Streaming services and the vinyl revival pushed UK music consumption and recorded music retail revenues in 2024 to a new high.
According to annual figures from digital entertainment and retail association ERA, last year the market delivered a record result for both volume and revenue. Combining physical and digital, the UK market outperformed the pinnacle of the CD era.
Consumption reached the equivalent of 201.4 million albums a year in 2024. Streaming alone generated the equivalent of 178m albums, exceeding the record of 172m physical albums sold in 2004 at the tail-end of the CD boom).
Meanwhile consumer spending on recorded music – both subscriptions and purchases – reached £2.39 billion, overtaking the previous high of £2.22bn achieved in 2001. Of course, that doesn’t reflect the impact of inflation over the last two decades, but it’s still a landmark achievement.
It follows the release of the BPI’s year-end figures on market volume, which showed the first year-on-year increase in physical music sales by volume in 20 years.
The success of the music market in 2024 stands out in ERA’s annual review of music, video and games sales. Preliminary figures show music revenues grew by 7.4% in 2024, ahead of video (up 6.9%) and games (down 4.4%). Physical games sales fell by more than a third in 12 months compared to robust physical music sales.
ERA CEO Kim Bayley said: “2024 was a banner year for music, with streaming and vinyl taking the sector to all-time-high records in both value and volume. This is the stunning culmination of music’s comeback which has seen sales more than double since their low point in 2013. We can now say definitively – music is back.”
This is the stunning culmination of music’s comeback which has seen sales more than double since 2013
Kim Bayley
ERA has published statistics on the value of the UK music, video and games sectors every year for the past 25 years.
The combined music, video and games markets surveyed by ERA topped £12bn for the first time in 2024, their 12th consecutive year of growth and eighth successive all-time-high. 2024’s total was more than 50% larger than the total in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year.
ERA chair Linda Walker said: “We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the dynamics of the entertainment business. Digital services and retailers have become the drivers of the market. For decades, it was new release activity which most drove revenues. In 2024 subscription sales are now a far more significant factor.”
MUSIC
Music’s 2024 was characterised by growth for both streaming and physical formats.
Streaming services including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and Amazon saw retail revenues from music streaming increase by 7.8% to £2.02bn. That figure represents 84.5% of the total.
Vinyl album sales grew even faster by 10.5% to £196m, while CD album revenues were flat at £126.2m. Physical music (£330.1m) now accounts for 13.8% of total retail revenues from music.
Downloads make up the remaining consumption, accounting for less than 2% of the market by value.
In revenue terms, ERA reported the first annual increase for physical sales three years ago. Although that was not repeated the following year, physical sales revenue has increased for the past two years, including a rare revenue uplift for CD in 2023.
ERA has confirmed details of this year’s edition of Record Store Day, which returns on April 12.
The BPI will issue its trade figures for recorded music revenue later this year.
As previously reported, the biggest-selling album of the year was Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department with sales of 783,820 albums, including 111,937 copies on vinyl, which also made it 2024’s biggest vinyl release.
The biggest single of the year was Noah Kahan’s Stick Season, generating the equivalent of 1.99m sales, according to the Official Charts Company.
Music’s strong results reflect a robust – and now growing – physical business, alongside its strength in streaming, according to ERA CEO Kim Bayley.
“With nearly 14% of revenues still coming from physical, music shows the benefits of having a mixed physical-digital ecology,” said Bayley. “We continue to believe that digital and physical channels are complementary and vital for the health of the entertainment market overall.”
VIDEO
For a second successive year, video was the largest of the three sectors surveyed by ERA, with revenues increasing 6.9% to £5bn.
The biggest driver was subscriptions to services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV. which grew by 8.3% to £4.46bn, almost 90% of the sector’s revenues.
In contrast to the physical growth in music, video physical revenues declined 7.9% to £156.3m. Blu-ray sales were up almost 5% on 2023, although still below 2022 levels.
The biggest-selling title of the year was Deadpool & Wolverine with sales of 561,917, more than 80% of them sold digitally.
Kim Bayley said: “More than ever before, entertainment is a visual industry and so it is no surprise that video is now the largest segment in entertainment. Subscription video services have transformed the viewing experience for millions. The challenge for video is to find a physical format which can do for the moving image what vinyl has done for music.”
GAMES
Games may have been overtaken by video in size, but the sector remains nearly twice as large as the recorded music business – even with its 4.4% decline in 2024 to £4.62bn.
The key development in 2024 was a shift away from full game sales with PC download-to-own down 5%, digital console games down 15% and boxed physical games slumping by 35%. The winners are increasingly subscription models, which saw growth of 12%.
The largest single segment of the market, mobile and tablet gaming, grew by 2.6% to £1,585.8m.
The biggest-selling game of the year was again EA Sports FC 25 – formerly known as FIFA – which generated 2.9m unit sales, 80% of them as digital formats.
Kim Bayley said: “After the breakneck growth of recent years, it is no surprise that the games market has slowed down, but it remains a giant. Despite the attractions of digital business models to developers, we believe physical still has a role to play.”
PHOTO: HMV
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