New York, NY (Top40 Charts) The British Phonographic
Industry looked at the top 1,000 best-selling artist albums in the UK over the last 15 years. They found that last year almost four in every 10 albums sold in the UK were by a male solo artist.
Male groups have always been the big winners in UK music with bands such as Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys,
Take That and
One Direction consistently boosting their share of UK sales and causing them to significantly outperform male solo artists. The girls have also always performed well and the phenomenal chart success of Adele, Rihanna,
Jessie J,
Lady Gaga and Beyoncé helped them to outperform male solo artists as recently as 2011.
You'd probably have to go back to the days when Robbie and
George Michael were regularly topping the Official Charts in the nineties to find a time when male solo artists so dominated the music scene.
The trend in male solo artists' success is also reflected in the successes of
James Bay,
Sam Smith and
Tom Odell in claiming the Brits Critics' Choice Award over the last three years, after five years of female artist dominance.
"After years of dominance by rock and pop groups as well as a more recent spell at the top by female solo artists, the amazing success of male solo artists in 2013 and 2014 led by Ed Sheeran,
Sam Smith and
George Ezra is helping to reshape the music landscape," BPI's Gennaro Castaldo said.
"You'd probably have to go back to the days when Robbie [Williams] and
George Michael were regularly topping the Official Charts in the nineties and then further back to the fifties era of the Crooners to find a time when Male Solo Artists so dominated the music scene."
Despite the success of male solo artists, male groups are still performing well and accounted for a further four of the top 10 albums of last year and also claimed over a third of sales in 2014.
Haim topped the female group category last year in the UK, although all their sales came from their 2013 release Days Are Gone. And in the least surprising finding of the research,
One Direction took the number one spot in the male group category with a combined total of almost 800,000 sales across their four studio albums.
