Songs sang by X Factor finalist Joe McElderry have enjoyed a massive increase in download sales in recent weeks.

Tracks like ‘No Regrets’, ‘Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me’ and ‘Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word’ enjoyed huge rises in sales in previous weeks and sources now suggest that his semi-final performance of ‘Open Arms’ led to a 5600% increase in sales of the track at the Amazon MP3 store.

‘Week after week we have seen sales of the songs performed by Joe jump massively,’ Julian Monaghan, head of music buying at Amazon.co.uk Ltd told musicnews.com. ‘We saw the most significant increase in sales of Joe’s tracks in semi-final week with strong uplifts for both ‘Open Arms’ and ‘She’s Out of My Life’ whereas we barely saw any movement on the tracks sung by Olly and Stacey on that same show.’

On the future of the X Factor winner Julian added:

‘Whoever wins X Factor should go on to have the biggest selling single of the year. The challenge is then maintaining that interest and coming back with a strong first album which transforms the artist from reality show winner to genuine pop star.’