Music sales in the UK hit a 20-year high
Kyiv • UNN
Consumers in the UK spent a record £2.4 billion on recorded music in 2024. Streaming subscriptions accounted for the largest share, and Taylor Swift's album became the best-selling album of the year.
Enchanted by new major releases by Taylor Swift, Coldplay, and Billie Eilish, music fans in the UK spent more on recorded music in 2024 than ever before, new data shows, UNN reports citing the BBC.
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Streaming subscriptions and vinyl record sales have increased dramatically, with consumers spending a total of £2.4 billion ($2.96 billion) in the last 12 months.
This surpasses the previous high of £2.2 billion ($2.71 billion) reached at the peak of CD sales in 2001.
The best-selling album of the year was Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department, which sold 783,820 copies.
The data comes from the Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA), which reported that subscriptions to services such as Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music accounted for nearly 85% of money spent on music last year.
The vinyl record market grew by 10.5%, with 6.7 million discs sold last year, bringing in £196 million ($241.8 million).
CD sales remained at £126.2 million ($155.7 million), although the format still outsold vinyl in terms of units, with 10.5 million albums sold.
ERA CEO Kim Bailey called 2024 a "banner year" for music, with sales more than doubling the low point of 2013.
"Now we can say for sure that music is back," she said in a statement.
However, music industry revenues in real terms still lag far behind those of 2001.
Adjusted for inflation, in 2001 the industry earned the equivalent of £4 billion ($4.94 billion) when Dido became the best-selling album of the year with sales of 1.9 million.
There are also questions about how artists are paid in the streaming economy.
"Unfortunately, professional musicians, artists and songwriters are not enjoying the boom represented by these figures," said Naomi Paul, the union's secretary general.
The ERA also said that video has become the most popular form of home entertainment, with moviegoers and TV lovers spending more than £5 billion ($6.17 billion) on streaming, movie and DVD rentals.
The best-selling film of the year was the comic book movie Deadpool & Wolverine with sales of 561,917 copies, over 80% of which were digital.
Video games showed a drop in revenues from 4.8 billion pounds (5.93 billion dollars) in 2023 to 4.6 billion pounds (5.68 billion dollars) last year.
These figures reflect a year of high-profile failures, when such Class A games as Concord, Suicide Squad, and Skull & Bones failed to find their audience, the publication points out.
There has also been a huge shift away from boxed physical games, with sales falling by 35%.
EA Sports FC 25 (formerly known as FIFA) was once again the most popular game of the year, selling 2.9 million copies, 80% of them in digital formats.
However, only four games out of the top ten were new releases, and two of them were franchise updates.
The strength of the Nintendo Switch was also evident, with half of the top ten including games consisting of games exclusive to the console.
