Introduction

The UK Official Charts company recently released their chart for "the most-streamed and best-selling tracks of 2025 so far in the UK" covering January to end of June 2025. It’s the definitive view of what people have been listening to privately - on headphones, at home, or on the go.

But until now, there’s been a major gap in our understanding of music consumption when it comes to what people are actually listening to in public.

Historically, accurately tracking public performance plays at scale - the music played in bars, cafés, shops, gyms, hotels, and other public venues - has been near impossible. Without precise data, a true public performance “chart” simply didn’t exist. Trends could only be estimated, based on anecdote or proxy measures like radio plays.

That’s all changed. Thanks to our Audio Meters – now installed across UK venues, we’ve created the largest (and growing), most accurate dataset of public performance plays ever compiled. For the first time, it’s possible to map out what’s soundtracking our shared public spaces and compare it directly to streaming and radio consumption.

This is ground-breaking work, and the results are fascinating. Public Performance has its own rhythm, shaped by the atmosphere venues want to create and the audiences they serve. Some differences are obvious when you consider them - funnily enough, far less parental-advisory content is played in public places compared to streaming, and way more timeless "classics" from decades past. Others are surprising, revealing how cultural moments, live tours, and viral trends seep into the music we hear around us.

So, we decided to do something that’s never been done before: put the UK’s first public performance Top 40 side-by-side with the Official UK Charts and Radio airplay rankings – and see just how different the worlds of streaming, radio, and public listening really are.

Overlaps

Starting at a high-level, the differences are clear. When we line up the three charts, the overlaps are far smaller than you might expect:

Just over half of the songs from public performance appear in the UK Official Chart (22 out of 40) or UK Radio charts (21 out of 40).

When comparing the UK Official Chart and Radio chart, 26 out of 40 songs are the same:

This tells us something important: public listening is not just a slower version of the streaming or radio charts - it’s an entirely different ecosystem.

Recent vs Classic songs

One of the clearest differences comes from looking at release dates. As hinted above, part of the reason for the small overlap is the playing of more "classic" songs, reflecting the fact that venue playlists are often built for mood and familiarity as much as novelty.

This can be seen if we take a look at the release dates in the charts: The Top 40 UK Radio Chart content is 100% from the 2020s:

The Top 40 Official Streaming and Download Chart content is almost entirely from the 2020s, with one song from the 2000s and one from the 1990s:

Public performance content is far more diverse with only 60% (24 songs) from the 2020s, and the rest stretching back across every decade from the 1960s onwards:

Digging a bit deeper, we see that 87% of the Radio Chart (35 songs) and 82% of the Official Chart (33 songs) are from the last year alone, compared to only 34% of the public performance data (17 songs):

That balance, between fresh hits and enduring favourites, is part of what makes the public performance chart so unique, and why it’s never looked like anything we’ve seen before.

Trends

That isn't to say that the good folk selecting their tunes for public performance are not keeping an eye on trends - Bruce Springsteen made it into the public performance Top 30 with Dancing in the Dark, where we can see more plays around May ahead of the concerts he played in the UK.

At the other end of the scale for generational trends, 90s hit There She Goes by The La's topped this TikTok chart and we can see it features at number 34 in the public performance data. Similarly, Dreams by Fleetwood Mac has been big on TikTok over the last year and came in at number 37.

None of these songs are in the Official Streaming or Radio charts, proving that public performance charts are not simply “catching up” to other platforms but following their own distinct path.

Classics

You'll see that there are loads more classic songs played in pubs, bars, hotels, restaurants and other premises that just aren't represented by streaming or radio playback. The public performance Top 40 includes some big artists as they are played more, but there is always huge long-tail of songs we recognise.

But here’s the groundbreaking part: even these chart-toppers are just the tip of the iceberg. Our public performance Top 40 songs only represent 2.2% of all the plays we saw during the first half of the year - meaning there are millions of plays for smaller artists that just wouldn't be recognised without our Audio Meters!

Without our Audio Meter data, this long-tail of music would remain completely invisible – and the artists behind those songs wouldn’t get the recognition or royalties they deserve.

The Charts

Now, without further ado, here are the songs that made up the first half of 2025 across the UK Official Charts, Radio and public performance plays. You can click the column headers to sort by the chart positions and explore the relative positions across the charts...

Summary

For years, music charts have been defined by streaming, physical/digital sales, & radio play. Public performance - the soundtrack to our shared spaces - has never had a seat at the table.

Now, for the first time in history, we can measure it accurately. And as these charts show, it’s a world all of its own: a blend of current hits, cultural touchpoints, and enduring classics that you won’t find replicated anywhere else.

I hope you've enjoyed digging into these charts…It turns out that public performance, streaming, radio play and physical sales are really nothing alike!

Steve Robbins, CTO