IFPI has announced three additional Global Album Charts, which highlight the biggest releases of 2023 by sales and the top selling vinyl and streaming albums of the year.
It follows last week’s IFPI Global Music Report, which showed annual growth in recorded music revenues of 10.2% globally. The figures revealed acceleration in subscription streaming revenues and double-digit growth across physical formats.
K-pop act Seventeen, who had already been announced as the overall IFPI Global Album Chart No.1 act, also took No.1 in the IFPI Global Album Sales Chart. The pure sales chart measures unit sales across all physical formats, as well as full album downloads. Their album FML sold 6.4 million units globally in 2023, breaking the record for most pre-orders ever for an album in South Korea.
The IFPI Global Album Sales Chart saw an unprecedented 19 of the Top 20 albums come from South Korean acts, underlining their global dominance of the physical album format. The only non-Korean artist present in the Top 20 was IFPI Global Recording Artist of the Year, Taylor Swift, whose album 1989 (Taylor’s Version) also topped the IFPI Global Vinyl Album Chart.
Taylor Swift held each of the top three places in the IFPI Global Vinyl Album Chart, and had seven albums reach the Top 20 of that Chart overall, with the releases of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) (No.1), Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) (No.2) and Midnights (No.3) joined by Folklore (No.7), Lover (No.9), Evermore (No.13) and Red (Taylor’s Version) (No.15).
Morgan Wallen scored his first ever IFPI Global Chart No.1 in the IFPI Global Streaming Album Chart, which counts global streams from both ad-supported and subscription platforms and calculates a weighted global unit number taking into account differing economics across regions. On that calculation, Wallen’s 2023 album One Thing At A Time was the biggest streaming album of the year. He also appeared at No.9 with Dangerous: The Double Album.
Lewis Morrison, director of global charts & certifications at IFPI, said: “Congratulations to Seventeen and Taylor Swift for their second IFPI Global Charts awards of 2023, and to Morgan Wallen for his first ever global No.1. Each of these artists created (or in the case of Taylor, reimagined) incredible music which found a global audience and achieved enormous commercial success in 2023, and the charts themselves highlight the multitude of ways in which music fans are engaging with their favourite albums all over the world.
“As highlighted in IFPI’s Global Music Report, revenues from both digital and physical music formats continue to see healthy growth, and the combination of fantastic artistry, format variety and the tireless work of record labels is the foundation on which this growth is built. Well done to everyone who featured in each of the album charts, which are a great summary of a fantastic year for global recorded music.”
Read our deep dive on the IFPI Global Music Report with industry executives here.
PHOTO: HYBE
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