UK Music Gets Digital Xmas Boost

After a bleak year, the British music industry received a Christmas present – a bumper week for digital downloads at Christmas, with the highest-ever recorded figures.

2007 wasn’t a good year for the music industry. CD sales slumped everywhere, and album downloads didn’t help offset those figures. But there was a ray of hope to finish off the year, asReuters reported that track downloads in Britain for the final week of the year were more than double those for the same period in 2006.   The Official Charts Company said that 2.9 million tracks were downloaded during the period, due in part to mp3 players and vouchers being given as Christmasgifts. But the overall yearlong figure for downloads shot up, too, rising by 50% to 77 million for the UK.   Although figures to December 23, both for physical and download sales, remained downin the US, the British figures mean a brief surge of optimism for the next 12 months that a recovery might begin, especially as online retailer eMusic has seenits downloads boom, adding 50,000 subscribers in less than two months, and recording its all-time high on Christmas Day with half a million downloads of music and audiobooks.