The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the UK’s record industry’s trade association, has revealed some interesting nuggets and foresights around some of the country’s music-listening habits. With the digital music revolution now in full swing, the BPI reports that 20% of the UK music-buying public have already “fully transitioned” to digital music, while almost 30% have bought downloads or streamed music legally in the last year using more than seventy legal digital music services. All this probably doesn’t come as too much of a surprise though – at the turn of the year we reported that digital was a major driving force in music industry revenue in 2012, with single sales up 6% on the previous year – 97.2% of those digital downloads. And although album sales overall were down – due in large to the decline of CDs – digital album downloads rose 14.8% year-on-year. These latest figures, however, focus on particular facets of audio-consumption habits, with in-car streaming, 4G, tablets and connected home networks garnering some attention, in terms of where things are likely to go from here. Fast-forward… The Digital Music Nation 2013 report predicts that by 2017, 50m vehicles with 4G or WiFi networked audio systems will ship each year, while almost 19m people will own tablets by 2016 and Internet-connected home sound systems from the likes of Sonos and Teufel will be shifting more than 3m units the same year. W
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