UK record industry celebrates a healthy 2013

Sales they are a changing

The British record industry achieved revenues of £1 billion-plus in 2013 according to statistics published by record label trade body the BPI and the Official Charts Company. The figures also reveal, for the first time, the value of the subscription streaming market in the UK which now generates £103 million a year, up from £77 million in 2012. The BPI/OCC say that in 2013 twice as many tracks were streamed overall than in 2012, totalling 7.4 billion. This includes music consumed on both subscription and ad-funded platforms - with Spotify, Deezer, YouTube and Vevo all included - though revenues generated by the advertising-based services are in addition to the £103 million in subscription sales. As with the USA, the number of digital singles sold in 2013 was down on 2012, with 175.6 million tracks downloaded, compared to the record breaking 183.3 million in 2012. But digital album sales were up again, by 6.8%, to 32.6 million units.

Traditional revenue streams held up well, despite the downsizing of the HMV network and the closure of Amazon's main online competitor Play.com.  CD sales did to decline, by 12.8% in 2013, but the decline has slowed and sales of this format still accounted for 64% of all albums sold during the year, at 60.6 million units. The vinyl revival continued in 2013, with sales of seven-inch singles, twelve-inch singles and vinyl LPs up 34%, 60.3% and 100.8% respectively, although overall numbers of units sold is very small in comparison to CDs and digital.