More older tracks were streamed in the UK in 2019 and made up 60.3% of the total according to statistics compiled by the BPI and shortly to be published in its annual yearbook All About the Music 2020. The analysis looked at what were the top 15,000 most-streamed tracks on audio services in the UK in 2019 i.e. any track played over 1m times or more over the course of the year.
Songs released in 2019 accounted for over a fifth (21.1%) of plays, with those from 2018 comprising a lesser share (18.6%). There is quite a notable drop off in the subsequent years with plays of songs from 2017 amounting to 9.5% of the total, with 2016 songs representing 5.2%. The total of so called ‘catalogue’ tracks (defined as anything released in or before 2017) is actually quite significant – 60.3% of total plays.
What the UK streamed in 2019
- Tracks released before 2018 accounted for over 60% of all streams in 2019
- More than 800 tracks from this period were streamed over 10m times over the course of the year
- Both the 1970s and the 1980s increased their share of catalogue streams
- Elton John and Queen account for six of the 10 most-streamed tracks from the 1970s between them
- Christmas songs popular in the 1980s rundown – Wham’s Last Christmas is top – but classics from Toto, Fleetwood Mac and Journey also did well
- Strong presence of Motown and Soul among most-streamed tracks of the 1960s
- Catalogue (re)discoveries of the year include tracks by Lizzo, Dave & AJ Tracey, The Foundations, Bruce Springsteen and The Cure
- Songs from 2019 account for just over a fifth of all the music played on audio streaming services last year, with Lewis Capaldi’s Someone You Loved, the most streamed song of the year with 229m plays in the UK, but…
- Tracks released before 2018 still account for over 60% of all streams in 2019
- Both the 1970s & 1980s increased their share of catalogue streams
- Elton John & Queen account for six of the 10 most-streamed tracks from the 1970s between them
- Christmas songs are prevalent in the 1980s rundown – Wham’s Last Christmas is top
- Motown & Soul features strongly in the most-streamed tracks of the 1960’s
In 2019 there were over 114 billion plays on streaming services up 7.5% on the year before. The number of tracks classed as catalogue expands with each year, but a significant jump took place in 2019 (its share was 56.5% in 2018). Contributing factors included the popularity of older tracks by artists who released new material in 2019, such as Tom Walker, Lewis Capaldi, Freya Ridings, and Lizzo, along with still-popular titles such as The Greatest Showman being newly classed as catalogue.
The full ‘What the UK streamed in 2019’ report (A4 6pp) which contains detailed statistics and a complete list of the Most Popular Track by Year of Release can be downloaded here.
