BPI reveals 2015 UK music sales figures, announces 4% rise in music consumption
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has released the UK music consumption figures for 2015, showing a retail value of £1.1. billion and a rise in consumption by 4%.
Streaming dominated growth in the sector, and has increased by 82% in volume, but the 4% overall increase in consumption was also aided by the smaller-than-expected drop in CD sales, just 3.9% compared to 2014, and by the continued rise of the vinyl market.
Close to 27 billion songs were streamed from services including Spotify, Deezer, Google Play and Apple Music, not far from doubling 2014’s figure of 14.8 billion. This works out at around 1,000 streams for each of the UK’s 27 million households.
The album market saw an increase, thanks in part to Album Equivalent Sales (a figure derived from streaming performance), rising from 117.2 million in 2014 to 121.6 million in 2016.
The resurgence of vinyl continues and the trend can no longer be called a "fad" - just a few days ago Amazon announced turntables were its biggest-selling audio item over Christmas, and the 64% increase in vinyl sales reported by the BPI confirms that the format is here to stay. Vinyl will never take over, and still only accounts for 2% of music consumption in the UK, but the higher prices it commands may see it constitute a higher percentage of earnings for certain pockets of artists.
Geoff Taylor, Chief Executive of the BPI and BRIT Awards, stated:
“The soaring popularity of music streaming and the burgeoning vinyl revival mean that UK music consumption rose again in 2015. Services such as Spotify and Apple Music are going mainstream as more people discover how wonderful it is to have all the music in the world to listen to, whenever and wherever you want. Millions of fans also continue to build treasured collections of favourite albums on vinyl, CD or downloads.”
In the UK, local acts led the way with Adele breaking (almost) every record in the books. 2015 however was also a bumper year for Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, James Bay, Jess Glynne and Coldplay.
Geoff Taylor remarked:
“Yet again it’s UK artists who are driving this growth and inspiring the fans – at home and across the planet – with their award-winning song-writing and performances…”
As far as sales of music by overseas artists are concerned, it is surprising to see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s Elvis Presley-inspired album “If I Can Dream” claim the top spot with over 880k sales. Justin Bieber’s “Purpose”, Taylor Swift’s “1989” and Hozier’s self-titled album follow.
The “Now That’s What I Call Music” series dominated compilations sales once again, shifting over 800k copies.
Although the BPI’s numbers are positive overall, it is important to note that the “Adele effect” is strong. Adele is the El Niño of the music industry, changing recognised sales patterns, boosting overall figures and grabbing an impressive slice of the market for a single artist, we'll undobutedly see figures surface that show what the year would have been like without Adele's release.
However, in 2011 - the year of release of Adele's “21” - the BPI had reported a 5.6% fall in combined digital and physical albums sales in spite of the boost provided by the album. This year’s 4% overall increase is close to a 9% improvement on those 2011 figures, which has got to be good news for the industry with or without Adele.
(Andrea Leonelli)