Streaming accounted for 87.7% of music consumption in the UK last year, according to UK record industry trade group BPI, with 179.6 billion streams being delivered across 2023.
That’s up 12.8% on 2022 and nearly double the total number of annual streams recorded five years ago. Vinyl sales also continued to grow, for the sixteenth consecutive year, with 6.1 million units shifted, up 11.8% on 2022.
If you mash together streaming and sales data - which isn't necessarily a sensible thing to do, but hey, why not? - total music consumption overall in 2023 was up 10%, with the equivalent of 182.8 million albums being consumed. And if you struggle to mentally process streams being converted into album sales, yeah we all do. But lots of music was consumed, that's all you need to know. And that can only be a good thing - right?
Consumption rather than revenue data tends to be easier to comprehend in the physical product bit of the music business, where there is generally a closer connection between units shifted and revenue generated. Although, that said, CDs still out-perform vinyl records in terms of number of units sold - 10.8 million versus 6.1 million - even though vinyl now generates more revenue for the industry because of the higher price point.
CD sales are still in decline, down 6.9% on 2022, although the BPI notes the decline is declining, to its lowest level since 2015. Make of that what you will. And, perhaps more importantly, cassette sales were down by 30%, from 195,000 units to 136,000 units.
Still, somewhere out there people are forking out for nearly 400 cassettes each day. Do we really need a cassette revival? If you were using cassettes first time round, you probably wonder why anyone would want to go back to a format that slowly stretches, gets eaten by your cassette player, and has no skip functionality.
Olivia Rodrigo fans - who presumably were generally not part of the first wave of cassette consumers - are perhaps yet to get that memo, having bought nearly 8500 copies of her album 'Guts' on tape during its first week of release. It’s worth noting that those sales alone account for more than 6% of all cassettes sold, which is definitely a sign of, well, something worth noting.
That made 'Guts' the highest selling cassette album of the year, unsurprisingly. But it wasn't enough to get the record into the UK album top ten for 2023, which was topped by The Weeknd's 2021 greatest hits album 'The Highlights', followed by two Taylor Swift records - 'Midnights' and '1989 (Taylor's Version)' - the latter of which was actually released in 2023.
Miley Cyrus hit 'Flowers' tops the UK singles chart for 2023, followed by Dave & Central Cee's 'Sprinter', and RAYE and 070 Shake's 'Escapism'. Seven of the top ten tracks of the year were by or involved female artists, which will surely - surely - mean that the best artist shortlist for this year's BRIT Awards will not, like in 2022, be all male, especially now they've extended that shortlist to ten.
Noting the success of female artists in the charts this year, BPI CEO Jo Twist says: “Whilst work continues towards achieving full representation for women across the music industry, 2023 has been a brilliant year for women in the Official Charts".
"There is a more diverse range of recording artists than ever achieving great success with the backing of their labels", she adds. "Women spent more weeks at number one on the Official Singles Chart than in any previous year, while seven of the ten biggest tracks were by women. This should be celebrated, but without complacency, and our work in the music industry continues to ensure that this becomes the norm". | 