One Direction's tenth anniversary leads to surge in streams and sales of the group's music

Celebrations around the tenth anniversary of One Direction last month has led to a huge surge in streams and downloads of the band's back catalogue.

Promoted with the hashtag #10YearsOf1D, a decade since the band's formation was celebrated with an anniversary website that featured an archive of music videos, artwork, TV performances, behind-the-scenes and rarely-seen content, all in one place. The band's streaming profiles were also refreshed with reformatted EPs featuring b-sides and rare songs, remixes, live recordings and acoustic tracks.

Official Charts Company data captured across the last fortnight reveals that 24.8 million UK streams of the band's songs have been recorded in the days leading to and following the anniversary date of July 23. Three of the band's albums - Take Me Home, Made in the A.M. and Four - returned to the Official Albums Chart Top 40 last Friday.

MORE: 10 incredible chart facts you probably didn't know about One Direction

Over the last two weeks, Harry, Liam, Louis and Niall's debut album Up All Night saw the biggest uplift in chart sales, rocketing 135%. Second album Take Me Home was their most streamed through the last fortnight and saw a 99% increase in total consumption.

The group's third album Midnight Memories has been their most downloaded over the past two weeks with a 106% rise altogether, while Four has seen the biggest increase in CD sales, and is up by 92% across all formats. There was also a 98% uplift for Made in the A.M..

When it comes to One Direction's singles, their most popular surrounding the anniversary has been their debut Number 1 hit What Makes You Beautiful, racking up 1.4 million streams. Close behind is 2013's Story Of My Life in second, while 2015's History is third overall but ranks as their most downloaded song of the period.

On this week's Official Singles Chart, Harry Styles' Watermelon Sugar could reach a new peak. The fourth single from his second album Fine Line sits at Number 3 on the Official Chart Update. 2020 has also been successful for Niall Horan who scored his first solo UK Number 1 album Heartbreak Weather and Louis Tomlinson whose debut solo album Walls is one of the Top 3 biggest debut albums of the year so far.