Music sales hit a 20-year high, thanks to streaming and vinyl

Captivated by main new releases from Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Billie Eilish, music followers within the UK spent extra on recorded music in 2024 than ever earlier than, new figures present.

Streaming subscriptions and vinyl gross sales shot up, with shoppers spending a complete of £2.4 bn during the last 12 months.

That overtakes the earlier excessive of £2.2bn, achieved on the peak of CD gross sales in 2001.

The largest-selling album of the yr was Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Division which offered 783,820 copies; whereas Noah Kahan had the yr’s greatest single with Stick Season, which generated the equal of 1.99 million gross sales.

The figures got here from the Digital Leisure and Retail Affiliation (ERA), which stated subscriptions to providers like Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Music accounted for nearly 85% of the cash spent on music final yr.

The marketplace for vinyl information grew by 10.5%, with 6.7 million discs offered final yr, producing £196m.

CD gross sales remained flat at £126.2m – though the format nonetheless sells greater than vinyl when it comes to items, with 10.5 million albums purchased.

The pinnacle of ERA, Kim Bayley, referred to as 2024 a “banner yr” for music, with gross sales at greater than double the low level of 2013.

“We are able to now say definitively – music is again,” she added in an announcement.

Nonetheless, music trade income nonetheless lags far behind the 2001 figures in actual phrases.

Adjusted for inflation, the trade made the equal of £4bn in 2001, when Dido’s was the yr’s greatest album, with gross sales of 1.9 million.

There are additionally lingering questions over how artists receives a commission within the streaming financial system. In response to the Musicians Union, virtually half of working musicians within the UK earn lower than £14,000 a yr.

Elsewhere, ERA stated video was the most well-liked type of residence leisure, with cinephiles and telly addicts spending greater than £5bn on streaming providers, film leases and DVDs.

The largest-selling title of the yr was the comedian e book film Deadpool & Wolverine, with gross sales of 561,917, greater than 80% of which had been digital.

Video video games noticed a drop in income, from £4.8bn in 2023 to £4.6bn final yr.

The figures mirror a yr of high-profile flops, with A-list video games like Harmony, Suicide Squad and Cranium & Bones all failing to seek out an viewers.

There was additionally an enormous shift away from boxed bodily video games, whose gross sales fell by 35%.

The largest-selling recreation of the yr was as soon as once more EA Sports activities FC 25 – previously often called FIFA – which offered 2.9m copies, 80% of them in digital codecs.

Nonetheless, solely 4 of the video games within the high 10 had been new releases, and two of these had been updates to current franchises.

The facility of Nintendo’s Change was additionally obvious, with half of the highest 10 together with video games comprised of titles which might be unique to the console.