State Champ Radio analysis
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What’s the best way to become a superstar? First, become a successful mainstream artist.
That’s one of the key takeaways from the inaugural annual report from music data company Chartmetric.
Of the roughly 710,000 new artists added to Chartmetric’s platform in 2023 that placed into one of six career stages — ranging from “undiscovered” to “legendary,” only a small fraction of a percent finished the year amongst the top 35,000 artists. Instead, most new artists — 87.6% of them — fell into the “undiscovered” category, while 12.3% of them reached “developing,” one category above.
The upper echelons were incredibly difficult for new artists to reach. Just 0.05% of new artists — about 355 — finished in the mid-level category or higher — meaning they ranked in the top 35,000 on the platform. Chartmetric created its proprietary Career Stages categories by taking into account artists’ performance across streaming services, social media platforms and radio airplay.
But wait, the numbers are even more imposing! There were actually 1.3 million new artists added to Chartmetric in 2023, but only 710,000 of them were actually assigned a career stage. Chartmetric told Billboard it does not assign every artist a career stage to limit duplicates, remove non-artist profiles and filter out artists with limited data.
Chartmetric’s statistics throw cold water on the notion that social media and do-it-yourself distribution can help any artist reach the levels of success previously attainable only to artists on record labels. Those rare instances grab headlines and feed the narrative that technology has eroded traditional gatekeepers’ powers and democratized access to audiences. And while it’s true that artists such as Armani White and Jxdn rode TikTok fame to major-label record deals, those success stories are outliers. Anonymity, or something close to it, is the norm.
Economic mobility is far from impossible, though. Because Chartmetric tracks so many artists, even incredibly low odds of success can result in a meaningful number of artists moving up the ranks. The 355 new artists that broke into or surpassed the mid-tier level is a big enough number of breakthrough new artists to feed a system of record labels and artist-services companies that must constantly seek out young candidates to become future stars.
Still, the challenging math underpinning success in music makes sense. Getting heard is difficult when audiences live under a constant deluge of listening options. A massive amount of music is released every day — more than 110,000 on average every day in 2023, according to Luminate. Chartmetric added 17.2 million new tracks to its database in 2023 — 7.7 million were released last year — and has 103.9 million tracks in its system.
To evaluate career stage development, Chartmetric took a sample of artists who had reached a career stage on June 11. The vast majority of artists fell into the undiscovered category. In fact, undiscovered artists made up all but 150,000 of the roughly 1.5 million artists who had been given any career stage category on June 11.
Rather than take huge jumps in career stages, most artists who break out to superstar status come from the mainstream, not from the mid-level or developing categories. More than half — 54.2% — of mid-level artists (No. 12,000 to No. 35,000) rose to the mainstream category (No. 1,500 to No. 12,000), the strongest relationship between any two career stages, says Chartmetric.
Put another way, getting to the upper echelon usually means you’ve already had considerable success. This is likely to result of “a steady, consistent rise to the top,” Chartmetric opines, rather than overnight fame.
This path to success makes sense given the advantageous starting point of most major label artists. Rare is the artist plucked from obscurity and developed into a chart-topping success from scratch. In most cases, artists build a career independently and prove themselves — whether through a TikTok hit or ticket sales — before signing with a record label. The bidding war comes after, not before, an artist finds an audience. Undiscovered artists are far riskier propositions for record labels than mid-tier artists.
There is some economic mobility for less successful careers — but not much. About 12% of developing artists were able to rise to mid-level status (No. 12,000 to No. 35,000). Far fewer jumped all the way to the upper echelons: Just 0.25% of developing artists jumped mid-level status and reached mainstream (No. 1,500 to No. 12,000) or superstar (top 1,500).
Just as economic mobility characterizes the “American dream,” the idea that a person can strive to achieve a better life, the great hope of the modern music business is that artists can make a living on streaming royalties. Whether the system is fair is under debate. Spotify, Deezer and SoundCloud have changed their royalty calculations to favor professional and developing artists over undeveloped artists and non-music content. In the European Union, lawmakers are pressing music streaming services to improve payouts to artists.
Chartmetric’s report doesn’t dispel any notions that the odds are stacked against new artists hoping to break into the mainstream. Success is possible, but it’s rare.
Queen is finally getting close to selling its catalog, according to sources — and may even already be in an exclusive period with an undisclosed suitor.
