Lewis Capaldi has become the UK's best-selling artist of 2019, as the recorded music market had its fifth consecutive year of growth.
The Scottish star had both the top album and single of the year, with his ballad Someone You Loved racking up 228 million streams.
According to trade body the BPI and Official Charts Company data, the equivalent of 154m albums were consumed across streaming and purchasing in 2019, up 7.5% on 2018 and reaching its highest level since 2006.
READ MORE: Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2019 Part 4 (25-1)
Streaming is also on the rise – the 2019 total of 114 billion plays on audio streaming services marks the first time the 100 billion landmark has been surpassed in a single year.
The year's biggest hit singles included Lil Nas X's country-rap crossover Old Town Road, which finished at number two, Ava Max's pop smash Sweet But Psycho and Giant, the result of Dumfries superstar producer Calvin Harris's collaboration with Rag 'n' Bone Man.
Other artists making the year end top 10 included, Ed Sheeran, Stormzy and Eilish, while singer-songwriter Tones and I enjoyed an 11-week run at the top of the Official Singles Chart with her global smash Dance Monkey – the longest run by a female singer in Official Charts history.
It was a huge year for Capaldi, with his debut album Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent becoming the best selling, beating Ed Sheeran’s No.6 Collaborations Project which finished in second place.
READ MORE: Lewis Capaldi lands first number one single
The 23-year-old East Lothian star's album sold over 640,000 albums across all formats and album equivalents, including well over 250,000 copies on CD and vinyl combined, according to Official Charts Company data.
And it has not stopped him using social media to wantonly tout for even more chart success, by pushing to get his latest song to number one in the UK pop charts for the start of the decade.
On Hogmanay he posted a now traditional bizarre message, this time directed at Scots: "I need ya help like never ever before! Only you up there can see this message.
"Most straight up, brutally straight message I've ever typed, ha ha!.
"Need every single one of ya (you) to click this link and download my song Before You Go to help get it to number 1! We're behind Stormzy and need to catch up.
"Streaming isn't enough. We need downloads (one download is 600 streams!).
He added: "The piano version of the download also counts towards the chart, if you prefer that!"
One post had him strip topless to his song.
It is currently at number 12 in the Official Singles Chart Top 100.
Lewis Capaldi is famed for not taking himself too seriously.
Other international and UK debut artists in the end-of-year albums Top 10 include Kilsyth-born Tom Walker's What A Time To Be Alive at number 8 and Billie Eilish at number 4 with When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
Meanwhile US star Ariana Grande finished at number 7 with Thank U, Next and Christmas album chart-topper Rod Stewart finished at number 10 overall with You’re In My Heart (Rhino).
The Greatest Showman soundtrack released two years remained in the running to be the number album overall again but finished at number 3.
Geoff Taylor, chief executive BPI and Brit Awards said: “British music proved once again in 2019 that it has a bright future.
“Strong demand for streaming music and vinyl, fuelled by the investment and innovation of UK labels in discovering and promoting new talent, boosted music consumption to levels not seen for 15 years.
“But the full benefits of this growth can only be unlocked if our new Government takes action to make the UK more competitive and encourage further investment, to require digital platforms to pay fairly for music and filter out illegal content, and to give all our schoolchildren the opportunity to play an instrument and discover the joy of making music.”
According to BPI, streaming is now responsible for three-quarters of "album equivalent sales" - the metric used by the industry to convert consumption on services like Spotify and Amazon Music into album sales.
Just three years ago, the technology was only responsible for 36% of album sales.
By contrast, physical sales were down 22.8% year-on-year and now account for less than 20% (18.2%) of the market. CDs slumped by 26.5% year-on-year to 23.5m units.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel