The billion-pound download

Music downloads are now, officially, a billion pound industry - whatever that really means - in the UK, as the BPI releases the latest bunch of sales figures, and tots up the figures since 2004:

The BPI said that spending on digital albums grew 23% to £146m, more than 56.5m digital albums sold since the format launched in 2006.
A total of £132m was spent on digital singles, a 12% year-on-year increase, with almost 600m sold since 2004.

That might be pretty encouraging for those in the music industry who cling, doggedly, to the album format as - as far as my maths goes at this time in the morning - it looks like revenue from albums has overtaken singles this year. The smart money, though, is surely still in making songs rather than forcing people to buy multipacks.