Magazine Sales Statistics

Global revenue from magazines and newspapers (print and digital) totalled $165.80 billion as of 2023.
Of this, print revenues made up $127.20 billion (76.72%). This is expected to drop 13.05% to $110.60 billion by 2027.
However, digital revenues made up $38.60 billion (23.28%). This is expected to grow 11.37% to $42.99 billion by 2027.
Between 2019 and 2022, total audiences for magazine companies have decreased by 38.56%.
Audiences for print/digital formats have decreased by 37.88%.
Audiences for mobile web formats have decreased by 28.33%.
As of 2021, the total number of adults that read magazines was 222.2 million across both print and digital.
This has increased by 5.46% since 2012’s 210.7 million readers.
The top 50 US magazines had a total of 123.67 million subscriptions as of 2021.
Of this figure, subscriptions to print made up 94.08%.

US magazine audiences by format

As of 2022, the most popular audience format for US magazines was mobile web (47.72%).
The mobile web format decreased by 3.51% over the previous year.
The second-most popular format was print/digital (42.28%)
The print/digital format decreased by 3.12% over the previous year.
Web and video formats combined made up 10.00%.

(Q4 YTD averages, figures in millions)

A graph is given below to show US magazine audiences by format:

As of 2022, AARP The Magazine (1st) had the highest average circulation at 22.68 million.
Over the period, its circulation has decreased by 6.36%.
AARP Bulletin (2nd) had an average circulation of 22.56 million.
Over the period, its circulation has decreased by 3.55%.
Costco Connection (3rd) had an average circulation of 15.68 million.

(average 6-month circulation, figures in millions)

A graph is given below to show the highest circulated US magazines:

As of 2021, the top 50 US magazines had a total of 123.67 million subscriptions.
Of this figure, print subscriptions made up 94.08%.
Over the period, print subscriptions decreased by 6.99%.
Digital subscriptions made up 5.92%.
Over the period, digital subscriptions increased by 69.84%.

(data from first half 2021)

A graph is given below to show subscriptions of top 50 US magazines by type:

In Western Europe, consumer magazine print circulation revenues decreased from $17.4 billion (2011) to $14 billion (2016).
In the UK, nearly a third of adults read print magazines at least once a week as of 2017.
However, only 19% read digital magazines at least once a week.
In terms of UK print magazine revenues, weekly TV magazines made up the largest share at 26.9%.
In Spain, magazine reading penetration has dropped to 22% as of 2021 from over 50% in 2013.
In France, daily average time spent reading magazines per capita dropped from 25 minutes (2010) to 23.8 minutes (2016).
In Germany, between 2013 and 2016 the number of people that stated they read magazines multiple times per week decreased by more than 4 million.

Although there are many factors that can influence sales figures, there are some common techniques that magazine companies to increase sales:
- Improvement of cover designs to encourage more consumers to purchase magazines off-the-shelf.
- Expansion of magazines into different geographic regions to target a larger target audience.
- Development of digital, including social media, video, mobile and web adaptations.
- Incentives such as coupons, gifts and reduced subscription prices.