IFPI report: One Direction were biggest selling global act in 2013

One Direction were the biggest selling record act in the world in 2013 across music downloads, streaming and physical format sales.

This was announced by the London-based IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) which presented the British band with its newly created IFPI Global Recording Artist award.

The boy band’s third studio album Midnight Memories was the biggest and fastest selling album in its home country, the UK. It sold 685,000 copies there last year, after it was released in late November. It moved 187,660 units in its first four days, and over 237,000 by the end of the first week.

In the United States, Midnight Memories debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 with 546,000 copies sold. This made One Direction the first group in US chart history to debut at #1 with its first three albums, and the first to reach the top spot with its first three albums since 1967. The album sold 1.096 million in five weeks. In Australia where it debuted at #1 on the ARIA chart, it went platinum (70,000 copies) in its first week.

According to the IFPI, the video for Best Song Ever attracted almost 200 million views on YouTube and Story of My Life’s video over 100 million views.  ID music was also heavily streamed on services such as Deezer and Spotify.

The second best selling global for 2013 was Eminem, with of his eighth studio album The Marshall Mathers LP 2 including giant singles Berzerk and The Monster.  In the US, where it debuted at #1, it sold over 792,000 copies in its first week (playing second fiddle to Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience which shifted 968,000 in its first week) and went on to sell 1.7 million copies in 2013. In Australia, it debuted at #1 on the ARIA chart after only three days of chart sales, becoming his seventh No. 1 album in the country. He kicks off his 3-date Australian Rapture tour in Melbourne on Wednesday Feb 19.

The rest of the list is made up of:

3: Justin Timberlake

4: Bruno Mars

5: Katy Perry

6: P!nk

7: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

8: Rihanna

9: Michael Bublé

10: Daft Punk

IFPI published its first global recording artists chart this week. The independently verified chart includes sales of albums – across digital, CD and vinyl formats; singles, both downloaded and physical; on-demand streams and music videos.  The chart includes all the music of each artist featured, not just one track or album.  It uses track and album equivalents to combine measurements of downloads, physical sales and streams. “Our chart for the first time measures the popularity of artists across the many different ways in which fans choose their music,” said IFPI Chief Executive Frances Moore.

Streaming has exploded in popularity in recent years, with Spotify claiming 24 million active users around the world, Deezer with 5 million subscribers and YouTube claiming 1 billion unique visitors per month. IFPI communications manager Alex Jacob said, “Streaming has become so much more mainstream within the music industry worldwide over the last couple of years we thought it was time we integrated the streams-on services such as Deezer and Spotify and YouTube as well.”