The music assets include recorded music, publishing and ancillary income streams, according to sources, who suggest Queen is seeking a $1.2 billion payday. Those ancillary revenue streams include revenue from the 2018 smash film Bohemian Rhapsody, merchandise and other licensing opportunities. The deal may also include royalties from the North America master recordings catalog, which Queen sold to the Disney-owned Hollywood Records at some unknown point since the label began licensing the band’s recordings in the early 1990s.
In the past, Hollywood has maintained that when it acquired Queen’s master recordings it was for life of copyright, which could mean the label has the band’s later albums in the U.S. for a total of 35 years, given that U.S. copyright law allows creators to terminate and reclaim their copyright after that term.
There have been numerous media reports about Queen seeking a record $1 billion catalog sale since the band started shopping it in May 2023 — the first of which by Music Business Worldwide. While many of those stories suggested that Queen was in discussions with Universal Music Group and that Disney, Hollywood’s owner, was also approached, sources say that the band’s music assets were shopped to only a few select suitors because the band members wanted to be comfortable in entrusting stewardship of its catalog. Moreover, because of the price the band is seeking, sources suggest that some of the potential strategic buyers may have partnered with financial institutions to make an offer.
Sources say that each band member — Brian May, Roger Taylor, John Deacon and the estate of the late Freddie Mercury — has his own lawyer involved to collectively shop the deal. Billboard reached out to lawyers who are or were officers for the band’s company, Queen Productions Ltd., as well as Hollywood Records and UMG, all of whom either declined a request for comment or didn’t respond.
The Queen catalog includes iconic hit songs such as “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Killer Queen,” “Another One Bites the Dust,” “Radio Ga Ga,” “Somebody to Love,” “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” “You’re My Best Friend, “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions.” Since 1991, the Queen catalog has generated nearly 38 million album consumption units in the U.S.; and has nearly 41.7 billion in global on-demand streams, according to Luminate.
Since late 2018, Queen’s sales and streaming activity has been turbocharged by the Bohemian Rhapsody theatrical film that came out that year.
For perspective, from 1991 to the end of 2017, Queen’s U.S. sales and streaming activity totaled 25.9 million album consumption units, according to Luminate. And in the three years leading up to the Bohemian Rhapsody film’s release, Queen’s annual catalog album consumption averaged about 752,000 units. But then in 2018, with the film’s release that November, the band’s album consumption unit count jumped to 2.074 million. In 2019, its catalog activity exploded to nearly 3.58 million units.
At the end of 2023, Queen’s U.S. album consumption sales activity to date since 1991 totals nearly 37.7 million units, an increase of 45.5% from the 25.9 million in 2017.
According to financial reports from Queen’s shared company, Queen Productions Limited, filed with the United Kingdom’s Companies House agency, the band reported a net profit of 18 million pounds on nearly 41 million pounds in revenue for the year ended Sept. 30, 2022. The company also reported 32.4 million pounds in gross profit and 22.16 million pounds after expenses but before taxes. For the prior fiscal year, the company reported 13.6 million pounds in net profit on revenues of 39.2 million pounds.
Music assets usually trade based on financial models built around an average of the catalog’s performance for the most recent three years. They trade on what’s known as net label share — gross profit after cost of goods but before marketing costs. Or, in the case of publishing, net publishers share — gross profit after paying out royalties.
However, the Bohemian Rhapsody film produced incredible financial rewards, throwing off the kinds of averages commonly used to price these deals. When investors look at music catalogs, they try to eliminate what they consider one-time activity bonanzas like a new boxset coming out; or in the case of Queen, setting aside the sales and streaming activity in the immediate aftermath of the film.
By the time the Queen music assets came to market in May 2023, interested suitors were likely scrutinizing the catalog’s activity from 2020 to 2022, when the band’s music averaged nearly 1.53 million album consumption units a year. That’s more than double the 752,000 album consumption units that the band averaged in the three years before to the film’s release. After discounting 2018 and 2019 as an anomaly, Queen’s camp, however, is likely arguing that the movie has brought Queen to a bigger audience and that success will be sustained. But suitors considering the Queen acquisition nevertheless might be worried that some of that activity might still be from the film’s afterglow. And if so, how much decay might still occur before sales and streaming activity level off and become predictable?
