New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Streaming has seen incredible growth around the world and British artists are performing exceptionally well on Spotify, with the music streaming service reporting that one in five tracks streamed worldwide is from a UK artist.
In fact, two UK artists have made Spotify history this year with
Ed Sheeran having the biggest ever release week on Spotify for his album X, which gained over 23 million streams in a week. And Calvin Harris' 'Blame' became the first song to break 10 million streams in a week last month.
"It should come as no surprise that Britain is famous the world over for its rich musical output," says
Kevin Brown, Spotify's Head of Label Relations for Europe.
"The range and quality of music from home-grown UK artists is staggering; from rock bands like
Arctic Monkeys to enormously successful dance artists like Calvin Harris, and exceptional singer-songwriters like
Ed Sheeran via all points in between."
British Dance group
Clean Bandit currently hold the title for the most-streamed track this year with their number one single, 'Rather Be' having been played more than 32 million times so far. But they are not the only British act to appear in the top 10 streaming chart of the year so far, with
Sam Smith and
Bastille tracks also featuring.
However, it's the statistics around the streaming habits of the British public that are most interesting as they reflect a true change in habits for music fans across the country. 10.2 billion tracks have been streamed on various platforms this year, which is equivalent to 160 streams by every single person in the UK already this year. In total, across services such as Spotify, Rdio and Deezer, users are now playing tracks over 300 million times every week, with the official streaming chart number one accounting for over a million of those.
"Streaming music continues to surge forward at record speed with over 10bn streams served so far this year - nearly double last year's figure," says BPI and BRIT Awards Chief Executive, Geoff Taylor. "We have soared past the landmark of 300m audio streams a week, adding another milestone as we continue to mark a Decade of Digital."
Subscription streaming accounted for £103m of music sales last year in the UK, an increase of a third on 2012 and an amount that will likely have increased again this year. These statistics show that British music fans' habits are changing and it's likely that the industry will see a decrease in physical music sales again this year, as there has been for the previous few years.
