Oasis reunion and Taylor Swift vinyls gas growth yr for UK music trade

[ad_1] Nostalgia surrounding the Oasis reunion tour, alongside Taylor Swift followers’ clamour for vinyl, contributed to a different growth yr for the UK music trade, as bodily codecs continued their comeback.

Music lovers listened to the equal of 210.3m albums by UK artists throughout 2025, in keeping with the British Phonographic Trade (BPI) annual report, up 4.9% on 2024 and the eleventh yr of progress in a row.

Feminine pop artists and touring middle-aged male rockers led the way in which within the charts, whereas gross sales have been additional bolstered by Britain’s enduring love affair with the British-American band Fleetwood Mac.

The BPI charges the success of the UK’s music trade through the use of a measure referred to as “album equal gross sales”, to reach at an estimate that seeks to check streaming consumption with digital and bodily gross sales.

On that foundation, the fastest-growing codecs have been all bodily, persevering with a pattern that started final yr when a 20-year decline lastly reversed.

Vinyl nonetheless makes up a comparatively small proportion of whole consumption: 7.6m albums in contrast with 189m “streaming equal albums”.

However file gross sales grew by 13.3%, the 18th consecutive yr of progress and much forward of the 5.5% improve registered by streaming.

Followers of Taylor Swift, generally known as “Swifties”, helped propel her 2025 launch The Lifetime of a Showgirl to 147,000 vinyl items – probably the most offered by anybody for the reason that Official Charts Firm started compiling the charts within the Nineties.

It's the fourth successive yr by which Swift has been the highest annual vinyl vendor, after Midnights in 2022, 1989 (Taylor’s Model) in 2023 and The Tortured Poets Division in 2024.

Regardless of a Christmas “retro renaissance” amongst youthful so-called gen Z listeners, CD gross sales nonetheless declined by 7.6% to 9.7m, indicating that the format’s resurgence could have been overplayed.

However an increasing curiosity in cassette tapes led to virtually 80% progress within the “different” class, albeit to a comparatively paltry 330,000. Total, bodily album gross sales have been up by 1.4% to 17.6m.

Whereas Swifties piled into vinyl, sellout excursions by Oasis and Coldplay helped catapult each acts again into the general album charts, that are weighted in the direction of digital streaming.

The 2010 Oasis compilation Time Flies … 1994-2009 returned to No 1 after the tour’s launch, hit the highest spot once more in August and completed the yr in fourth, with the 1995 album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory in seventh.

Sabrina Carpenter’s Quick n’ Candy was the second-biggest-selling album of the yr behind The Lifetime of a Showgirl, adopted by Ed Sheeran’s +-=÷x (Tour Assortment).

Fleetwood Mac’s 50 Years – Don’t Cease, launched in 2018, got here in fifth. Their fan-favourite album Rumours, launched half a century earlier in 1977 and one of many bestselling albums of all time, was seventh within the vinyl charts.

The BPI additionally hailed breakthroughs by newer acts comparable to Olivia Dean, Lola Younger, Sleep Token, PinkPantheress and Skye Newman, in addition to the 2025 Mercury prize winner, Sam Fender.

Jo Twist, the chief government of the BPI, referred to as on the federal government to make sure that the trade was protected by upholding copyright legislation, amid mounting concern concerning the impact of AI on artists.

Twist mentioned the figures “needs to be a strong reminder that British music is a world headline act, and one of many crown jewels of the UK’s inventive industries. Making certain its success needs to be excessive on the federal government’s agenda in 2026.

“We'd like the dedication of policymakers, the continued safety of the UK’s gold-standard copyright framework, and a enterprise setting which helps direct licensing between music and tech firms to ensure that labels to proceed to find, nurture and promote the worldwide stars of tomorrow.”