Artists including Arctic Monkeys, Florence + The Machine and Harry Styles lifted UK cassette sales to their highest level in nearly two decades last year, according to new analysis from the BPI, the representative voice for the UK’s world-leading record labels and music companies.
Based on Official Charts Company data, sales of the retro format grew for a tenth consecutive year in 2022, reaching annual totals not seen since 2003, when the year’s two most popular titles were Now That’s What I Call Music compilations and Daniel O’Donnell had the top artist album.
The revival of the audio cassette market is highlighted, among many other fascinating trends and stats, in All About The Music 2023 – the 44th edition of the BPI Yearbook, which is out now1.
While sales of cassettes remain quite a bit lower than vinyl, having grown by 5.2% year-on-year to 195,000 units in 2022, the format is playing a significant role in the sales mix of some brand new album releases. On 10 occasions last year, the format accounted for over 10% of the chart sales of the No.1 album on the weekly Official Albums Chart. Some of these chart-topping albums sold more copies on cassette than on vinyl when they debuted at No.1, including Florence + The Machine’s Dance Fever and 5SOS5 by 5 Seconds of Summer. More than a fifth of each album’s first-week chart sales were claimed by cassette. For some new albums, a cassette version went on sale when a vinyl release was not available, as was the case with Central Cee’s 23, Digga D’s Noughty By Nature and Blackpink’s Born Pink, which all reached No.1 last year.
OFFICIAL CASSETTE ARTIST ALBUMS CHART 2022 – © Official Charts Company
Pos. Artist & Title
1. Arctic Monkeys – The Car
2. Harry Styles – Harry’s House
3. Florence + The Machine – Dance Fever
4. Muse – Will Of The People
5. Central Cee– 23
6. Robbie Williams – XXV
7. 5 Seconds of Summer – 5SOS5
8. Blackpink – Born Pink
9. The 1975 – Being Funny In A Foreign Language
10. Machine Gun Kelly – Mainstream Sellout