Overall, in 2019 — the year the band’s financials were most impacted by the film — Queen reported 72.8 million pounds in revenue and, after cost of sales, a gross profit of 58.8 million pounds. In the three years prior to the movie being released, from 2016 through 2018, the Queen catalog averaged 17.6 million pounds — due to an atypically low 2016 when revenue was only 12.34 million pounds — while gross profit averaged 13.5 million pounds. From 2020 through 2022, the catalog averaged revenues of 40.7 million pounds, and gross profits of 22.2 million pounds.
It’s likely that the Queen financials don’t include all Queen revenue, as well. For example, while it may include music publishing royalties paid to the band’s publishing company, it likely doesn’t include the individual payouts from global collection societies that are paid directly to writers. With that under consideration, Billboard estimates Queen’s publishing revenue likely totals about $17 million annually, based on the 2020–2022 three years average.
For masters, Billboard estimates — also based on a three-year average — annual global revenue of about $48 million for the Queen catalog. Of that, about $16 million is from North America — where sources say the band receives artist royalties. For the remaining $32 million outside North America, Queen owns its catalog. Figuring Queen takes a quarter of the revenue from North America, and three-quarters elsewhere, the band would earn roughly $28 million annually off recorded music.
In all, that’s about $45 million that Queen earns from recorded and publishing annually, based on estimates.
Sources say Queen’s annual royalties in the deal total about $50 million, which likely also includes royalties from Bohemian Rhapsody DVD and Blu-Ray sales, band merchandise and Queen theatrical productions in the U.K.
Valuing Queen’s publishing catalog at a 25-times multiple would come to about $420 million. The masters and other income streams at a 20 times multiple would bring that valuation to $660 million. And then, adding in other tertiary income streams and then likeness and image rights could get it to $1 billion valuation.
Queen is seeking more than that, though. And the steep $1.2 billion price tag sources suggest could be one of the reasons why the catalog has been in play for so long. Now, though, it seems a deal may finally be close.
“Rap beef is so washed and tired. Exhausting. Embarrassing. Just f—ing over all corny as f—.”
The rapper Coi Leray made this pronouncement in a since-deleted tweet on Jan. 26. She was responding to an Eminem verse in a new Lyrical Lemonade song titled “Doomsday Pt. 2,” but the spat — and Leray’s suggestion that beef was a waste of energy — was quickly forgotten.
That’s because, that same day, Megan Thee Stallion released “Hiss,” a withering track that hurls vitriol at blogs, exes, shit-talkers, copycats, “Z-list hoes,” and more. Nicki Minaj is not named in the song, but she took offense to a line, and has spent her subsequent days letting the world know in interviews and on social media. She also attacked Megan Thee Stallion in a venomous new song called “Big Foot.”
All of this has been great for the commercial reception of “Hiss,” which launched at No. 1 on the Hot 100, far higher than Megan Thee Stallion’s last single, “Cobra” (No. 32). On-demand audio streams of “Cobra” started at around 1.7 million the day of release and then slid to a plateau around 1.1 to 1.2 million, according to Luminate. “Hiss” started out higher — earning 3.2 million on-demand audio streams opening day — and then began to make a similar slide, falling to 2.3 million plays by Sunday, a drop of around 27%. However, when Minaj released “Big Foot” Sunday at midnight, streams of “Hiss” shot back up — hitting 3.8 million on Monday, a jump of more than 60% — and they stayed strong for the rest of the week.
That’s all worth real money. Billboard estimates that “Hiss” earned around $121,000 in royalties from those on-demand audio streams — about $33,000 of which came from that “Big Foot” bump. (Megan Thee Stallion recently signed a distribution deal with Warner Music Group.) “Big Foot,” meanwhile, has earned more than $44,000 in recorded music royalties from its audio streams, Billboard estimates. (These figures don’t take into account other sources of streams or sales, which were especially significant for Megan Thee Stallion.)
In an industry where the competition for attention is fiercer than ever, the combination of controversy and celebrity remains the closest thing to a surefire winner. “When you’re in a very crowded marketplace with however many songs coming out on streaming services every day, you have to figure out an angle to cut through the noise,” says Eddie Blackmon, a longtime A&R. “Obviously this is cutting through the noise.”
