Harry Styles and Top Gun Maverick boost entertainment industry with record sales

Harry Styles' album Harry's House and Top Gun Maverick starring Tom Cruise helped drive record sales in the entertainment industry last year.

The two releases sold the most in the music and video sectors respectively, early trade body figures suggest.

The total spent on home entertainment last year, including gaming, was £11.1bn - 6.9% up on 2021 and 39% up on the last pre-pandemic year of 2019.

In contrast, UK box office takings are up on 2021 but lower than pre-pandemic.

The digital entertainment and retail association (ERA) said its preliminary figures were "a huge vote of confidence" for the sector.

Lockdown habits, with more people watching films on streaming services than in the cinema, have stuck, which ERA Chairman Ben Drury described as "extraordinary".

"Few would have believed we would retain the huge bounce in revenues seen when the Covid lockdown kept people at home," he said.

Tom Cruise's sequel to 1986's Top Gun was the biggest-selling video title of 2022, although more than 800,000 of the 1.1 million sales were from "electronic sell-through" or downloads, the ERA said.

Subscription platforms - like Amazon Prime, Netflix and Now TV - grew by around 18% compared with 2021 to £3.85bn, now accounting for 87% of the video market.

The gaming industry still came out on top, accounting for £4.7bn of sales in the UK in 2022 - higher than that of the film, television or music sectors - but the gap is narrowing.

In years gone by people would rush excitedly to the shops on the release day of a big triple A game but these figures show that 90% of video games are now bought digitally.

When it comes to who the public chose to listen to, it was Harry Styles who topped the year's biggest-selling album list, as well as the single list with his hit As It Was.

British stars were responsible for all of the UK's top 10 most popular singles in 2022, for the first time since year-end charts began over 50 years ago.

Music sales grew to their highest level since 2003. Physical sales came down but revenue from streaming sties like Spotify and Apple Music have gone up, earning the industry nearly £2bn.

ERA CEO Kim Bayley claimed "music is within sight of exceeding £2bn in retail sales value for the first time in more than two decades".

The full report will be released in March.