UK music sales hit an all-time high as Taylor Swift takes first place in selling albums. music industry

Music lovers spent a record $2.4 billion on streaming subscriptions and physical music last year as the UK music industry finally recovered from the digital revolution that led to rampant online piracy and the slow death of CDs.

According to the Entertainment Retailers Association, music revenue increased 7.4% last year to $2.38 billion, with sales increasing for the 17th consecutive year due to subscriptions to streaming services such as Spotify, Amazon, and Apple and the resurgence in popularity of vinyl records. solidarity).

The music industry took decades to adapt and recover from the advent of the digital age, with the UK industry losing billions of dollars in value. Sales exceeded the previous high of $2.2 billion in 2001.

ERA CEO Kim Bayley said music is back thanks to streaming and the vinyl revival. For decades, it was new launch activity that generated most revenue. Digital services and retailers have become the driving force of the market.

Consumer spending on streaming subscriptions grew 7.8% last year, surpassing $2 billion for the first time.

Spending on other formats, such as CDs, vinyl and cassettes, rose 6.2% to $330 million.

Vinyl album sales outpaced the market by 10.5% at $196 million, while CD album revenue remained flat at $126 million.

However, these figures do not reflect inflation, meaning total music spending in the UK is still likely to be below record levels in 2001.

ERA said total album sales, including physical sales and conversions to the equivalent album from streams led by Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department, reached 783,820 units.

The previous record for annual album sales was 172 million units, set in 2004. However, this is purely based on actual sales.

Last week, the British Phonographic Institute announced that album sales had risen 9% to 6.7 million units.

The report found that total sales of physical recorded music rose to 17.4 million for the first time in 20 years, with CD sales down only 300,000 to 10.5 million units and sales of other formats like cassettes up by the hundreds of thousands.

Spending on streaming accounts for around 85% of all music revenue in the UK and 88% of albums purchased, but ERA does not expect the future to be digital-only.

We continue to believe that digital and physical channels are complementary and essential to the health of the overall entertainment market, Bayley said.

The music industry's resurgence through subscription services comes against a backdrop of ongoing complaints about the pay of musicians and big-name singers seeking to increase revenue through lucrative tours.

Tom Gray, chairman of the Ivors Academy, a group of British songwriters, and member of the band Gomez, said: “A record-breaking year for whom? Music creators are not seeing their fair share of this success.

We urgently need to rethink how streaming revenue is distributed. The entire industry is staring at the potential damage of AI, but we haven't even gotten our house in order yet.

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“Sadly, professional musicians, artists and composers are not enjoying the boom represented by these figures,” said Naomi Pohl, general secretary of the Musicians Union.

They face a number of challenges, including high living and travel costs, stagnant public arts funding, post-Brexit EU travel issues and, crucially, not receiving their fair share of streaming revenue.

The ERA report also looks at the performance of the digital video market and gaming market, led by Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video.

Spending on subscription digital video services, the largest of the three sectors surveyed, rose 6.9% to hit $5 billion for the first time.

Subscriptions to services like Netflix rose 8.3% to 4.46 billion, accounting for nearly 90% of the segment's revenue.

Physical sales revenue for DVDs and Blu-ray Discs continued to decline, down 7.9% to $156 million.

The most popular title purchased or rented by consumers was Deadpool & Wolverine, with 561,917 copies sold. More than 80% of purchases were made through digital channels.

The gaming market, which saw its value reverse to the video sector for the first time last year, decreased 4.4% to $4.6 billion. The best-selling game of the year has once again proven to be the latest version of EA Sports FC, previously known as Fifa Sports. The game sold 2.9 million units, 80% of which were digital.

It's not surprising that the gaming market is slowing after seeing tremendous growth in recent years, Bayley said. But it remains huge, almost twice the size of the recorded music business.

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