“Beef always helps music, because it just brings attention,” adds another rap executive who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “In the clickbait world that we’re in, that gets the headlines, that’s what people talk about, that gets the barbershops going. People react to negativity more than they do positivity.”
Megan Thee Stallion has already proved adept at using celebrity and controversy to galvanize headlines and streaming, of course. When she released “WAP” with Cardi B in 2020, conservatives objected to the sexually explicit lyrics, turning the single into a culture-war-flashpoint — and a No. 1 hit. (When the two rappers released “Bongos” in 2023, it failed to incense right-wing commentators, debuted at No. 14, and quickly faded from view.) Lil Nas X achieved a similar feat with “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” transforming conservative outrage over the track’s video into a tail-wind that propelled him to No. 1.
These days, culture war controversy may be the most effective rocket fuel for hits. For two other examples that helped mint No. 1’s in 2023, see Oliver Anthony Music’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” and Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town.”
Hip-hop feuds are another strain of controversy with their own long history, fodder for many an internet list: MC Shan vs. KRS-One; Lil’ Kim vs. Foxy Brown; Jay-Z vs. Nas; 50 Cent vs. Ja Rule; Meek Mill vs. Drake; Minaj vs. Remy Ma, and many, many, many more.
Sha Money XL produced 50 Cent’s “Wanksta,” a hooky Ja Rule diss that came out in 2002. “That was 50’s first break-through record,” Sha Money XL says. “DJs went crazy with it.”
A dispute between artists “is definitely going to raise your attention,” the producer and longtime record executive adds. “The bad thing is there can be fights, shoot-outs, that come with it.”
Listeners love to take sides in abstract debates — which rapper is more talented, or more of a sellout — especially in an era where zealous fan armies vie for primacy online, but there can be dangerous real-world consequences. “With beefs there can be a bravado there; guys want to hurt each other or defend their ego,” says Ray Daniels, a veteran hip-hop executive and host of The GAUDS Show.
In the case of Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj, Daniels continues, “no one is saying, ‘tool up and get security up.’ So to me, it’s a great thing that they’re using their platforms to shine lights on each other, whether that’s good light or bad light. Both songs are streaming; it’s obviously working.” (Though while streams of “Hiss” rebounded and stayed high, “Big Foot” enjoyed a big debut — 4.1 million on-demand audio streams — then fell off quickly, logging 1.1 million plays in the last day of the track week, according to Luminate.)
If sales can be a side effect of some spats, they can also be the main event, the whole purpose of the fracas. 50 Cent and Kanye West battled over who would sell more units in 2007, as did Minaj and Travis Scott in 2018. (At the time, Minaj memorably ridiculed Scott as “this Auto-Tune man coming up here selling f—ing sweaters.”)
Squabbles over sales also help drive sales, of course — it’s not a coincidence that West’s Graduation earned the biggest opening week of his career at that point. “Some skeptical hip-hop fans believe that most of these feuds are merely cheap marketing stunts meant to help sell records,” The New York Times noted at the time. “This feud was unabashedly a marketing stunt, with record sales not the hidden agenda but the main point.”
“We know there are real beefs and then there are manufactured beefs,” acknowledges Blackmon, who started his career working at West’s G.O.O.D. Music label. “But they all help build awareness of the songs that are being released. It’s all marketing at the end of the day. If it takes on a life of its own, the companies and teams around it figure out how to fan the flame.”
That fanning process can happen more quickly in the social media era. “Social media makes little things bigger, magnifies the tension and the opinions,” Sha Money XL notes.
Many of the prominent music- and culture-focused accounts on X, Instagram, and TikTok are entrepreneurial, meaning they accept money for posts. “People spend tens of thousands of dollars across Instagram, blogs, and X culture accounts,” says one digital marketer who is not working with either Megan Thee Stallion or Minaj. “Narrative-based campaigns are everything. You’re getting the internet to see the parts of the story you want them to see; if you wanted to hurt somebody, for example, you seed out their low first-week numbers [when they release an album], knowing that everybody’s just gonna roast them.”
“Black Twitter has had a field day right now with this whole feud” between Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion, the digital marketer adds. His advice: “Keep fueling it.”
“You want to continue the conversation,” a second digital marketer uninvolved with either rapper agrees. If a rivalry is developing, he continues, artist’s teams can go to culture-focused accounts and pay $50 or $100 for posts asking something as simple as, “who’s harder?” “It’s much easier to push a narrative on X, especially if you’re a large artist,” the digital marketer says. “You’re going to get impressions just by using the name.”
