Japan boy band King & Prince have set the record for 2023’s fastest-selling album in Japan, with their compilation album, 'Mr.5', selling more than 1.2 million physical copies in its first week, MBW reports. The ‘best of’ album also became the first album of 2023 to sell more than one million copies during its first week in Japan. On April 26, King & Prince sold over 1 million CD copies of their single 'Life Goes On' in its first week, which was the first time in three years that sales threshold was crossed.

Cassette sales in the UK grew by 5.2% in 2022, reaching their highest level since 2003, following 10 consecutive years of growth, Forbes reports. All in all, 195,000 audio cassettes were sold last year in the UK, compared to 3,823 sold in 2012. All 20 of the U.K's biggest-selling cassettes in 2022 were released that year, with the most popular cassettes sold being The Arctic Monkeys' ‘The Car’ and ‘Harry’s House' by Harry Styles. Similarly, in the U.S. 2022 sales of albums on cassette tape jumped by 28% to 440,000 - up from 343,000 in 2021,

Recorded music revenues in the US - money spent on streaming subscriptions, as well as physical and digital music - grew 6.1% YoY in 2022 to $15.9 billion, the market’s seventh consecutive year of growth, MBW reports. Streaming grew 7.3% to a record high $13.3 billion in revenue and collectively accounts for 84% of revenues. Wholesale revenues – the money that makes its way back to record labels, distributors and artists – were $10.3 billion in 2022, the first time they exceeded $10 billion in the market. Also, retail revenues from paid subscription services (Spotify, Apple Music etc) grew 8% to $10.2 billion in 2022, exceeding the $10 billion mark annually for the first time. Revenues from vinyl records grew 17.2% to $1.2 billion – marking the format’s 16th consecutive year of growth - accounting for 71% of physical format revenues. For the first time since 1987, vinyl albums outsold CDs in units - 41 million vs 33 million.

Elton John's Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour is the highest-grossing concert tour of all time - it has grossed $817.9 million across 278 shows so far, more than any other tour in Billboard Boxscore history (Ed Sheeran’s The Divide Tour made $776.4 million). Billboard has another fascinating statistic - dating back to reports for Elton John’s Ice on Fire Tour (1986), and including his share of co-headline runs with Eric Clapton, James Taylor, Tina Turner, and Billy Joel, John has grossed $1.863 billion and sold 19.9 million tickets over 1,573 reported shows. That’s the highest career gross and attendance for a solo artist in Billboard Boxscore history, having passed Bruce Springsteen and Madonna while on this tour.

Taylor Swift sold 1.695 million vinyl albums in the U.S. in 2022 across her entire catalog of releases, more than any other act by far last year, Billboard reports. Nearly one of every 25 vinyl LPs sold last year in the U.S. was a Swift album - 43.46 million total vinyl albums were sold by all artists. Swift’s latest release, 'Midnights', was the top-selling vinyl album of 2022 in the U.S., with 945,000 copies sold across all of its vinyl variants and editions, benefiting from the availability of a range of alternative versions and color-vinyl variants. 'Midnights' was available in four standard vinyl LP editions, each with a different cover and colored vinyl, with back covers of the albums fitting together like a puzzle to display a clock face. A side fact - while vinyl album sales continue to gain each year in the U.S., only half of those fans buying records actually own a vinyl record player.

Record 2.232 million vinyl albums were sold in the US the week ending December 22, the highest figure it has ever been recorded since 1991, Billboard reports. The biggest-selling record was ‘Midnights’ by Taylor Swift, which moved 68,000 units. This is the second time since 1991 that vinyl sales have crossed the 2 million mark – the first time this happened was only last year, when 2.1 million records were sold in the week ending December 23, 2021.

Top 100 Tours of 2022 have set a new record with $6.28 billion grossed this year, based on Pollstar’s Year End Top 200 Worldwide Tours chart.  It represents a whopping 13.2% increase over 2019 — the pre-pandemic year saw a  record-setting gross of $5.5 billion. Overall ticket sales reported around the globe in 2022 also set an all-time gross record with an astounding grand total of $11.7  billion — just over a 5% increase compared to 2019’s $11.1 billion. This number is just a part of the entire global live industry, which easily surpasses an estimated $30 billion annually. Pollstar reports on the successful touring year.

Bad Bunny has grossed $435.38 million in 2022 alone from touring, setting an all-time record amount made from touring in a calendar year, Pollstar reports. Puerto Rican artist surpassed the previous record set by Ed Sheeran for his Divide tour, which amassed $432.3 million in 2018. Bad Bunny also became Spotify’s most-streamed artist globally for the third year in a row after amassing more than 18.5 billion streams on the platform.

This week, Ticketmaster’s site crashed during the presale for Taylor Swift’s Era’s Tour, causing the cancellation of the general sale scheduled for Friday (November 18), the MBW reports. Ticketmaster claims that demand was so high for the tickets that, based on the volume of traffic to their site, Swift “would need to perform over 900 stadium shows (almost 20x the number of shows she is doing)”, or a stadium show “every single night for the next 2.5 years“. Over 2 million tickets were sold for Taylor Swift’s tour on November 15, “the most tickets ever sold for an artist in a single day”.

With her new album 'Midnights', Taylor Swift broke many records in sales, streams, plays - many formats and categories. So, 'Midnights' moved 1.578 million units, behind only Adele’s '25' for the biggest debut by a female artist in Billboard history. She also became the only artist to have five albums debut with over 1 million units sold in their first week in US Nielsen history. 'Midnights' sold 575,000 copies on vinyl — the largest week for an album on vinyl since tracking began in 1991. Taylor becomes the first artist to claim all top ten entries on the Hot 100 in a single week. 'Midnights' is Swift’s 11th No. 1 album overall, tying Barbra Streisand for most No. 1 albums made by women. Above the two ladies are The Beatles (19), and Jay-Z (14), with Drake and Bruce Springsteen also having 11 No. 1 albums. Insider lists all the records.