“Music Is Back”: Taylor Swift Takes U.K. Top Album of 2024 Crown as Recorded Sales Hit 20-Year High
Everyone’s favorite pop girlies have continued to make their mark on the music industry with the likes of Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Sabrina Carpenter prompting Brits to spend more on recorded music in 2024 than ever before.
According to new figures released by the Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA), streaming services and a vinyl revival pushed U.K. music consumption last year to a 20-year high, exceeding the pinnacle of the CD era.
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Consumer spending on recorded music — both subscriptions and purchases — reached ￡2.4 billion ($3 billion), overtaking the previous high of ￡2.2 billion ($2.7 billion) achieved in 2001.
Meanwhile, overall music consumption reached the equivalent of 201.4 million albums a year, ERA reported, and 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.
To no one’s surprise, Swift’s most recent album, The Tortured Poets Department, was the biggest-selling album of the year with 783,820 copies sold in Britain. Noah Kahan, on the other hand, took the year’s most popular single with “Stick Season” which generated the equivalent of 1.99 million sales.
Rounding out the top five albums of the year in the U.K. were The Weeknd (The Highlights), Carpenter (Short N’ Sweet), Kahan (Stick Season) and Eilish (Hit Me Hard And Soft).
Chappell Roan followed in sixth place with The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess and Fleetwood Mac’s 50 Years: Don’t Stop came in seventh place. Charli XCX’s critically acclaimed Brat, Coldplay’s Moon Music and Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts albums seal the top 10.
“2024 was a banner year for music, with streaming and vinyl taking the sector to all-time-high records in both value and volume,” said ERA CEO Kim Bayley. “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 ERA also said subscriptions to services like Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Music accounted for almost 85 percent of the money spent on music last year — together, they saw a 7.8 percent streaming increase compared to 2023.
The market for vinyl records grew by 10.5 percent, with 6.7 million discs sold last year, generating ￡196 million ($244 million). Again, The Tortured Poets Department was 2024’s biggest-selling vinyl in the U.K. with 111,937 copies sold.
Elsewhere, games sales declined 4.4 percent, following a drop in physical games sales of more than a third in 12 months.
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