Back in the summer, Music Week revealed that overall physical music sales are on course for their first annual increase in 20 years.
That was based on the half-year BPI and Official Charts Company figures, which showed physical album sales up 3.2% year-on-year.
Now the Q3 figures are in and that increase for physical is still in sight. While the physical growth in the quarter was just 1.2%, the year-to-date increase now stands at 2.6% (11,656,797 units).
The overall recorded music market (including streaming) was up 10.2% in Q3. The year-to-date increase is 9.9%.
While vinyl growth has been consistently strong in recent years, and has seen gains for 16 years straight, the decline in CD has dragged down the overall physical sales result as it remains a bigger share in unit terms. Now that CD decline has flattened, overall growth is returning.
Going into Q4, there are encouraging signs with Coldplay’s album, Moon Music, on course for No.1 with a huge physical tally. In the latest Midweek Sales, it had amassed 175,782 physical sales (out of 199,694 so far). That would suggest Coldplay could be responsible for a weekly increase in the physical album market of more than 50%.
Physical sales growth softened a little in Q3 with vinyl LP sales up 9.4% in the three months (13.3% in Q2). For the year to date, vinyl is up 11.5% year-on-year (4,406,917 units).
CD’s decline is clearly not quite over as the decrease extended to 2.8% in Q3. For the year to date, CD sales are down 1.9% (7,130,740 units).
Overall physical album sales have not registered a year-on-year increase since 2004, when there was a 2.6% uplift to 163.4 million units.
Just over 17 million units were sold for physical music in 2023, so there needs to be a further 5.5m sales in Q4 to achieve market growth.
Thanks to releases like Coldplay, that should be achievable. In fact, the industry might expect an even stronger result than the 5.7m physical sales in Q4 of 2023.
See the new edition of Music Week for our Q4 report.
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