Taylor Swift leads record year for UK music sales

Consumer spending on recorded music reached £2.4bn in 2024, overtaking the previous record in 2001

UK music consumption and recorded music revenues soared to a 20-year high in 2024, figures show, with pop star Taylor Swift and singer-songwriter Noah Kahan leading the “banner year”.

Swift’s Grammy-nominated album The Tortured Poets Department was the biggest-selling of the year with sales of 783,820 albums, including 111,937 copies on vinyl, according to annual figures released by digital entertainment and retail association ERA.

Meanwhile, Kahan’s breakthrough single “Stick Season” generated the equivalent of 1.99 million sales.

Streaming services including Spotify, YouTube Music and Amazon saw revenues from music increase by 7.8 per cent to £2.018bn.

Meanwhile, vinyl sales experienced an even bigger jump as they grew up 10.5 per cent to £196m.

In all, consumer spending on recorded music, including subscriptions services and physical purchases, reached £2.4bn, overtaking the previous high of £2.2bn in 2001, the ERA said.

Swift’s album ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ helped drive record-breaking music sales in 2024 (Republic)

ERA chief executive Kim Bayley said: “2024 was a banner year for music, with streaming and vinyl taking the sector to all-time-high records in both value and volume.

“This is 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.”

In December, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) also reported how Swift had claimed the biggest-selling record of the year, with The Weeknd’s 2021 compilation album The Highlights in second place.

Female artists dominated the list of 2024’s top albums, with Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Billie Eilish and Charli XCX all enjoying huge years.

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L-R: Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, Beyonce, Sabrina Carpenter and Charli XCX were among the biggest artists of 2024 (Getty)

Jo Twist, chief executive of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has hailed the past 12 months as characterised by “era-defining women” in the music industry.

“We’ve seen another strong year benefitting from streaming and driven by era-defining women,” said Twist.

”From Coldplay, and Charli XCX, to The Last Dinner Party, and Myles Smith, there were plenty of examples of UK music success stories in 2024.“

Carpenter, Eilish, Roan, XCX and Swift are also among the artists expected to dominate at the 2025 Grammys, which take place on Sunday 2 February at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.

Swift received yet another Album of the Year nod, this time for The Tortured Poets Department, which puts her ahead of Barba Streisand, whom she had been tied with as the most nominated female artist in the category.

Meanwhile, Beyoncé shattered a record to become the most nominated artist of all time, with a total of 99 nominations throughout her career.

She was previously tied with her husband, Jay-Z, at 88, but moved ahead after leading the 2025 nominations with 11 nods, including Album of the Year for her country-influenced Cowboy Carter.