Digital sales of UK magazines have surged by 15.4% year on year to an average of 2.6 million per edition, according to Press Gazette research based the latest ABC figures. This is all largely due to Spotify-style bundled subscriptions. Some 147 titles published digital edition ABC figures for 2023. This data includes paywalled apps like The Economist and PDF-style digital versions of print titles.
The Economist remains the biggest title overall with global digital edition sales of 966,947 (down 2.3% year on year). However, it should be noted this figure includes print subscribers who get the digital edition added on as there is no option to subscribe just to the print edition of The Economist. According to The Economist’s annual report, it has 697,000 digital-only subscribers, which puts it 13th on Press Gazette’s ranking of the top paywalled newsbrands globally.
Digital edition sales appear to have been significantly inflated by “all you can read” sales – i.e. readers purchasing access to titles via third-party bundled magazine offerings such as Readly.
BBC Science Focus magazine boasts 105,456 all you can read subscriptions out of its 107,646 digital sales total. Car magazine has 57,725 all you can read sales out of 60,201, and for Grazia 47,031 out of 48,238 digital edition sales are all you can read.
Overall, these all you can read sales account for 1.2 million of the total 2.6 million average digital circulation per edition, up from 860,000 last year, and so appear to collectively account for the market growth.
Navkiran Dhaliwal is a seasoned content writer with 10+ years of experience. When she's not writing, she can be found cooking up a storm or spending time with her dog, Rain.
