The contrasting reality of the music industry’s revenues

Firstly, the figures do not take inflation into account, and comparing the £2.389 billion spent by consumers in 2024 with the £2.221 billion spent in 2011 makes little sense (this sum is equivalent to £4 billion in 2024). Secondly, the calculation method used by the Entertainment Retailers Association is outdated: streaming now accounts for 85 per cent of the market, whilst physical sales account for just 13 per cent. The ERA continues to convert everything into ‘album equivalents’, even making comparisons with 2004… two years before Spotify was launched. To claim that ‘the equivalent of 201 million albums were consumed last year in the UK, compared with 172 million albums purchased in 2004’ is therefore a bold comparison. Finally, the distribution of revenue raises questions: streaming revenue is significantly less lucrative for artists than CD sales, and we now know that market share is concentrated amongst three major record labels, which are engaged in a constant cycle of consolidation.

These triumphant figures therefore provide yet another opportunity to observe that the music industry benefits the major labels far more, and above all that they say nothing about the economic reality faced by performing artists. A modernisation of the calculation method must be considered to reflect the current reality of the market