Sales of music via the internet and mobile phones proliferated and spread across the world in 2005, generating sales of US$1.1 billion for record companies - up from US$380 million the previous year -- and promising further significant growth in the coming year.

The findings are released today in IFPI's Digital Music Report 2006, a comprehensive review of the development of the digital music market internationally.

Music fans downloaded 420 million single tracks from the internet last year - twenty times more than two years earlier - while the volume of music licensed by record companies doubled to over 2 million songs. Digital music now accounts for about 6% of record companies' revenues, up from practically zero two years ago.