Both Megan Thee Stallion and Minaj seem keenly aware that their clash has the potential to drive clicks. Even as Minaj insults Megan Thee Stallion in “Big Foot,” she claims that she’s doing her rival a favor: “It’s the most attention you’ve ever gotten.” Meanwhile, “Hiss” targets anyone “usin’ my name for likes.” “All this free promo,” Megan raps. “I’m turnin’ a profit.”
The music industry’s Cold War with TikTok just turned very hot — and extremely complicated. By the end of the month, Universal Music Group (UMG) will require the platform to take down music it controls even a small part of, by using what some music executives call “the nuclear option.” This will prevent some other rights holders from making money on TikTok — but at least some of them are cheering it on.
On Jan. 30, the day before UMG’s latest deal with TikTok lapsed, the company announced in an open letter that “we must call time out on TikTok” and began removing its recorded music from the platform. After a 30-day grace period, UMG says it will also require TikTok to take down any song in which Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) controls any rights. That means songs by Harry Styles, SZA and Bad Bunny; those with writing credit from creators like Metro Boomin and Jack Antonoff; and even those that sample compositions by UMPG songwriters. In some markets, that might account for more than half of the music used on the platform.
The question is what this means for the rest of the business. Styles, SZA and Bad Bunny are three of the biggest acts signed to or distributed by Sony Music Entertainment, so this would affect that label, as well as Warner Music Group, BMG and scores of independents. From the end of February until UMG and TikTok reach a new licensing deal, they will not earn any money on music to which UMG has any rights — a relatively minor income stream at this point — while losing out on an important source of promotion. In the long term, of course, a win for UMG that pushes TikTok to pay more for the rights to music could also help the entire industry.
This Cold War turned hot pretty suddenly. For years, rights holders have embraced TikTok as a promotional vehicle while griping about the short-form video platform’s low payouts in what seemed like a repeat of the music industry’s contentious relationship with YouTube. Both can pay less than other platforms because in many cases they can essentially operate under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows them to make available content uploaded by users until rights holders ask for a takedown. In language that sounds like it could have come from YouTube a decade ago — or from a file-sharing service a decade before that, for that matter — in a statement released on social media, TikTok said that UMG had abandoned a popular platform “that serves as a free promotional and discovery vehicle for their talent.” Basically, they offer exposure. But as creators and rights holders might say — and here you have to imagine a Borscht Belt delivery — you could DIE of exposure!
UMG’s move came at the worst possible time for TikTok: the day before a Senate committee hearing on child safety and social media, during an escalating Middle East conflict that has focused negative attention on TikTok’s Chinese ownership, and during a week when much of the music business was in Los Angeles for the Grammys. This isn’t entirely a coincidence: UMG’s long-term deal actually expired at the end of 2023, and Jan. 31 was just the end of a one-month extension. (A source close to TikTok said that the two sides were close to a deal at the end of December, while a source close to UMG said that was not the case.) Fair or not, the pressure in Washington could be substantial. (I have serious concerns about a Chinese-owned app becoming an important source of news on Taiwan, but I’m not sure that has much to do with music licensing.)
So far, there has been some support for UMG from other companies in the music business. Neither of the other two major labels would comment — Sony declined and a spokesperson for Warner did not return messages — and it’s unlikely that they will, for antitrust reasons. Primary Wave, Downtown and Hipgnosis have expressed support for Universal, though. And at a Grammy Week music publishers event, National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) president/CEO David Israelite pointed out that the model contract with TikTok that’s used by many NMPA members expires in April.
Tik-tok, indeed.
The dynamic here is complicated but potentially revolutionary. For the last two decades, most of the negotiations between media and technology companies have involved a few rights holders that each control significant amounts of content and a platform that has a larger share in its market than they do — think labels and streaming services or book publishers and Amazon. Since antitrust law almost always prevents big companies from negotiating together — a lesson Apple and some book publishers learned the hard way — the platforms have an advantage. In this case, UMG managed to get more leverage by using publishing rights that by their nature will affect impact a lot of compositions, creating a situation where some small companies can cheer it on.
