BPI, the trade body representing the UK’s recorded music industry, has published data for 2017 that reveal a strong year for British recorded music with UK consumption across all formats growing at its fastest rate this millennium.
A total of 135.1 million albums or their equivalent were either streamed, purchased on physical format and/or downloaded in 2017 – a 9.5% rise on 2016.
The year’s strong growth was driven by 68.1 billion audio streams served through Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and other audio streaming services. This represents a 51.5% rise on 2016 and a 1,740% increase since 2012.
Streaming now accounts for over half (50.4%) of all UK music consumption, and in December 2017 a new landmark of 1.5 billion audio streams in a single week was achieved. Ed Sheeran was the year’s most streamed artist ahead of Drake, with Shape of You the most streamed song and four tracks in the top 10. Little Mix were the third most streamed, while Calvin Harris, Coldplay and Stormzy also made the top 10.
The US Experience
The total value of digitally distributed formats in the US for the first half of 2017 was $3.2 billion, up 21% from the prior year, and contributed 84% of total industry value (Source: 2017 Mid-Year RIAA Shipment and Revenue Statistics | RIAA). Streaming accounted for 62% of these revenues with digital downloads at 19% and physical media at 16%.
Nielsen in its 2017 US Music Year End Report show on-demand audio streams surpassed 400 billion streams in 2017, compared to 252 billion in 2016, and overall on-demand streams, including video, exceeded 618 billion.
Overall consumption of albums, songs and audio on-demand streaming grew 12.5% year on year.
Streaming’s growth contributed to some notable milestones. In 2017 there were 19 songs that reached 500 million on-demand streams, compared with only 6 in 2016. 17 of those 19 tracks were from the R&B/Hip-Hop genre which has now become the most dominant genre with seven of the top 10 most streamed albums coming from that genre.
