The dominance of streaming over downloading and physical music sales continued in the UK last year, according to a report published by the BPI.
As The Guardian reports, streaming made up 54% of the total income generated by record labels in the UK, accounting for £468m of the overall £865.5m.
Much of this has come from those who pay for subscriptions to streaming services such as Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music and Tidal. The figure is significant because it shows that last year was the first time that streaming made up over half of the total, growing 35% year-on-year from 2017.
£516.4m was the overall streaming total, when including advertising revenue from YouTube clips as well as from users of Spotify’s free service. Income generated from physical formats fell by 22.5% year-on-year in 2018, while downloads fell by 27.9%.
Find out more in the BPI’s analysis here.
