Female artists (and Oasis) drove UK music sales in 2025

To almost no-one’s surprise, Taylor Swift dominated the UK music charts in 2025.

The star’s 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, was the year’s biggest seller, shifting an impressive 642,000 copies since its release in October.

Women led the way all year, with breakout Brits like Olivia Dean and Lola Young powering the music industry to a record-breaking year, as combined sales rose by nearly 5% to 201 million albums sold or streamed.

There was also a huge resurgence for Oasis, whose blockbuster reunion tour helped them shift more than one million albums during 2025.

The band’s greatest hits compilation, Time Flies, was the fourth biggest album of the year, while (What’s The Story) Morning Glory, was seventh.

The figures were revealed by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which said streaming now accounts for 89% of the overall music market.

Fans streamed 210.3 billion songs over the course of the year, with US singer Alex Warren’s Ordinary the year’s most-played track.

However, Warren’s song was one of the only new releases to make a major impact – as older songs clogged up the charts.

Six of the Top 10 best-selling tracks came out in 2024. Chappell Roan’s Pink Pony Club was even older: It was originally released in 2020.

It was a banner year for new female talent in the UK, with Lola Young landing the year’s second-biggest single, with Messy.

Olivia Dean also became the first woman in UK chart history to achieve her first number one single (Man I Need) and album (The Art Of Loving) in the same week.

Asked why her songs had resonated with so many people, Dean said she’d tried to make her album an antidote to troubling times.

“I wanted it to feel just like a hug – comforting,” she told the BBC’s Sidetracked podcast.

“I just said everything needs to feel warm and intimate.”

Dean will cap off her incredible year – which also saw her achieve four simultaneous top 10 hits – by appearing on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny.

There were also breakthroughs for confessional songwriters Skye Newman and Sienna Spiro; while artists like Raye, PinkPantheress and Wet Leg all consolidated their first wave of success at home and abroad.

On the singles chart, female artists accounted for two-thirds of 2025’s number one hits; and former Little Mix star Jade achieved the biggest opening week for a debut album with her critically-acclaimed That’s Showbiz, Baby!

Vinyl sales have risen for 18 successive years and increased rapidly again, up 13% year-on-year to 7.6 million units.

Swift’s Life Of A Showgirl led the pack, and the star scored another entry in the Top 10 with Lover (Live From Paris) – a limited edition release which was only available for 72 hours on Swift’s website.

According to the Official Charts Company, it sold 47,000 copies in that short stretch of time; and subsequently became the first album to reach number one on pure sales (with no streams contributing to its total) in eight years.

Overall, vinyl sales have doubled in the last decade, and are on course to overtake CDs for the first time since the 1990s.

The two formats are now separated by just 2 million sales, with 9.7 million Compact Discs sold in 2025. Ten years ago, that figure was 47.3 million.

Although it’s very much a niche market, cassettes also saw a 53.8% sales increase to 164,491 units in 2025.

The soundtrack to Robbie Williams’ biopic Better Man was, for reasons that remain unclear, the year’s best seller on tape.

In its report, the BPI highlighted that a new generation of British talent had achieved international success in 2025.

Olivia Dean and Lola Young both broke into the US Billboard charts, and scored nominations for best new artist at next year’s Grammy Awards.

Rock acts including Yungblud, Sleep Token, Wolf Alice and Florence + The Machine also made waves abroad; while Ed Sheeran became the first overseas artist to top India’s Spotify Charts since 2021 with his single Sapphire.

These achievements were “an impressive feat, given more acts than ever are vying for audience attention”, said Dr Jo Twist, CEO of the BPI.

“The UK is still the second largest exporter of music globally, which is amazing, but we can’t be complacent because streaming has opened the floodgates to every bit of recorded music that’s ever been made,” she told BBC News.

“Luckily, we have a brilliant ecosystem in the UK which helps those artists reach global success – but it’s a tough competitive environment and that’s why we need the continued support of the British government.”