Milestone or Millstone?

Was 2024 really a good year for UK recorded music?

Happy New Year to the Radio Edit’s readers and subscribers. In case you missed it, on Medium, I closed out 2024 with an article about record deals, where I discussed the evolution of the record deal, its place in artist development and the importance of risk for artists and labels alike. I’ve also kicked off an experiment to offer a paid version of this Substack: I’d love supporters to participate and have a compelling promotion running this January - more details at the end of the post.

It’s still fairly sleepy in the music biz, unless you’re someone who publishes“first look” statistics from trade bodies to outline sector performance. The BPI, the industry trade body for recorded music, said “2024 figures reveal another milestone year for UK recorded music” . Consumer spending on music, according to the Entertainment Retailer’s Assocation (E.R.A), generated £2.4BN, which eclipsed 2001’s previous high point. But how was 2024 really for the UK recorded music sector?

The collated, annualised figures that we see in the E.R.A statement represent the flow of hard cash from consumers to retailers and streaming services. There’s evidently growing value there as it’s only at some point within the last decade that I remember it crossing the £1BN mark. E.R.A gives us a snapshot of total spend - it doesn’t tell us about the downstream economic impact to the British recorded music business. The BPi, representing as it does the UK’s record labels, own that particular story. To read BPi’s press release, it was a good year for record labels. “2024 proved another milestone year for UK recorded music, with BPI analysis based on Official Charts data revealing new heights for streaming, record-breaking success for women and a return to growth for physical music sales…[2024’s] growth was driven by an 11.0% rise in the streaming market, with 199.6 billion audio streams accumulated… contributing to a market where streaming…makes up 88.8% of consumption (2023: 87.7%).” *

Yet 2024 was a tough year for many who worked in the British music ecosystem. Major label groups underwent radical restructuring, with frontline labels merged and employees laid off. Acquisitions of independent companies by global corporations created anxiety about jobs and about the appetite for indies from acquirers backed by money markets and financial institutions. Global music tech services cut budgets and headcounts. As outlined by MVT and NTIA, live music and nightclub venues closed at an alarming pace. How do we account for the differences between the indicators of sector performance and the lived experiences of those working in it - and what is the true picture for 2024?

The economic upside presented by the published data is the culmination of artistic and business effort created prior to 2024. Some of that work may have happened decades ago, when seminal artists, from Elton John to Queen, Fleetwood Mac to the Arctic Monkeys, recorded some of their iconic songs. How continued this growth story will be depends on the ability to keep generating this value over the next few years – value that will need to flow to British labels for them to continue investing in home-grown repertoire. As album volume as measured by The Official Charts Company is referenced in both press releases, it’s useful to have a look at 2024’s aggregate album chart to see what it tells us.

In terms of successfully launching new music from new British artists: the only UK-signed debut album in the top 200 in 2024 was from Last Dinner Party. It is, in fact, the only debut album in the top 200 released since January 2023. To go back to the point about work today creating value tomorrow, this matters because the business of music is regenerative. The consumption of catalogue music by subscribers is great for finances today, but puts at risk the finances of the future. No successful new music today: no cash from it in in five or ten year’s time.

The BPI’s press release offers data that suggest a more successful year – specifically, the number of UK artists that had number one albums as opposed to the absolute ranking over the course of the year. To quote - “More than 20 British groups and solo acts topped the Official Albums Chart during the year.”. Any label product manager will tell you, when artists have a tenured fanbase that buys physical product, with the right timing, a number one album can be delivered with a degree of certainty. What is far more challenging is the generation of pervasive streaming consumption at scale required to compete with global, US-signed stars like Taylor Swift, The Weeknd or Olivia Rodrigo, or evergreen or culturally resonant local catalogue like Elton John or Little Mix. The facts delivered by the ‘24 album chart suggest a different reality to the happy picure described in the quote, where the ability to deliver any new music from the UK successfully is compromised. There are 14 albums in the top 200 of the album chart, year-to-date, that were released by British artists this year. Of these 14 albums, one was by David Gilmour, one was by Jools Holland and Rod Stewart and one was by The Cure.

2024 was a landmark year for female artist success. BPi’s release points to the domination of the top 20 of the chart by US stars like Billie Eilish and Chappell Roan (the only time the chart in aggregate is referenced as a datapoint), but analysis shows that of the 63 UK-signed albums in the top 200, 13 were from female artists (21%). Of the 22 British albums that hit number one namechecked in BPi’s release, only four were by female solo artists or groups.