The question is what happens after February. Rights holders can live without the money they make on TikTok, but what about the platform’s promotional value for breaking artists? For now, presumably, artists on other labels who don’t work with UMPG songwriters will gain an advantage. If this dispute lasts a few months, that might give smaller labels enough of an advantage to matter. If it lasts longer than that, though, TikTok could face more competition, too. The company has suggested that music accounts for a modest amount of the platform’s value, but that would be tested if TikTok has to compete against other short-form video platforms that have rights to use music that it doesn’t.
The more likely scenario is that UMGand TikTok will reach an agreement — perhaps one that both will grumble about but accept — and then over time find ways to work together that benefit both sides, plus creators of all kinds. Short-form video could eventually grow into a truly important revenue stream. By that time, of course, a new platform will probably come along to challenge that, too.
A year into SoundCloud’s fan-powered royalties, a departure from the traditional “pro rata” method of calculating streaming royalties, artists have a better understanding of their fan bases and a better chance to monetize their listeners, according to a new report by author, podcaster and economics professor Will Page.
Fan-powered royalties — known more broadly as user-centric royalties — is a method for calculating streaming payouts to independent artists based on individual fans’ listening on SoundCloud. The traditional, pro-rata model divvies up a large revenue pool based on a track’s total number of plays. In that scenario, an up-and-coming artist shares the same royalty pool as the biggest superstar.
User-centric royalties turn a big pool into smaller silos by splitting a listener’s subscription or advertising revenue based on only the tracks they streamed. If a listener streams only independent artists, most or all of the user’s subscription or advertising revenue will go to those artists. Since SoundCloud first announced fan-powered royalties in 2021, Warner Music Group and Merlin have agreed to use the calculation approach for their artists.
SoundCloud singles out an artist’s biggest fans and gives artists the tools to engage with those supporters through person-to-person messaging. With the help of tools that help artists engage directly with their fans on the SoundCloud platform, a small number of what SoundCloud calls “true fans” will provide an “outsize” share of an artist’s royalties. (Page did not define “true fan” or explain the threshold that separates them from less passionate ones.) The combination of the engagement tools and the fan-powered royalties “make this true fan game the most desirable to play,” wrote Page.
The promise of fan-powered royalties is a more sustainable business model for up-and-coming and working-class musicians. For SoundCloud, a well-known springboard for young musicians’ entry into the big leagues, a model that benefits independent artists over major-label superstars would help cement that platform’s credentials in the creator community.
So, Page offered three case studies that examined artists in different stages of their careers. In 2022, Rapper Lil Uzi Vert opted into fan-powered royalties and gave SoundCloud an exclusive on the track “Space Cadet” from his Red & White EP. As a result, according to Page, “more of Uzi’s listeners became true fans, and those true fans made up an even greater proportion of the overall revenue.” With fan-powered royalties and insights from the platform, true fans accounted for 6.5% of the rapper’s audience in July 2022, up from 5.2% in the previous month, as well as 71.8% of his revenue, up from 54.6%. The audience he gained was engaged: 6% of them were true fans, 69% were classified as engaged and only 9% were passive listeners.
To show that fan-powered royalties can help a mid-tier, independent artist, Page offers the example of Kelow LaTesha, a rapper with about 14,000 SoundCloud followers. LaTesha used fan-powered royalties to reach more listeners. True fans’ share of her revenue jumped to 45.7% in July 2022 from 32.2% in June 2022. The number of true fans increased, but because she gained a greater share of passive listeners, LaTesha’s true fans accounted for 1.4% of her listeners, down from 1.7%.
The do-it-yourself case study, focusing on EDM producer/DJ ShortRound, improved both his true fans and his revenue from those fans. From June to July 2022, true fans’ share of DJ ShortRound’s SoundCloud audience climbed from 3% to 4.4% and their share of his revenue jumped from 77.7% to 82%.
SoundCloud’s adoption of fan-powered royalties pre-dated a larger effort to make streaming more financially viable for labels and artists. Universal Music Group partnered with streaming service Deezer in 2023 to improve payouts to professional musicians while reducing payouts to background noise and other types of audio content that arguably provide less value to listeners. In Europe, politicians are calling for “fairer models of streaming revenue allocation” for artists.
SoundCloud’s approach might not be the best approach for all streaming platforms, but the handful of case studies is evidence that the approach works for SoundCloud. The combination of fan-powered royalties and creator tools “opens a new path to prosperity that the entire music industry should understand,” wrote Page.
