Video, games and music sales score second successive year of growth in 2014

 

 

Sales of video, games and music scored their second successive year of growth in 2014, rising 2.2% to £5.66bn, according to preliminary figures from the Entertainment Retailers Association.

 

The results were propelled by buoyant digital sales, now running neck-and-neck with physical formats, each with sales of just over £2.8bn. However physical formats continue to remain more resilient than expected with video sales dominated by DVD and Blu-ray and albums on CD and vinyl still outselling album downloads by two-to-one. 

 

ERA is the trade association for entertainment retailers of every kind from specialists and independents, to supermarkets, internet and download retailers as well as the new generation of streaming services, such as Spotify and Netflix.

 

The strongest performer in the entertainment market in 2014 was videogames, up 7.5% by value to £2.45bn. Video and music fell slightly, video declining 1.4% to £2.18bn and music down 1.6% to £1.03bn.

 

The fastest-growing sector was the subscription music streaming business which came of age in 2014 with the inclusion of audio streams in the official singles chart. The channel ended the year up 65% to £175m.

 

Entertainment Retailers Association Director General Kim Bayley said, "2014 was a remarkably successful year for retailers and digital services as they continued to invest in the future of the entertainment business. More than half of entertainment revenues now come from retail channels which did not even exist a decade ago.

 

Too often the debate about the future of entertainment is portrayed as a battle between physical and digital. This second successive year of growth demonstrates entertainment is becoming a mixed, multi-channel economy in which streaming, digital and physical formats can both prosper, each satisfying different consumer needs."

 

The most successful entertainment product of the year, as measured by ERA's Entertainment Chart, was Disney's Frozen video which sold over 4m copies, 50% more than the best-selling video game, FIFA 15, and more than twice as many copies as the best-selling album of the year, Ed Sheeran's X.

 

 

 

 

Sources: Music - Physical / Digital - The Official Charts Company, Subscription Streaming - BPI.  Video - Physical - Official Charts Company / BVA, Digital - IHS estimates (including EST, TV-VoD, web-based VoD and sVoD services. Games - Physical - GfK Chart Track, Digital - IHS estimates (including digital online, mobile and tablet gaming).

 

 

 

-       Powered by the growth of mobile and online gaming and the launch of the Xbox One and PS4 console platforms late in 2013, videogames was for the second-year-running the star performer in the entertainment market, surging 7.5% to £2.45bn;

-      Digital revenues estimated by IHS increased 18.8% to £1.5bn in 2014, meaning digital now accounts for 61% of the gaming market;

-      Although Xbox One and PS4 gave an undoubted boost to console software sales, the overall static console software market still declined by 2.3%;

-      The biggest-selling games title of the year was FIFA 15 with sales of 2.66m units, ahead of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare on 1.84m and Grand Theft Auto V on 1.34m.

 

 

-      Total video sales declined 1.4% to £2.18bn;

-      Digital sales of download-to-own, digital rental and streaming services increased 29.3% to £807.9m;

-       DVD sales down 12.9% - and Blu-ray down 8.2% - continued to decline, but still account for more than half of the market;

-      Despite the rise of digital, the physical rental market still generated sales of £109m;

-       Disney's Frozen was the hit of the year with sales of just over 4m units, more than twice as many as second-placed The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug (1.55m units) and nearly four times as many as third-placed The Lego Movie (1.09m units).

 

-       Music sales declined 1.6% in 2014 to £1.03bn, but the headline number obscures some dramatic shifts;

-      The streaming subscription business led by Spotify increased by 65% to £175m, while music downloads dominated by Apple's iTunes fell 14.9% to £338.1m;

-      CD album sales fell by 7.4% while vinyl albums, albeit still a niche market worth just £25.9m, grew 76% on sales of 1.36m units;

-       Ed Sheeran's X was the biggest-selling album of the year with sales of 1.7m units, ahead of Sam Smith's In The Lonely Hour on 1.3m;

-      Together with third-placed Wanted on Voyage by George Ezra and Paolo Nutini's Caustic Love, the top four best-selling artist albums of the year were all by British male solo artists.

 

 

2014 was the year British consumers just would not 'Let It Go'!

 

Disney's animated fantasy-comedy musical Frozen was by far the biggest-selling entertainment product of 2014 with sales of just over 4m units, making it a clear winner of ERA's annual Entertainment Chart, which combines sales data of videos, games and music albums.

 

So successful was the Frozen phenomenon, that its soundtrack also appears in the Entertainment Chart at 13 with sales of 974,000. (It's worth pointing out that a second album, Disney Sing Along Frozen sold over 405,000 copies, while its stand-out song Let It Go by Idina Menzel generated singles sales of 731,000).

 

With 4.01m units sold, Frozen was 50% ahead of second-placed FIFA 15, one of the Entertainment Chart's most reliable performers which sold 2.66m units, almost exactly the same as the previous year's edition of the popular franchise.

 

Of the Top 20 best-selling entertainment titles in 2014, nine positions were taken by videos, five were videogames and six were music albums, led by Ed Sheeran's X.

 

 

Source: ERA. Chart combines sales data from Official Charts Company (Physical video and physical and digital download music) and GfK Chart-track (physical games sales).

All volumes are weighted to include physical sales from non-reporting retail outlets 

 

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