The paucity of new British music in the chart is countered on the one hand by the popularity of domestic and international catalogue and on the other by the emergence of newly-broken US-signed artists. The data on this suggests a deterioration in UK vs international repertoire in the top 200. There are 63 albums in the top 200 released by British-signed artists in 2024, i.e. 32%; compare this to 2004 when the figure was 46% and 2014 when it was 53%.

Because of the way the chart measures consumption (see Eamonn Forde in The Guardian), over a year’s measurement , the impact of one-week number one albums, based on big vinyl pre-orders, melts away. But many who view the chart as a useful measure of success, given how streaming is measured and added, cite “the algorithm” as the enemy of progress. It features in this narrative as a shadowy robot, an objective personality pulling the strings, controlled by the mechanical brain of global tech firms. In reality it’s a tool which performs actions designed to generate a successful listening experience based on user behaviours. With streaming now approaching maturity, the way to subscriber growth is by retaining users, so the tech is focused on listening experiences without friction and an increased probability of continuous and/or repeat playback.

In a capitalist system, businesses that distribute music find commercial success by giving people what they want. Before streaming, for example, if you wanted uncomplicated music listening without the friction of unfamiliar songs, you tuned in to commercial radio. Their business model was the sale of advertising in short segments between periods of listening. Their primary goal was to stop listeners switching away, to maximise audiences during ad breaks; they programmed familiar popular hits. While manual or semi-automated in the heyday of radio, this approach to optimise playback for listening is highly analogous to what an algorithm does. Chasing listening is nothing new.

The similarities and differences between radio and streaming has been something the industry has tussled with since streaming’s ascendance. When I worked in that sector, I used to highlight these similarities to labels to explain how things worked, as it was such a pervasive paradigm and driver of success that it was an easy analogy to use. During streaming’s high growth phase, Spotify and Apple hired a swathe of radio producers. Their programming strategies mirrored specialist radio, with competition to acquire and highlight new songs and a heavy focus on novelty which appealed to a record business that was used to a hits culture. Labels tweaked their strategies but managed this radio 2.0 promotional process to success - before automation changed the playbook.

In the UK, we enjoyed a radio landscape that included the BBC’s publicly-funded broadcasting, a major economic contributor to the music industry and a critical part of its culture. Radio 1 had a remit to appeal to young audiences and reflected their diverse tastes (albeit more slowly than they appeared in culture); the station broke new British music, partly because of its scale and partly because it had a mandate to do so. Commercial radio’s programming cemented familiarity with songs that Radio 1 had initially popularised. Radio 2 had a remit to service an older audience and had a slower turnover of new music from more tenured artists; it complemented commercial radio’s ability to entrench songs in the public psyche.

For those concerned with breaking artists, streaming in 2025 is like a radio landscape that is all commercial radio and Radio 2 with no Radio 1. DSP’s programmes designed to support new artists may look good in the trade press but are often neatly tidied away in the unseen corners of those services. They deploy few moves that generate mass listening equivalent to turn-of-the-century placement on a Radio 1 A-list. This is conjecture of course, but one wonders if streaming service marketing and tech teams, measured on retention metrics, may resist moves to prioritise new music as it risks alienating lean-back listeners.

This discussion has been limited to recorded music consumption and primarily streaming - regular readers will know the issue of artist development and breaking artists is a passion and I’m engaged in a broader piece of analysis to look at this in the round. But if we consider the issue of music consumption, what alternatives or solutions are there? Here’s a few things that have personally come to mind - but please get in touch if you have other ideas:

• Cultural Quotas. Some commentators have argued for “legislating the algorithm” - which misunderstands the technology as well as the global legal frameworks of the corporations that own them. But if we focus on the radio analogy, what we had with a powerful BBC was a public body with the interests of British culture and commerce as part of its mandate. Perhaps some equivalent measure of public control is necessary, akin to the mandates around specific linguistic content, in music and other media, found in different parts of the world; a quota on the proportion of British music played in lean-back playback vehicles (algorithms, Stations and playlists) on UK consumers’ streaming apps as well as more traditional media like radio.

