today's Featured List/September 1, 2014

Barbadian singer Rihanna was the most successful artist on the UK Official Download Chart during the 2000s.

The chart was launched on 1 September 2004 after a 10-week trial period – its first official number one was a live version of "Flying Without Wings" by Irish boy band Westlife. The most successful artist of the decade was Barbadian singer Rihanna (pictured), who featured on five different number-one singles for a total of 13 weeks, while the most successful record label was Universal Music Group, who spent 110 weeks at number one with 40 singles. The most downloaded single of the 2000s was "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga. Released in 2009, the song was downloaded 779,000 times, and topped the chart for three weeks. Sales of music downloads in the UK grew significantly over the course of the 2000s. From 2004 to 2005, sales grew by 743%, and by 2007 the country had become Europe's largest consumer of online music, with almost 78 million tracks being downloaded that year. By the end of the decade this figure had nearly doubled. (Full list...)