‘Music is back’: Taylor Swift drives UK music sales to 20-year high

UK music sales hit a 20-year high of £2.4bn (€2.8bn) in 2024, topping the previous record of £2.2bn (€2.6bn) in 2001, according to recent figures published by the Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA).  

The all-time high revenues from recorded music were led by pop superstar Taylor Swift and driven by the vinyl revival and streaming.  

Indeed, Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department‘ was the biggest-selling album of 2024, aided by her record-smashing worldwide Eras Tour. The album sold 783,820 copies in the UK, nearly 112,000 of them on vinyl. That makes it 2024’s biggest-selling vinyl album.

Elsewhere, Noah Kahan had the year’s biggest single with ‘Stick Season’, which generated the equivalent of 1.99 million sales, and popular figures like Charli XCX and Chappell Roan made their mark on 2024 by charting in both the Top 10 best-selling albums and Top 10 vinyls of last year. Both appeared in our People Of The Year round-up of the cultural figures that had the biggest impact on 2024.  

According to Official Charts Company and BPI, the Top 10 best-selling albums of 2024 are:  

1. Taylor Swift – The Tortured Poets Department (2024) 
2. The Weeknd – The Highlights (2021) 
3. Sabrina Carpenter – Short N’ Sweet (2024) 
4. Noah Kahan – Stick Season (2022) 
5. Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard And Soft (2024) 
6. Chappell Roan – The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess (2023) 
7. Fleetwood Mac – 50 Years: Don’t Stop (2018) 
8. Charli XCX – Brat (2024) 
9. Coldplay – Moon Music (2024) 
10. Olivia Rodrigo – Guts (2023)

The Top 10 vinyl albums of 2024 are:  

1. Taylor Swift – The Tortured Poets Department (2024) 
2. Oasis – Definitely Maybe (1994) 
3. Chappell Roan – The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess (2023) 
4. Sabrina Carpenter – Short N’ Sweet (2024) 
5. Fontaines D.C. – Romance (2024) 
6. Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard And Soft (2024) 
7. Fleetwood Mac – Rumours (1977) 
8. The Cure – Songs Of A Lost World (2024) 
9. Coldplay – Moon Music (2024) 
10. Charli XCX – Brat (2024)

It’s worth noting that Fleetwood Mac are the oldest band still charting, with their seminal 1977 album ‘Rumours’ and their 2018 Best Of ’50 Years: Don’t Stop’ surpassing newer releases. And rightly so. Also, how wonderful to see both Fontaines D.C. and The Cure’s latest releases in the Top 10 vinyls of 2024 – both of which made our Best Albums of 2024 rundown.

Getting back to the figures, takings from streaming services including Spotify, YouTube Music, and Amazon rose by 7.8% to a little over £2bn, while almost £200m (€240m) was spent on vinyl albums. This represents an annual uplift of 10.5% for vinyls, while CD album sales remained flat at just over £126m (€152m). That said, CDs still sell more than vinyl in terms of units, with 10.5 million albums bought. 

ERA chief executive Kim Bayley called 2024 “a banner year” for music, calling it the “stunning culmination of music’s comeback which has seen sales more than double since their low point in 2013.” 

“We can now say definitively – music is back,” she added in a statement. 

While music revenues grew by 7.4% in 2024, the streaming economy still represents a threat for artists and how they get paid. According to the Musicians Union, almost half of working musicians in the UK earn less than £14,000 (approx €16,000) a year. 

Other preliminary figures for 2024 released by ERA show that video rose by 6.9% and games fell by 4.4%. Subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV grew by 8.3% to £4.5bn (€5.4bn) – almost 90% of the sector’s revenues – with Deadpool & Wolverine being the biggest-selling title of the year. 

Despite the games sector’s 4.4% decline last year, it remains nearly twice as large as the recorded music business. 

EA Sports FC 25 – formerly known as Fifa was once again the biggest-selling game of the year. It generated 2.9 million unit sales.

Additional sources • ERA – Musicians Union UK