• Re-focus the BBC. In an environment of dwindling listening, I’ve heard the accusation levied that BBC Radio programming has become more mainstream to prevent listener loss (though don’t have enough data to support or contradict that view). If we agree that the BBC has lost any kind of “war” for listeners, as the long-term listening trends for radio vs streaming suggest, then does this create space for the BBC to re-find its cultural purpose? This is the only lever we directly control in the UK, and we’re all owners of this institution. If the population penetration of streaming subscriptions is at an all-time high, then we don’t need our license fee to be duplicative, i.e. to give us radio and online playback that’s analogous to what we already get on YouTube, Amazon Music or the Spotify top 50. We need something that isn’t offered elsewhere; music that represents the breadth and depth of British music culture and helps highlight scenes, niches and local music cultures from all over the UK. We also need specialist programming that lifts the unknown rather than promotes the obvious (e.g., this week The Weeknd, Snoop Dog & Dre, NLE Choppa and Jack Harlow are on the 1Xtra playlist - see commentary on this from Elijah - @eli1ah on Instagram). The BBC did a good job of rescuing 6 Music, which has 1MM more listeners than 10 years ago and has contributed to the success of recently-broken acts like Wet Leg and Last Dinner Party, but this is a specialist station aimed at its core middle class, middle aged brand demographic. What did they learn from the growth of 6Music and can it be applied in other radio brands to create a landscape with a broad, but not mainstream, appeal? There’s plenty of evidence (see, for example, the writings of Mark Mulligan’s team at Midia on the topic) that younger demographics are turning to analogue forms of interactions and cultural engagement and consumption. Perhaps they’d respond to an edgier BBC radio output that more closely represented their music culture.

• Cohesive Legislative Framework. Cultural quotas and a renewed mandate for the BBC to support British music should run alongside a wider series of governmental support. Intervention in the live sector, to mandate a ticket levy and put a cap on secondary pricing are good, but if we don’t do something to limit primary pricing, live music events will be as exclusive and elitist as going to watch Polo. The Ticket levy should be taken out of the hands of MVT to create general subsidy for touring, through funds that act like old-fashioned label tour support: and the live sector should have a public body to administer it. Tax breaks should be offered across the sector – lower business rates on venues, less VAT on tickets and physical music, and tax incentives to encourage investment in A&R, recording, innovation in live music and other creative output.

• Positive Environment for Innovation. for those who rail against “the algorithm”: a new market entrant to music streaming can build a minimum viable product in app form with a few quid, but it can cost one million pounds, in upfront legal and licensing fees, to launch something with potential access to a full catalogue of songs. The determinant of those costs are the rights holders who own those copyrights, i.e. record labels – for whom the algorithm is the perceived obstacle to breaking new music. Barriers to entry need to lowered, on the licensing side, the legislative side and in the creation of a robust domestic technology sector advocated for by organisations like Music Technology UK. We inhabit a streaming environment that’s getting closer to Coke vs Pepsi: if the industry helps create and sustain oligopolies then it can’t complain when affected by the lack of competition and consumer choice that leads to the outcomes that now occur. New entrants should be supported and encouraged to grow.

• Leadership. This is a Here and Now problem. Consumption of British-made music doesn’t happen in isolation. It has many root causes and issues and it’s impact could be existential if not addressed. This piece addresses one limited area of that ecosystem; an integrated approach that takes in all its aspects is required. The UK’s trade bodies have struggled to agree collectively on a number of issues and have been buffeted by developments from the Broken Record campaign to the Generative AI issue and now the Downtown acquisition. But the degradation of our vibrant musical heritage isn’t just something that comes from the proliferation of automated muzak-fodder: it’s happening right now as a new generation of musicians struggle to connect with potential new fans and to have their music played, seen, heard and experienced. We should stop squabbling as if we don’t have a thriving ecosystem to promote new music there’ll be no value to lose or argue about. Music has been integral to British culture and British identity since the end of World War II: it is something to cherish and nurture. It’s time to understand this, and for leaders across the sector to step up.

  Who is with me?

*The BPI release is a bit unclear on what it means by an 11% rise in the streaming market - if it refers to an increase in stream volume then that’s not a market size increase, as streaming is a market for subscriptions, not streams themselves. For further commentary on the metrics used by the BPI and ERA, see Eamonn Forde over at The Guardian

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