With audio streaming in the UK continuing to grow at an exponential rate, music body the BPI today reveals that, according to Official Charts Company data, the landmark of 500 million weekly streams has been breached for the first time.
Only a year ago, in July 2014, the weekly number of audio streams averaged just over the 275 million mark – contributing to a combined annual figure of 14.8 billion streams served through streaming services such as Spotify, Deezer, Rdio and Google Play, close to double the previous year’s total.
In the first half of this year there have been 11.5 billion streams – an increase of 80 per cent on the same period in 2014, and by June just gone the weekly average had risen to 484 million streams – according to the weekly Official Charts Company survey. However, for the chart week ending Thursday 16 July, there were 505,849,000 audio streams, including through the most recent entrants to the streaming market, Tidal Music and Apple Music (see Notes to Editors – Table 1 for monthly data).
If this level of growth continues at the current rate across the rest of the year, the number of audio streams in the UK in 2015 should comfortably exceed the 25 billion mark1. Were video streams on services such as YouTube, which are not currently reflected in the Official Charts Company data, to be added, the overall UK volume for 2015 across all platforms would most likely pass the astonishing landmark of 50 billion streams.
In the first six months of 2015 59 tracks were streamed more than 10 million times in the UK, with the most streamed song, Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars’ Uptown Funk, played more than 45 million times (see Table 2). The most streamed artist in the UK overall during this same six-month period, however, was Ed Sheeran, whose various songs (including Thinking Out Loud) were streamed over 170 million times in total, ahead of Sam Smith, who also broke the 100 million barrier, and Irish artist Hozier (see Table 3).
Table 1: Average weekly audio streams by month 2014 – 2015 Source: Official Charts Company.
Month Streams Month Streams
Jul 2014 276.9m Jan 2015 382.8m
Aug 2014 282.3m Feb 2015 411.5m
Sep 2014 305.5m Mar 2015 429.3m
Oct 2014 330.9m Apr 2015 453.1m
Nov 2014 347.0m May 2015 484.2m
Dec 2014 377.3m Jun 2015 483.6m
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Table 2: Top 10 most streamed songs: Jan – Jun 2015
Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars / Uptown Funk Columbia Label Group ( Sony Music)
Omi / Cheerleader (Felix Jaehn Remix) Syco Music (Sony Music)
Hozier / Take Me To The Church Island (Universal Music)
Ed Sheeran / Thinking Out Loud Atlantic Records UK (Warner Music)
Ellie Goulding / Love Me Like You Do Polydor (Universal Music)
Wiz Khalifa ft. Charlie Puth / See You Again Atlantic Records UK (Warner Music)
James Bay / Hold Back The River Virgin EMI (Universal Music)
Maroon 5 / Sugar Polydor (Universal Music)
Years & Years / King Polydor (Universal Music)
Major Lazer ft. Mo & DJ Snake / Lean On Because Music
Source: Official Charts Company
Table 3: Top 10 most streamed artists: Jan – Jun 2015
Ed Sheeran
Sam Smith
Hozier
Drake
Rihanna
Eminem
Chris Brown
Calvin Harris
David Guetta
Beyoncé
Source: Official Charts Company
1Analysis based on the top 15,000 tracks of the first six months of the year
