Last year an Adele-infused indie sector took a bite out of the majors’ market shares. This year, the empire struck back.

Universal, led by David Joseph in the UK, remains clear market-leader in every single major metric, although its share was slightly squeezed apart from on Compilation Album Sales (of which more in a minute).

However, it still racked up an impressive 35% share of All Albums AES (down from 35.4% in 2015) and 34.4% of Artist Albums AES (35.4% ...