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 by digital entertainment and retail association ERA.

Consumption reached the equivalent of 201.4 million albums a year. Streaming alone generated the equivalent of 178 million albums, exceeding the record of 172 million albums sold in 2004 at the tail-end of the CD boom.

Meanwhile consumer spending on recorded music – both subscriptions and purchases – reached £2.38 billion (€2.87bn) billion overtaking the previous high of £2.22 billion 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 per cent in 2024, ahead of video, up 6.9 per cent, and games, which declined 4.4 per cent, following a drop in physical games sales of more than a third in 12 months.

ERA CEO, Kim Bayley, commented: “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.”

The combined music, video and games markets surveyed by ERA topped £12 billion for the first time in 2024, their 12th consecutive year of growth and eighth successive all-time-high. 2024’s £12.009 billion total was more than 50 per cent larger than the total in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year.

ERA Chair, Linda Walker, added: “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, YouTube Music and Amazon saw revenues from music streaming increase by 7.8 per cent to £2.018 billion. Vinyl album sales grew even faster by 10.5 per cent to £196 million. CD album revenues were flat at £126.2 million.

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 1.99 million sales.

“With nearly 14 per cent 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 per cent to £5 billion.

The biggest driver was subscriptions to services such as Netflix, Prime Video and Apple TV+ which grew by 8.3 per cent to £4.46 billion, almost 90 per cent of the sector’s revenues.

Physical revenues continued to be challenged, declining 7.9 per cent to £156.3 million, although there was some good news for Blu-ray with sales up almost 5 per cent 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 per cent of them sold digitally.

“More than ever before, entertainment is a visual industry and so it is no surprise that video is now the largest segment in entertainment,” noted Bayley. “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 per cent decline in 2024 to £4.61 billion, 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 per cent, digital console games down 15 per cent and boxed physical games down a massive 35 per cent. The winners are increasingly subscription models with a strong value for money proposition which saw growth of 12 per cent.

The largest single segment of the market, mobile and tablet gaming, grew a respectable 2.6 per cent to £1.58 billion.

The biggest-selling game of the year was again EA Sports FC 25 – formerly known as FIFA – which generated 2.9 million unit sales, 80 per cent of them as digital formats.

Bayley concluded: “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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Tags: apple, era, fifa, Prime Video, Taylor Swift