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The UK streamed almost 200bn tracks in 2024, helping to increase the annual consumption of music by a tenth in a year that was also record-breaking for female music artists.
Physical music purchases, which include vinyl, CDs and cassettes, also grew for the first time in two decades, according to music industry group BPI, which represents the UK’s record companies and label businesses.
This was due to the surging popularity of vinyl, with the reunion of Oasis propelling the band’s debut album just behind Taylor Swift in the top-selling vinyl records of the year.
Overall, UK recorded music consumption rose by close to 10 per cent to 201mn albums, or their equivalent in streaming numbers, marking a decade of uninterrupted growth, the BPI added.
Growth was driven by an 11 per cent increase in the streaming market, with 199.6bn audio streams in the year. This took streaming to nearly 90 per cent of overall music consumption. Audio streaming has more than doubled in six years.
Sales of albums in physical formats increased by 1.4 per cent, with a 17th consecutive annual rise of 9.7 per cent in vinyl purchases, taking the market to a three-decade high.
Female artists proved the most popular in 2024, with the latest album by Swift the biggest selling and other hits from Charli XCX, Billie Eilish and Sabrina Carpenter.
Women topped the charts for the majority of weeks in 2024 and claimed half of the year’s top 20 best-selling albums for the first time.
The BPI said UK record labels had invested more than £2bn in marketing and A&R, the department responsible for finding musical talent, for their artists between 2018 and 2023, supporting industry growth.
However, music executives have raised concerns about threats to the UK music industry in coming years, with the increasing use of artificial intelligence-based models able to rip off and reproduce music by popular artists considered a threat.
BPI chief executive Jo Twist warned that UK recorded music faced intensifying global competition and proposed changes to copyright law that would give AI companies free access to music.
“From Coldplay and Charli XCX to The Last Dinner Party and Myles Smith, there were plenty of examples of UK music success stories in 2024,” Twist said. “But there are also rising challenges for domestic talent in a rapidly changing and hyper-competitive global music economy.”
British music, which has been one of the country’s main cultural exports, is being squeezed by the rise of global superstars from the US and emerging, fast-growing markets in South Korea and Latin America, able to attract consumers over streaming and social media.
UK artists were behind just nine of the 40 top tracks of 2024 across streaming and sales, with the highest being “Stargazing” by Myles Smith at number 12. Five years ago, almost half of the year’s 40 biggest singles were by UK artists.
US singer-songwriter Noah Kahan scored the year’s biggest song hit with his slow-burning “Stick Season”, followed by Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things”, Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso”, Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” and Hozier’s “Too Sweet”.
In the albums charts, Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department recorded about 783,000 sales by the end of December — the most for any artist release in a calendar year since 2017.
