Entertainment Scores Its Best Year Ever As Music, Video And Games Revenues Surge Through The £6Bn Barrier

Surging digital revenues pushed the UK’s combined games, video and music markets to an all-time high of £6.1bn in 2015, finally shrugging off a decade of decline, according to latest figures from the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) based on data from the Official Charts Company (music, video) and GfK Chart-track (videogames).
Entertainment sales reached £6.04bn in 2004, but that peak was then followed by years of decline, hitting a low point of £5.2bn in 2012 in the face of the impact of the internet and the closure of High Street names like Woolworths, Our Price and Virgin.

Latest figures, however, suggest that substantial investment by new digital retailers and services is finally helping the industry turn the corner.

All three entertainment sectors registered growth last year with video up 1.5%, music up 3.5% and games up a striking 10%.

In each sector, it was digital services driving the growth:

* In music, streaming services such as Spotify, Google Play Music, Apple Music, Deezer and Amazon Prime Music increased sales by nearly 50% to £251m over the year;

* In video, digital revenues from services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime and Sky Store exceeded £1bn for the first time, making it almost certain that video will become a majority-digital business in 2016;

* And in games digital revenues from online and mobile services – which are more than those of music and video put together -grew 17% to £1.9bn.

Digital services, many of them developed by ERA members, now account for nearly 60% of entertainment revenues in the UK.

ERA CEO Kim Bayley said, “Ten years ago the entertainment business was on the edge of a precipice. Piracy was rampant and there were few legal alternatives. Thanks to huge investments by the likes of Apple and Steam and Netflix and Spotify, there has been a significant turnaround. From indie record stores to video on demand, from High Street chains to streaming services, internet retail and supermarkets, there has never been such a wide variety of ways for people to get the music, video and games they want.”

For full market figures see below

Discs have a good year as vinyl booms and console games show growth

While digital generated most growth in 2015, established disc-based formats remained the formats of choice for millions.

Vinyl album sales continued their relentless surge up 65% on 2014 to £42m, but remain a niche taste, accounting for just 6% of the album market.

Strikingly, console software driven by the Xbox One and PS4 platforms more than held its own in the face of booming growth in digital games, showing an increase of 1.6% to £866m in 2015.

Meanwhile the compact disc – launched in 1982 – enjoyed its best year in a decade declining just 3.7% and generating sales of £468m.

Compact discs are proving much more resilient than music downloads, the format which was tipped to replace them and which is now clearly well off its 2013 peak, declining in value 13% to less than £300m in 2015.

Said Bayley, “It is clearly way too soon to write off the CD or other disc-based formats. Hopefully we have now all learned the lesson of the vinyl LP that older formats can happily co-exist with newer ways of enjoying entertainment. The fact is that different formats provide different benefits to different groups of entertainment fans. That diversity is proving to be the entertainment market’s greatest strength.” Era Ent Monitor

Source:
GfK Chart-track