UK recorded music revenues up 4.7% in 2022 reaching £1.32 Bn according to a recent report by the BPI. This marked the sector’s eighth consecutive year of revenue growth, led by streaming. However, when adjusted for inflation, the figure falls hundreds of millions of pounds below the total reported in 2006. Growth in 2022 was again fuelled by climbing streaming revenues, which rose 6.3% year-on-year to £885 million and which now account for 67.2% of industry revenue – up from 66.2% in 2021.
Streaming and digital revenue
Streaming revenue of £885 million (up 6.3%) was shaped largely by paid subscriptions to services such as Amazon, Apple, Spotify and YouTube, rising by 4.8% to £762.8 million (up from £727.6m in 2021). Ad-funded streaming income, though worth less than a tenth of the value of subscriptions, none-the-less grew by over a fifth in 2022 (22.3%) to £62.5 million (up from £51.1m). Revenue from digital downloads continues to decline as consumption accelerates its shift towards streaming – falling by 17.5% (less than the 23.2% drop in 2021), with downloaded tracks and albums still generating £27.6 million.
The year’s most-streamed track was Harry Styles’ As It Was (Song of the Year at the 2023 BRITs), followed by Ed Sheeran’s Bad Habits (who also had Shivers in the top 5), Glass Animals’ Heat Waves, which topped the US charts, and Go by former BRIT School student turned pop sensation Cat Burns.
Physical formats – vinyl, CD & cassette
Revenue from physical formats fell 10.5% to £215.7 million, with rising revenue of £119.5 million from the purchase of albums on vinyl up 3.1% helping to offset a 23.7% drop in CD revenue to £89.5 million.
Vinyl’s continuing popularity, boosted by events including Record Store Day and National Album Day, meant that revenue from the sale of LPs, which now makes up 55% of earnings from physical formats, overtook the amount generated by CD (£89.5m) for the first time since 1987. Cassette sales weighed in with over half a million pounds of sales, with the biggest sellers Arctic Monkeys’ The Car, Harry Styles’ Harry’s House, Florence + The Machine’s Dance Fever, Muse’s Will Of The People, and 23 by Central Cee.
Sync (music used in film and other soundtracks and in advertising) has been an area of revenue growth for labels in recent years. Disrupted by the pandemic in the preceding period, revenue increased by 39% in 2022 to reach £42.7 million. Income from the public performance of music, which was similarly impacted by the pandemic, also showed encouraging growth, up 23% in 2022 to stand at £143.4 million.
![Podcast listening in US grew 20% in 2022 with the weekly listening average increasing from 2.7 hours in 2021 to 3.8 hours in 2022 according to Triton Digital. Triton Digital’s U.S. Year-End Podcast Report provides key insights into the growing US podcast landscape over the course of 2022. Key findings from the U.S. Year-End Podcast Report Podcast listening continues to grow, with a 20% increase in downloads in 2022. The average listener downloaded more than one hour more of content per week in 2022, in comparison to the prior year. Both Apple Podcasts and Spotify are leaders in where podcasts are consumed. Spotify has more listeners, but Apple has more total downloads and downloads per listener. Mobile remains the key podcast listening device. Smart speaker podcast listening has declined, returning to pre-Covid levels. News, Comedy, and True Crime remain the largest podcast genres. Significant consumption of back catalogue episodes exists, although varying by genre. Amongst the facts contained in the report, it now takes an average weekly download of 490K to make the top 51-100 position in the Podcast Top 100 chart and over 3 million downloads to get into the top 25. On average there were 226 million podcast downloads in the US with NPR News Now being the number 1 most downloaded podcast of the year. Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra was the top performing debut podcast of the year, launching in October with the highest number of downloads and listeners during a debut month. The report found that monthly podcast listeners are younger than the general population and are more likely to be male. They also tend to be more affluent, better educated and more diverse with 15% more Hispanic and 9% more Black/African American listeners than the general population. The complete 27-page report which is free can be obtained from Triton Digital here. Recent articles of interest [icon name="file-alt" style="solid" class="" unprefixed_class=""] US women want more female oriented podcasts [icon name="file-alt" style="solid" class="" unprefixed_class=""] Spotify reveals its 2022 Wrapped podcasts [icon name="file-alt" style="solid" class="" unprefixed_class=""] Podcast listening among US Latinos hits record high SOURCE: Triton Digital - Podcast listening in US grew 20% in 2022.](https://k4p2f2g6.rocketcdn.me/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Podcast-listening-in-US-grew-20-in-2022-feat-326x245.webp)
