Streaming and vinyl makes 2024 record year for music sales

Artists Taylor Swift and Noah Kahan led a “banner year” for music sales in 2024, driven by a combination of streaming and the vinyl revival, figures show.

Streaming services and vinyl sales pushed UK music consumption and recorded music revenues 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.

Streaming services including Spotify, YouTube Music and Amazon saw revenues from music increase by 7.8% to £2.018 billion.

Vinyl album sales grew even faster by 10.5% to £196 million, while 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.

In all, consumer spending on recorded music – both subscriptions and purchases – reached £2.4 billion, overtaking the previous high of £2.2 billion in 2001, ERA said.

ERA chief executive Kim Bayley said: “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 preliminary figures show music revenues grew by 7.4% in 2024, ahead of video, up 6.9%, and games, which declined by 4.4%.

Video was driven by subscriptions to services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV which grew by 8.3% to £4.5 billion – almost 90% of the sector’s revenues.

The biggest-selling title of the year was Deadpool & Wolverine, with sales of 561,917 – more than 80% of them sold digitally.

Despite the games sector’s 4.4% decline last year, it remains nearly twice as large as the recorded music business.

The year saw a shift away from full game sales with PC download-to-own down 5%, digital console games down 15% and boxed physical games down 35%, in favour of subscription models which saw growth of 12%.

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% of them as digital formats.