Consumer spending on music in the UK grew by 9.9% in the first half of this year to £672.7m (around $816.7m) according to figures published yesterday by the Entertainment Retailers Association. The patterns within that will be familiar: physical sales down by 13.8% to £138.8m, download sales down 26.1% to £48.1m, and streaming subscriptions up 25.8% to £485.9m. That means streaming subscriptions are now 72.2% of the total consumer spending on music in the UK – although bear in mind these *are* ‘spending’ stats, so don’t include ad-supported revenues for music.
ERA’s wider figures covered music, video and games spending, with games growing the fastest out of the three, albeit still with the lowest total (video grew by 6.4% to £1.07bn while games grew by 1% to £1.56bn).
In separate news, eMarketer has published its latest estimate for Spotify’s listener growth in the UK. “Monthly listeners will top 14 million this year, more than double that of four years ago,” said analyst Eric Haggstrom, in a video shared by the research firm. “By 2023, the number of listeners will be close to 17 million. At that time, more than four in ten digital audio listeners in the UK will use Spotify.”
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…