2012 was the year in which we all spent most money on downloading games, music and films from the internet.
In fact, the total for the year which recently ended was a staggering £1 billion. This was an increase of just over 11% from the previous year and, perhaps more intriguingly, means that a quarter of the entertainment purchases we now make are digital.
Of course, the flip side to this is that as we make more digital purchase it means that the retailers make less physical sales than before. High street shops have reported big drops in things like CDs, DVDs and games, which a reported drop of over 17% on the 2011 figures. Having said that, they are still the biggest entertainment suppliers in the market.
An Incredible Achievement
Kim Bayley is the Director General of the Entertainment Retailers Association and she said that it was an “incredible achievement” for the industry to smash the billion pound barrier last year. She also pointed out that a lot of people might be surprised to see just how strong the physical sales business still is even when all of this digital buying is going on.
Of all of those digital entertainment purchases we made in 2012 the biggest sector was the video games one. Here we spent £552 million, which was a healthy increase of 8% on the previous year. Although music and films represented a smaller percentage of the overall total they increased by 15% and 20% respectively.
Who would bet against the digital sales figure being even higher in 2013?
