UK music consumption hit record highs in 2024 as vinyl sales and streaming subscriptions soar

The UK music industry enjoyed its most lucrative year of the century in 2024.

Consumers spent a total of £2.4 billion between streaming subscriptions and physical releases, according to figures from the Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA). The new figures overtake the previous high of £2.2 billion, which  was reached at the peak of CD sales in 2001.

Much of the boom was driven by subscriptions to services like Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Music, which together accounted for nearly 88% of the money spent on music last year. According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), UK recorded music consumption across sales and streams rose 9.7% in the past year to 200.5 million albums, marking a decade of uninterrupted growth.

This was driven by an 11.0% rise in the streaming market to 199.6 billion streams. In May, the Official Charts Company announced that for the first time ever, they had recorded over four billion audio streams in a single week.

2024 was also the first year in two decades to see a rise in sales of vinyl, CD and cassettes, driven largely by major label artists like Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift, whose releases proved particularly popular on wax. As previously reported, drum & bass streams also saw an enormous surge, rising by 94%.

Data from the Official Charts Company and BPI in May last year found that album sales had grown 3.2% year-on-year with 8,044,760 units sold in the first six months of 2024.

The market for vinyl records grew by 10.5%, with 6.7 million discs sold last year, generating £196 million. There wasn’t much movement in CD sales figures, which were stuck at £126.2 million, although they still outstrip vinyl figures.

In 2014, just before streaming figures were incorporated into sales figures, revenue from recorded music hit its lowest point, dropping to £1.03 billion. The industry took a while to adjust to the digital era, hamstrung by the surge in music piracy and legal and financial frameworks that took time to adjust to the new era.

Despite all of this news, the amount of profit that makes its way back to the musicians’ pockets is a major concern. According to the Musicians Union, almost half of working musicians in the UK earn less than £14,000 a year. “Sadly, professional musicians, artists and songwriters are not enjoying the boom represented by these figures,” said the union’s general secretary, Naomi Pohl.

“They are facing multiple problems including the high cost of living and touring, stagnating public arts funding, problems touring in the EU post-Brexit and, crucially, they are not receiving their fair share of streaming revenue.”

Last year, it was reported that Spotify will pay songwriters an estimated $150 million less to artists this year. Meanwhile, the streaming giant reported a revenue increase to €4 billion, having amassed more than 250 million subscribers.

Most recently, troubling reports emerged with allegations that Spotify was filling high-profile playlists with “ghost artists” to minimise royalty costs and boost profit margins.

Dr Jo Twist OBE, BPI chief executive, said: “The UK’s creative output and human creativity is being placed at risk by proposed changes to British copyright law, which would allow international tech giants to train AI models on artists’ work without payment or permission, and would be the wrong way to realise the exciting potential of AI. Meanwhile, streaming fraud is also a rising concern.”