At the beginning of 2024, the always-changing music business is going through rapid transformation unlike anything in the last decade. How music companies organize themselves is changing. How royalties are calculated and paid is changing. How companies engage with fans is changing. And investors have different expectations of public companies — more focus on margins, less obsession with growth.
Music companies’ earnings results for the fourth quarter of 2023 will provide insights into how companies have performed and, more importantly, what they expect to do in the future. Only one company, SiriusXM, has announced to date. Next week’s earnings releases include Spotify (Tuesday, Feb. 6), Reservoir Media (Wednesday, Feb. 7) and Warner Music Group (Thursday, Feb. 8). Universal Music Group (UMG) announces earnings on Feb. 28. Here are some things to watch for in upcoming earnings calls.
The scope of layoffs
In October, UMG executives primed investors for cost-cutting measures that would improve margins and allow for investments in growth opportunities. The result would be hundreds of layoffs, according to a Jan. 12 Bloomberg report. On Thursday, UMG revealed some details of a bi-coastal label group restructuring. But what’s missing, so far, are details on the number of layoffs and the cost savings UMG expects to get from a restructuring. UMG’s fourth-quarter earnings release on Feb. 28 will be an opportunity for analysts to ask the company to give an update on its restructuring plans. As Billboard noted last week, the music industry is seeing widespread layoffs despite continued streaming growth. Warner Music Group (WMG), Downtown Music Holdings and BMG cut jobs in 2023. Digital music companies have shrunk their head counts, too: Spotify, Amazon Music, SoundCloud, Tidal and Bandcamp went through downsizings of various sizes.
More troubles in TikTok-land?
When UMG failed to renew its licensing contract with TikTok, it made licensing to the social video platform a major topic of conversation for upcoming earnings calls. Analysts and investors should want to know how a company’s negotiations with TikTok are proceeding and whether to expect an interruption if the two sides cannot reach an agreement. TikTok and WMG reached an agreement in July 2023, but investors may want progress reports from other public companies — Reservoir Media, Believe, Sony Music — about their licensing talks.
UMG’s decision is not without precedent: In 2008 and 2009, WMG pulled its catalog from YouTube for nine months while the two companies’ licensing negotiations were at an impasse. In 2011, Google launched an audio music streaming service, Music Beta by Google, without licenses from both Sony Music Entertainment (SME) and WMG. When Google added MP3s to its Google Music service later that year, the SME and WMG catalogs were initially absent.
The direct financial hit to UMG will be minimal since TikTok accounts for 1% of the company’s revenue, UMG stated in an open letter about the licensing talks. But because TikTok is an important promotional vehicle and a popular place to discover music, the indirect financial hit is more substantial. Investors always want to know about direct dollar impacts of a company’s moves, and they should want to understand the downsides of leaving a hit-making social platform.
How much have price increases mattered?
Music subscription prices didn’t budge for over a decade before succumbing to change in 2022 and 2023. The big fish was Spotify, which finally raised prices in the United States and other major markets in July. A higher price creates a multiplier effect on top of existing subscriber growth and will augment what would have otherwise been record quarterly revenues. The gains should come without an increase in churn: Spotify CFO Paul Vogel said during an Oct. 27 earnings call that Spotify didn’t lose any subscribers in the third quarter due to the price increase.
For record labels and publishers, a 10% price increase atop year-over-year subscriber growth stands to accelerate revenue growth. Guggenheim analysts said in a recent note to investors that they expect price increases at Spotify, YouTube and Deezer to raise UMG’s subscription revenue growth to 14.8% in the fourth quarter from 13.0% in the third quarter.
The state of the advertising business
While the subscription market has been strong, the ad-supported side of the business has struggled to keep chase. Through the first three quarters, Spotify’s ad-supported streaming revenue increased 14.9% year over year. That’s better than the 11.4% improvement in subscription revenue but well below the 22.2% and 62.1% gains in ad revenue in full-year 2022 and 2021, respectively.
Broadcast radio has fared even worse. Companies such as iHeartMedia, Cumulus Media and Audacy have blamed a slowdown in national broadcast advertising on some disappointing earnings in recent quarters.
