The United Kingdom’s recorded music trade (wholesale) revenues rose 4.8% year over year in 2024 to GBP £1.49 billion, according to new data from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).
That equates to USD $1.903 billion at the average exchange rate for 2024.
The industry group’s report, issued on Wednesday (March 12), noted that streaming revenue crossed the £1-billion barrier for the first time last year, rising 5.7% YoY to £1.02 billion ($1.30 billion), and marked 10 consecutive years of growth.
In that decade, which marked the arrival of music streaming services and the end of the slump in music revenues caused by widespread piracy, music revenues in the UK rose by 80%, the BPI said.
“However, once adjusted for inflation, annual revenue is still hundreds of millions of pounds lower than it was in 2006, the first year public performance and sync were included in the calculations,” the report noted.
Despite the solid numbers, the BPI stressed that growth rates are slowing, and said the industry’s future growth is at risk from growing international competition, as well as a UK government proposal to loosen copyright laws to spur the growth of AI companies.
The BPI numbers cover recorded music revenue only, excluding publishing revenue. They combine recorded music royalties from streaming, digital downloads, physical music, sync and public performance (broadcasting etc.).
On the streaming side, BPI noted that revenue growth is slowing: 2024’s 5.7% YoY increase is notably less than the 8.4% YoY growth seen in 2023. Nonetheless, as streaming revenues grew faster than overall recorded music revenue, streaming now accounts for an all-time high of 68.1% of recorded music revenue, compared to 67.5% in 2023.
Within streaming, paid subscriptions accounted for the lion’s share of revenue – £875.5 million ($1.12 billion). That’s up 5.9% YoY, and amounts to more than 86% of streaming revenues.
While ad-supported streaming accounted for only the remaining 14%, it saw faster growth than subscription revenue in 2024, rising 8.9% YoY to £77.9 million ($99.49 million).
The BPI said four tracks generated more than 200 million audio and video streams in the UK last year: Noah Kahan’s Stick Season (233.1 million streams), Benson Boone‘s Beautiful Things (219.3 million), Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso (202.8 million), and Teddy Swims’ Lose Control (201.6 million). More than a dozen other tracks hit at least 100 million streams, among them Stargazing by Myles Smith, winner of the BRIT Awards’ Rising Star accolade for 2025.
Sync and public performance revenue also saw strong growth in 2024, with public performance up 5.6% YoY to £161.7 million ($206.5 million) and sync up 11.3% YoY to £43.9 million ($50.1 million).
Other sources of recorded music revenue saw less dynamic growth, if at all. Digital downloads fell 6.6% YoY to £24.3 million ($31.0 million), continuing a years-long decline, albeit at a slower pace than the double-digit declines seen in previous years.
Vinyl sales rose 2.9% YoY to £145.7 million ($186.1 million). Like in other markets, vinyl has made a major comeback in recent years, with revenues growing by 650% in the UK since 2014.
The BPI says the vinyl market is changing. Back in 2014, half of the top 10 vinyl records were catalog titles, but by 2024, eight of the top 10 were current releases. The top vinyl seller in the UK last year was Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, and others in the top 10 included Chappell Roan’s The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess and Charli XCX’s Brat.
CD sales dropped 0.5% YoY to £96.7 million, but the BPI says, perhaps surprisingly, that it sees sales of this media stabilizing.
“At the start of the decade, CD revenue was hit by a series of year-on-year double-digit percentage declines, but over the last three years has stabilized to become a £90 million-plus annual market,” the report said, concluding that the long-term trends “suggest a relatively healthy future for the format.”
And as with vinyl, CD sales were led by current releases such as Coldplay’s Moon Music, Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, and Sabrina Carpenter’s Short N’ Sweet.
Despite an overall healthy revenue picture, the BPI’s report highlighted what it sees as risks for the UK recorded music industry going forward.
Key among those is the declining share of UK-born music among consumers both globally and in Britain, or what the BPI calls “unprecedented competition” from abroad.
“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,” the BPI said in a recent blog post.
“Five years ago, in 2019, 19 of the year’s 40 biggest singles were by UK artists.”
“After a decade of growth, it is all too easy to take for granted the success of UK recorded music and the vital role record businesses play in this…”
Dr. Jo Twist OBE, BPI
In data released last fall, the BPI showed that UK artists accounted for around 10% of music streams globally, down from 17% as recently as 2015.
“After a decade of growth, it is all too easy to take for granted the success of UK recorded music and the vital role record businesses play in this, underpinned by copyright, by investing billions to nurture and promote diverse talent from across the UK,” BPI CEO Dr. Jo Twist OBE said.
“But in the face of intensifying global competition, it’s essential they’re empowered by a supportive policy environment to keep British artists on the world’s top step. Crucially, this requires the exciting potential of AI to be realized by the government safeguarding the UK’s gold-standard copyright framework and not siding with global big tech at the expense of human artistry and our world-leading creative industries.”
“At a time when they are facing escalating competition from overseas music markets, we need to ensure our labels are valued and are in a position to be able to fully support their artists’ careers.”
YolanDa Brown OBE DL, BPI
Like many artists and record companies, the BPI is alarmed by a recent UK government proposal to create an “opt-out” system for the training of AI models. Under that system, AI developers would by default be allowed to use copyrighted content, including music, to train their AI models, unless copyright holders expressly objected.
Numerous artists collaborated recently on a “silent album” meant to protest the proposed change, while the heads of the three global music majors – Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group – joined a Daily Mail campaign opposing the proposal.
“Given the colossal effort it took initially to turn around years of decline, it is a real cause for celebration that the UK recorded music market has now been on the rise again for an entire decade,” BPI Chair and artist YolanDa Brown OBE DL said.
“At a time when they are facing escalating competition from overseas music markets, we need to ensure our labels are valued and are in a position to be able to fully support their artists’ careers.”Music Business Worldwide
