AMAZON BOOMS IN BLIGHTY CD RETAIL

Sales of physical music by David Bowie and Prince helped boost online U.K. retail in Q2 2016 as Amazon recorded its highest ever marketshare outside of the Christmas period, according to data from Kantar Worldpanel. Glastonbury also prompted a few sales, with Adele and Coldplay appearing in three of the top five album bestsellers.

Amazon was retail king in spending on DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs and games during the three months to end of July, recording a marketshare of 23%.

Taking second place is high street staple HMV, which has emerged nicely from bankruptcy in 2013, increasing its marketshare in the entertainment sector to 16.3% from 14%year-on-year.

Sales of catalogue CDs more than six months old grew 9% YoY, with Prince selling more than any other new release artist aside from Adele this quarter, and David Bowie doing the same earlier this year.

Same bad news: no music titles made it into the top 30 entertainment products this quarter. Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the biggest title across the whole physical entertainment market, with 1.8 million shoppers picking up a physical copy.

Supermarket Tesco takes third place with a marketshare of 15.2%, followed by Sainsbury’s, which is the fourth biggest retailer in entertainment for the first time in Blighty with a share of 9.7%.

Online spend across the entertainment industry has bounced back from declines over the past year and now accounts for over a third of spend – the highest it’s been since 2015.