British music industry body the BPI has been drip-announcing stats from its latest annual yearbook, and the latest drop focuses on ‘new music’.
Its research found that 72 of the 100-most streamed tracks in the UK in 2022 came out in the 2020s, while 32.2% of streams for the top 15,000 tracks were for music from this decade.
But what’s most interesting is the BPI’s call for an industry debate about how we define what is and isn’t new (or old) music.
“The long-established way of segmenting music into ‘current’ and ‘catalogue’ may have worked for CDs, but is increasingly less relevant for the streaming age,” said chief strategy officer and interim CEO Sophie Jones.
“Where once tracks typically reached their commercial peak quickly, the more organic pace of the streaming market means it can now take months or even years to reach success – Cat Burns’ Go reached No.2 last year nearly two years after release, and yet would be considered ‘catalogue’ using current definitions.”
“As an industry, we need to revisit how we define catalogue to improve understanding and better reflect how the market works today.”
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