Most listened to music genres in the United Kingdom (UK) 2018

According to a survey run in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2018, roughly 70 percent of British adults stated that they preferred to listen to pop music. R&B and dance were the second and third most listened to genres at 45 percent each, followed by rock and hip-hop.

Spotify dominates nationwide

When asked in the first quarter of 2020 to name the streaming services they used on a weekly basis, 64 percent of UK listeners listed Spotify. YouTube came in second, with a 39 percent listener share nationwide. Other services such as Amazon Music and Apple Music were used to a much lesser extent - by 27 and 11 percent of users respectively. Despite Spotify having the nationwide lead, when it comes to teenagers, it is a different story. YouTube emerged as the top music streaming service among UK teens in 2019, used by 57 percent of respondents in comparison to the 54 percent that used Spotify.

A new era of digital music?

In 2018, the UK brought in Europe’s second highest digital music revenue at 815.4 million US dollars. This figure outstripped France in third place by an impressive 343.9 million US dollars. Furthermore, revenue from digital music within the UK has been on the rise since 2011 while sales revenue from brick and mortar stores have continued to decline. In fact digital music revenue had more than tripled during this period, from 333 million British pounds in 2011 to over 1 billion British pounds in 2018. This was also reflected in consumer spending, which reached over 1 billion British pounds for digital music in 2019.