It's no real surprise that sales of CD albums have dropped by 19.5%, with the rise of mp3 players and everyone using laptops, phones, and tablets along with the internet for all their musical needs, the CD is fast becoming redundant. However, as the BBC reports, overall album sales have dropped by 11.2% while fans opt to download singles (sales of which have risen by 6%) rather than an artist or band's full set of new music. 

The British Phonic Industry (BPI) have released the data, and their Chief Executive, Geoff Taylor, commented on the statistics, Like all other industries in the nation, the Olympics helped out. "The Jubilee celebrations and the London 2012 Olympics provided a great showcase for British music internationally," he said, adding that "market conditions at home remained difficult and pressure on the 'leisure wallet' impacted music sales on the high street." Indeed, numerous artists saw as much success overseas as at home, including One Direction, Mumford & Sons and Adele, all of whom have enjoyed number one albums in the USA. The highest selling album artists of the year were Adele with 2011's album 21, Emeli Sande's Our Version of Events, and Ed Sheeran's +.

The final week of December saw the highest downloads of the year with "more than 1.3m albums and 5.6m singles" being downloaded. Streaming music has also become increasingly popular, while "UK music fans streamed more than 3.7 billion tracks in 2012." Most streamed tracks included  Somebody That I Used To Knowby Gotye ft Kimbra, Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen and Titanium by David Guetta ft Sia.