Crazy, also highly placed in many critics' end of year polls, topped the charts for nine weeks during the summer before its creators Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse tired of its ubiquity and deleted it. The chart rules changed in April to allow digital singles to be counted a week before their physical counterparts go on sale. The iTunes Music Store has a market share of more than 80% among digital download sites.
Its end of year chart suggests the coffee table CD is being rapidly superseded by the coffee table download. The majority of the album top 10 is comprised of the sort of guitar music typically heard in the background at dinner parties. Examples include Eyes Open by Snow Patrol, In Between Dreams by Jack Johnson and Undiscovered by James Morrison.
Alex Luke, director of worldwide music programming and label relations at iTunes, said the chart tended to mirror physical sales but pinpointed some key differences. "A lot of hip hop and R B does really well in the physical formats and iTunes tends to overperform in areas like rock and alternative," he said. The chart was also biased towards newer acts with Arctic Monkeys, who sparked huge media interest after their internet-assisted rise to fame, recording the second biggest selling album of the year through iTunes.
While bigger names dominated the chart, Mr Luke said customers were also becoming more adventurous and acting on recommendations to buy older and more obscure tracks from the so-called "long tail" of the 3.5m on offer. "People are digging through the catalogue and coming across things that they can't find in physical formats or haven't listened to in years.
It's very satisfying to identify things that may not have been a hit years ago that are selling now." Record labels and artists are hoping that the uplift in digital sales, predicted to double to 50m in the UK this year, will be enough to compensate for the collapse in CD sales.
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