Sales of music, games and video soared 6.4 per cent in the first half of 2017, more than doubling the three per cent growth recorded in the same period last year.
According to new data from the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), rising subscribers to services like Spotify, Amazon and Netflix attributed to the sales surge.
Of the £2.9 billion in total entertainment sales, music performed best despite representing only 20 per cent.
Music sales grew 11.2 per cent and saw Ed Sheeran‘s Divide album top the ERA‘s entertainment chart, selling over two million units.
| ENTERTAINMENT CHART H1 2017 | ||||
| Title | Artist | Company | Sales | |
| Divide | Ed Sheeran | Warner Music | 2,064,966 | |
| Rogue One – A Star Wars Story | Walt Disney Studios | 1,180,496 | ||
| Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them | Warner Home Video | 1,032,525 | ||
| Bridget Jones’s Baby | Universal Pictures | 936,064 | ||
| Moana | Walt Disney Studios | 714,698 | ||
| Human | Rag’n’Bone Man | Sony Music | 694,194 | |
| Trolls | 20th Century Fox He | 657,760 | ||
| Now That’s What I Call Music 96 | Various Artists | Sony Music/Universal Music | 530,290 | |
| Doctor Strange | Walt Disney Studios | 510,711 | ||
| Sing | Universal Pictures | 489,672 | ||
Despite 75.4 per cent of sales in all categories coming from digital formats, vinyl record sales continued their staggering growth, seeing another double-digit rise of 35.7 per cent to £36.3 million.
READ MORE: Physical entertainment retail continues to decline unabated
Games sales, which represent 48 per cent of total entertainment sales, saw an 8.4 per cent growth.
Due to game creators‘ propensity to save big title releases for the fourth quarter, no games were in the top 10 most sold products.
Conversely, video dominated the top 10 charts representing seven titles, with Rogue One – A Star Wars Story hitting the top spot with 1.2 million sales.
“Entertainment has now seen over four years of continuous growth thanks to a combination of digital services pioneering new ways of consuming music, video and games, and physical retailers working hard to maximise sales of discs,” ERA chief executive Kim Bayley said.
“To now deliver another £180 million worth of sales in the first half of 2017 is really extraordinary.”
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