New music is by far the biggest driver of music consumption in the U.K., according to new analysis from the BPI.
Based on Official Charts data, 72% of the 100 most-streamed tracks in 2022 came out in the 2020s, while only one entry in the year-end Top 20—Kate Bush’s ‘80s classic Running Up That Hill—was released before then.
This domination of new or recent music challenges the perception that streaming consumption is made up largely of older songs by heritage artists. Turns out that more than 60% of streams last year were of tracks released during the last 10 years.
Music from the last two years provided 25.4% of streams generated by the year’s top 15k tracks; music from the last five years made up 43.5% of streams.
The stats are in All About The Music 2023, the 44th edition of the BPI Yearbook, which is available here.
One notable trend the analysis highlights is the duration of time it can now take for a track to reach its commercial peak after release. A case in point is Cat Burns, whose debut single “Go” hit its chart peak of #2 on the Official Singles Chart almost two years after its July 2020 release.
“The long-established way of segmenting music into ‘current’ and ‘catalog’ may have worked for CDs, but is increasingly less relevant for the streaming age,” said BPI Chief Strategy Officer and Interim Chief Executive 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 … As an industry, we need to revisit how we define catalog to improve understanding and better reflect how the market works today.”
