format generating nine out of 10 of Christmas chart sales.