The sales of albums in the UK fell by 10 percent in 2012.
The statistics, released by the BPI, also reveal that the CD album market shrunk by a fifth, with sales of albums on CD down 19.5 percent year-on-year with only 69.4m albums sold.
Sales of digital and physical albums combined fell overall again by 11.2 percent to 100.5m over the past 12 months – although singles sales hit a new high.