Online music sales hit record levels

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Music downloads in the UK hit a record 2.94m in the last week of 2007, double the level of 2006.

The results will cheer record companies as growth in the US legal download market has been slowing.

Figures released yesterday also showed a healthy increase in year-on-year sales of DVDs, particularly in feature films for both adults and children.

The music download figures show that in week 51 of 2007 - which saw the chart determining the Christmas number one single - there were 1.93m downloads in the UK. This represents a 45 per cent increase on the 1.33m files downloaded by music fans in the same week of 2006, according to data from BPI, which represents the recorded music industry.

In the final week of 2007, however, a record 2.94m songs were purchased on-line, compared with 1.47m in 2006 - an increase of 100.2 per cent. Growth in online music sales was also markedly faster than in the previous 12 months: there were just over 1m downloads in the final week of 2005.

The BPI said sales of iPods and other MP3 players as Christmas presents affected the number of downloads significantly, as people filled their new machines with favourite songs.

The total number of downloads for 2007 was 77.6m - a quarter higher than the 52.5m total for the year before.

A spokesman for the BPI said: "Even though we've seen a significant boost in download sales in the week after Christmas in recent years, this was a larger increase than expected and sales should continue to grow throughout 2008."

As for the year's DVD sales, there was an increase of more than 13 per cent, led by the James Bond film Casino Royale , the fifth Harry Potter film and part three of Pirates of the Caribbean . All sold more than 2m copies, according to the British Video Association.

There was a similar rise in children's DVD sales, again caused by the release ofbox-office hits for home viewing, including Happy Feet and Shrek the Third .

The association said sales of high-definition discs to be played in Blu-Ray or HD-DVD machines had exceeded 1m, while the first signs of a measurable effect from the sales of digital downloads appeared in their statistics.

The top five music downloads for the final week of 2007 were: Leon Jackson's "When you believe"; Leona Lewis's "Bleeding love"; Timbaland's "Apologise"; Soulja Boy Tellem's "Crank that"; and Take That's "Rule the World".

Leon Jackson's When You Believe was the Christmas number one - picture.

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