Streaming and Vinyl drive music to twenty year high
Streaming services and the retail-led vinyl revival pushed UK music consumption and recorded music revenues in 2024 to a 20 year high and an all-time record, exceeding the pinnacle of the CD era, according to annual figures released today by digital entertainment and retail association ERA.
Consumption reached the equivalent of 201.4m albums a year. Streaming alone generated the equivalent of 178m albums, exceeding the record of 172m albums sold in 2004 at the tail-end of the CD boom[1].
Meanwhile consumer spending on recorded music – both subscriptions and purchases – reached £2,389.8m overtaking the previous high of £2,221.7m achieved in 2001.
The success of the music market in 2024 is the most striking feature of 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, which declined 4.4%, following a drop in physical games sales of more than a third in 12 months.
ERA has published the definitive 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 £12,009m 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.”
| 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | % change vs 2023 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Music | Physical | £280.4 | £311.0 | £330.1 | 6.2% |
| Downloads | £45.4 | £42.7 | £41.3 | -3.2% | |
| Streaming | £1,699.1 | £1,872.0 | £2,018.4 | 7.8% | |
| Total Music | £2,024.9 | £1,872.0 | £2,389.8 | 7.4% | |
| Video | Physical Retail | £209.0 | £169.7 | £156.3 | -7.9% |
| Physical Rental | £7.7 | £5.6 | £4.5 | -19.9% | |
| Digital | £4,281.7 | £4,502.8 | £4,841.3 | 7.5% | |
| Total Video | £4,498.4 | £4,678.1 | £5,002.0 | 6.9% | |
| Games | Physical | £517.9 | £495.4 | £324.4 | -34.5% |
| Digital | £4,205.0 | £4,336.3 | £4,292.8 | -1.0% | |
| Total Games | £4,722.9 | £4,831.7 | £4,617.2 | -4.4% | |
| Total Entertainment | Physical | £1,015.0 | £981.7 | £815.3 | -16.9% |
| Digital (inc streaming) | £10,231.1 | £10,753.8 | £11,193.7 | 4.1% | |
| Total Entertainment | £11,246.1 | £11,735.5 | £12,009.0 | 2.3% |
MUSIC
Music’s 2024 was characterised by growth for both streaming and physical formats. Streaming services including Spotify, YouTube Music and Amazon saw revenues from music streaming increase by 7.8% to £2,018.4m. Vinyl album sales grew even faster by 10.5% to £196m. CD album revenues were flat at £126.2m.
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-selling vinyl album. The biggest single of the year was Noah Kahan’s ‘Stick Season’, generating the equivalent of 1.99m sales.
Music’s strength is the fact that it still has a robust (and growing) physical business, alongside its strength in streaming, said 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 £5,002.0m.
The biggest driver was subscriptions to services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV which grew by 8.3% to £4,460.4m, almost 90% of the sector’s revenues.
Physical revenues continued to be challenged, declining 7.9% to £156.3m, although there was some good news for Blu-ray with sales 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.
Said Kim Bayley, “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 even with its 4.4% decline in 2024 to £4,617.2m, it remains nearly twice as large as the recorded music business.
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 down a massive 35%. The winners are increasingly subscription models with a strong value for money proposition which saw growth of 12%.
The largest single segment of the market, mobile and tablet gaming, grew a respectable 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.
Said Kim Bayley, “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.”
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