UK tunes into more music

THE amount of music listened to in Britain rose last year by its fastest rate this millennium, with more than half of it online through streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music.

A total of 135.1 million albums or their equivalent were either streamed, purchased in physical format, and/or downloaded over the past 12 months, representing a 9.5 per cent rise on 2016 and marking a third year of growth.

Excluding radio, last year Britons did more than half of their listening via the internet, though physical sales were down only 3 per cent, propped up by a booming vinyl market.

Some 4.1 million LPS were sold, 20 times as many as a decade earlier.

Ladies were asked to attend “without hoops” supporting their petticoats and gentlemen were begged to leave their swords at home. This was for the first performance of Handel’s Messiah, in 1741, which had aroused such interest that an audience of 700 was to be crammed in a venue for 600. Live music is just as compelling today, but anyone wanting to hear a Handel air or an Ed Sheeran song can do it instantly, in the house or the street, downloaded or streamed straight to the earpiece. Thus is it that, as we report today, the amount of music Britons are listening to is growing at its fastest rate for two decades. Whether this encourages office choirs and amateur music-making is another question. But listening to bad music with an option of better is preferable to that thing we were once unfairly accused of being: a land without music.