Booming Digital Entertainment Sector sees Surge in Consumer Spending | Prepaid365

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2 January 2014
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Sales of digital entertainment products including music, films and video games rose during 2013 following a five-year lull, according to the latest figures.

The success of digital services such as Netflix and Spotify has supported this growth which saw the value of film and TV downloads, streams and subscriptions reach £621 million.

Meanwhile, the number of tracks that were streamed doubled to 7.4 billion in the past year, according to the Entertainment Retailers Association.

Spotify and Deezer have seen a massive increase in people using their services, with the shift to digital viewing more than offsetting sales of physical DVDs.

As a result, a five-year decline in video sales was halted, with 3.7% growth totalling £2.06 billion recorded in 2013.

With services available across a multitude of devices, more and more people are looking for services to be available on the move and this is reflected by the surge in sales.

Skyfall – the latest in the James Bond series – topped DVD sales in the UK last year after 2.96 million copies were sold, while The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey sold 2.07 million copies.

Meanwhile, the second season of Game of Thrones and Top Gear: The Perfect Road Trip were the best-selling TV shows.

The music industry trade body BPI also said that digital downloads almost offset the plummeting sales of CDs, with the UK music market seeing total album and singles sales drop by 0.5% overall to £1.04 billion.

Digital subscriptions rose by 34% during 2013 to £103 million, with the Arctic Monkeys notably spanning the digital divide. The four boys from Sheffield were the most streamed act as well as the best seller on vinyl.

Vinyl has also continued a mini-revival with sales doubling to 780,000 last year, meaning this market is now worth a total of £14.6 million.

Digital sales were topped by Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines and Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, while digital album sales rose by 6.8% to 32.6 million downloads – worth a total of £233 million – with Bastille’s Bad Blood the top-seller.

Video game sales also received a boost in 2013, thanks to popular releases such as Call of Duty: Ghosts and the latest offering in the Grand Theft Auto franchise.

The overall home entertainment market grew by 4% in 2013 – its best year since 2009 – reaching £5.4 billion.

Prepaid cards are a great way to manage spending and can be of particular use when purchasing goods online. This is mainly because they offer enhanced security in an age where the techniques which hackers employ are becoming increasingly sophisticated.

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