The UK music market just clocked its 11th year of growth, driven by fresh homegrown talent.
The British recorded music market continued its upward trajectory in 2025, marking an impressive 11th consecutive year of growth, propelled by new artists making waves. According to the latest report from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which utilized data from the Official Charts Company, the overall consumption of recorded music—encompassing both sales and streaming—rose by 4.9 percent this year. This surge brought the total to a record 210.3 million albums or their streaming equivalent.
Notably, the streaming market surpassed a staggering 200 billion streams for the first time, totaling 210.3 billion streams in 2025. This figure represents a robust 5.5 percent increase compared to 2024, with streaming now accounting for an impressive 89.3 percent of total music consumption. The vinyl revival also continued, with vinyl sales increasing for the 18th consecutive year and overall physical format sales experiencing a modest rise of 1.4 percent.
While the year-on-year growth remains strong, it’s slower than the remarkable 9.7 percent spike noted at the end of 2024. The success of breakthrough British artists has played a significant role in this year’s positive performance, with names like Lola Young achieving the second biggest single of the year with “Messy.” Olivia Dean made history as the first female solo artist to achieve both a Number One single and album in the same week, with “The Art Of Loving” hailed as one of NME’s albums of the year.
In 2025, 27 albums by British artists dominated the UK Albums Chart, featuring talents such as Sam Fender, Sleep Token, and Wolf Alice. On the UK Singles Chart, emerging acts like Skye Newman and Myles Smith also found their footing. Jo Twist, CEO of BPI, emphasized the emergence of UK talent on both domestic and international fronts, highlighting the need for ongoing support from policymakers to maintain this momentum.
In terms of international artists, Taylor Swift made headlines by being the first artist since ABBA in 1977 to have the biggest album of the year for two consecutive years with different albums. Her latest release, “The Life Of A Showgirl,” achieved the largest first-week sales since Ed Sheeran’s “-” in 2017, totaling 642,000 sales by year’s end. Meanwhile, Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” emerged as the biggest song of the year, and the tours of iconic bands like Oasis and Coldplay propelled their greatest hits albums up the charts.
