Taylor Swift has been topped as IFPI‘s 2022 World Recording Artist Of The Yr.

That’s good, not least as a result of it comes with a elaborate trophy (pictured). However understanding what it truly means in enterprise phrases places an vital spin on issues. Permit us to clarify.

IFPI, the worldwide recorded music commerce physique, has right this moment (February 22) named 20 artists, so as, that make up its World Recording Artist Chart for 2022 – with Swift on the high.

This chart, in response to IFPI, is “the one [global] rating to precisely measure consumption throughout all codecs (together with streaming codecs, digital and bodily album and singles gross sales) and all nations”.

After which the essential bit: “It’s weighted based mostly on the relative worth of every technique of consumption.”

What meaning in apply: the IFPI’s Prime 20 checklist (which you’ll see in full beneath) reveals, so as, the artists who generated essentially the most cash final 12 months globally throughout streaming, obtain, and bodily document gross sales (mixed) in 2022.

Right here it’s:

1. Taylor Swift
2. BTS
3. Drake
4. Unhealthy Bunny
5. The Weeknd
6. SEVENTEEN
7. Stray Children
8. Harry Kinds
9. Jay Chou
10. Ed Sheeran
11. Eminem
12. Kanye West
13. YoungBoy By no means Broke Once more
14. Kendrick Lamar
15. Lil Child
16. Billie Eilish
17. Put up Malone
18. Juice WRLD
19. The Beatles
20. Think about Dragons

Taylor Swift definitely had an enormous 12 months.

In line with a Common Music Group press launch issued on December twenty second, her Midnights bought over 6 million album equivalents globally throughout simply three months in 2022, after its launch on October 21.

Midnights didn’t, nonetheless, out-stream 2022’s different largest albums on the planet’s largest market.

Midnights’ US on-demand audio streams in 2022, per Luminate knowledge, sat at 1.791 billion performs, behind the likes of Harry Kinds’ Harry’s Home (1.836 billion), Morgan Wallen’s Harmful: The Double Album (2.915 billion), and The Weeknd’s The Highlights (2.366 billion).

Far out in entrance, by way of streams within the US final 12 months, was Unhealthy Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti, with a whopping 4.266 billion on-demand audio streams – greater than double the equal play-count of Midnights (see beneath).

So how come Unhealthy Bunny is down at No.4 on the IFPI’s money-generating checklist of world artists, behind Swift (No.1), BTS (No.2), and Drake (No.3)?

There are just a few apparent components:

1. The aforementioned Prime 3 artists all have vital catalog historical past on mainstream pop charts world wide (particularly, within the US) over the previous decade. This implies all of them have an enormous quantity of catalog (and catalog listening) on streaming companies that might have solely been uplifted by their most up-to-date releases. Midnights is Swift’s tenth studio album thus far, for instance, and her ninth US No.1 album. Unhealthy Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti, against this, is simply the Puerto Rican artist’s second Billboard 200 No.1 album, and his third Prime 3. One killer stat: In line with that Common Music Group announcement issued on December 22 final 12 months, mixed international calendar-year streams of Taylor Swift’s catalog, at that time in 2022, stood at an enormous 36.6 billion performs;
2. Bear in mind: the IFPI checklist relies particularly on “worth” i.e. income generated each at retail and on streaming companies… and Taylor Swift did exceptionally properly with Midnights when it got here to bodily album gross sales. The document bought over 1.8 million copies (i.e. actual gross sales throughout obtain and bodily) within the US final 12 months, says Luminate – together with 640,000 from CD gross sales, 219,000 from obtain gross sales, and a shocking 945,000 from vinyl gross sales. It was the primary album to promote over 1 million bodily albums within the US since 2015;
3. Taylor Swift had larger and higher success than ever earlier than in a single particular, large international market that has historically been laborious to penetrate for non-domestic artists: China. In line with Common, Midnights was the fastest-selling document by a ‘western’ artist in historical past within the territory.

One other very fascinating pattern revealed inside IFPI’s new artist chart: 4 of the Prime 10 largest acts globally in 2022 had been Asian artists.

Three of them had been boy-bands hailing from South Korea – the nation with extra artists within the IFPI’s Prime 10 than every other.

Alongside BTS at No.2, Korean artists on the checklist embody SEVENTEEN (a boy-band fashioned by Pledis Leisure) at No.6, in addition to Stray Children (one other boy-band, who had been fashioned by JYP Leisure through a televised competitors in 2017).

The opposite Asia-based entry in IFPI’s Prime 10 for 2022 is Jay Chou (No.9), the Taiwanese pop star who enjoys enduring reputation throughout China and South-East Asia.

There have been two British acts within the Prime 10: Harry Kinds at No.8, and Ed Sheeran at No.10.

(Going again to the significance of a voluminous and standard streaming catalog on this checklist… Ed Sheeran didn’t launch a brand new studio album in 2022, however nonetheless made the Prime 10.)

Frances Moore, Chief Government, IFPI, mentioned: “It’s a nice pleasure to award the IFPI World Recording Artist Award to Taylor Swift for an unprecedented third time within the chart’s ten-year historical past.

“Taylor is a very magnificent worldwide star, who continues to develop and evolve as an artist while sustaining an extremely sturdy connection along with her followers world wide.

“It’s thrilling to see this 12 months’s World Recording Artist Chart mirror the more and more numerous spectrum of music out there to music followers right this moment, with superstars from Latin America, Taiwan and South Korea in addition to the US, UK and Canada represented.

“Document firms proceed to work diligently in each nook of the globe to seek out and develop international stars and construct their profitable careers for the long-term.”Music Enterprise Worldwide