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Despite a 54 per cent surge in downloads, according to the figures from Nielsen SoundScan, overall unit sales were down 10 per cent. Even adding ringtones and subscription services makes no difference to the overall picture.

Several explanations have been put forward, including file sharing 'piracy', the closure of 800 record shops in 2006 alone, and competition from other goods, particularly DVDs.

Not even the record industry continues to argue with any conviction that file sharing is the culprit, a conclusion that recent research appears to have

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utterly debunked, though it continues to pursue individuals it believes to have shared files through the courts.

In fact it would appear that several factors have coincided, hence the size of the decline. These include the closure of stores and competition from other entertainment industries. But ironically, the advent of downloading, which was expected to revive the industry, is contributing to its problems.

The ability to download individual tracks from an album has proved widely popular, as the 54 per cent increase shows, but the downside is that fewer complete albums are being sold. One chart-topping album this year sold just 65,000 copies. This is nine or ten times fewer than might have been necessary in the past to claim the number one spot. Single sales, on the other hand, are the one success story for the music industry in the last couple of years.

Another possible reason for the failure of digital sales to compensate is the recent backlash against DRM. While there has long been simmering resentment among technorati, several things have coincided to bring the issue to the notice of the wider public, not least Apple CEO Steve Jobs call for the music industry to abandon its insistence on copy restrictions.