SiriusXM provided the latest clue about broadcast advertising. “SiriusXM’s advertising revenue remains challenged,” CFO Tom Barry said during Thursday’s earnings call, “which we believe is a product of a tough broadcast advertising market.” Elsewhere, however, SiriusXM’s digital advertising improved versus 2022: Pandora had “strong growth” in its podcasting and programmatic advertising businesses, added Barry.
Some positive news in recent days shows advertising — perhaps not for broadcast businesses — is rebounding. U.S. ad spending in November was up 25% year over year, according to MediaRadar, an advertising intelligence company. The number of advertisers declined 8%, however, suggesting existing advertisers were ramping up spending.
More good news came from major ad-driven tech companies. Google’s advertising revenue in the fourth quarter increased 11% from the prior-year period, the company announced Wednesday, up from year-over-year improvements of 3.3% and 9.5% in the second and third quarters, respectively. Meta’s revenue grew 25% and its ad impressions rose 28% in the fourth quarter, the company announced Thursday.
The mission to reach superfans
Major music companies are suddenly taking a greater interest in serving superfans, those heavy-spending consumers that drive the concert and merchandise businesses but have less effect in a world of flat-rate, all-you-can-eat music subscription services. The 80-20 rule says 80% of a company’s business comes from 20% of its consumers. With music streaming, however, a $10.99-per-month service doesn’t capture a superfan’s willingness to pay more for additional value. Spotify hinted that “superfan clubs” were in the works in an announcement about the Digital Markets Act in the European Union. UMG CEO Lucian Grainge’s letter to staff in January said the company will focus on “strengthening the artist-fan relationship through superfan experiences and products.”
The problem isn’t that consumers won’t pay more money to engage with their favorite artists. The problem is no platforms have found a winning formula. Numerous previous attempts to court superfans fizzled. Drip, a platform that allowed artists to provide fans with music and other items for a recurring monthly fee, lasted from 2011 to 2016 (it relaunched a Kickstarter in 2017 but shut down in 2018). PledgeMusic shut down in 2019 amidst financial problems and allegations of improprieties. Most recently, startups’ attempts to use Web3 technologies to build superfan communities ran headfirst into the public’s sudden distrust of cryptocurrency and disinterest in NFTs. Given Spotify’s market size and resources, though, the company could make a real impact.
During an October earnings call, Universal Music Group CFO Boyd Muir told investors the company was conducting “a careful review” of its costs. In the world of public company statements, that was a hint that UMG expected to make cuts to its workforce of roughly 10,000 — specifically hundreds of jobs in the first quarter of the year, as Bloomberg later revealed.
UMG has plenty of company. Until late last year, the music business had mostly escaped the job-cutting that ravaged industries that depend more on advertising in 2022 and 2023. That was still the best of times for the industry, which had found double-digit revenue growth in streaming. Since 2020, 10 music companies have gone public to take advantage of investors’ enthusiasm for music, including labels and publishers (UMG, Warner Music Group, HYBE, Reservoir Media, Believe, Round Hill Music Royalty Fund), streaming services (Deezer, Anghami, Cloud Music) and live-entertainment firms (a spinoff of MSG Entertainment).
That changed during 2023. In March, WMG’s new CEO, Robert Kyncl, a former YouTube executive, laid off around 270 people — 4% of the company’s workforce — to focus more on technology initiatives and “new skills for artist and songwriter development,” as he wrote in a memo to staff at the time. Downtown Music Holdings — owner of CD Baby, FUGA, Songtrust and more — also thinned its payroll in May. BMG laid off about 30 people in October. Digital music companies fared even worse in 2023: Spotify cut about 23% of its workforce in two rounds of layoffs, TIDAL cut 10%, SoundCloud cut 8%, and Bandcamp chopped half its head count after being acquired by Songtradr.
But UMG? The company’s revenue in the first nine months of 2023 was up 9.4% on a constant currency basis, 6.8% as reported due to foreign currency fluctuations. More than two years after spinning off from former corporate parent Vivendi, UMG is a profitable, hit-making machine that controlled 29.4% of the U.S. recorded-music market in 2023, easily besting Sony Music’s 18.9% and WMG’s 15.6%. It has Taylor Swift, Morgan Wallen, Drake and many other big stars. Perhaps understandably, there has been talk that other labels could follow, with cuts of one size or another.
UMG’s decision may be the most dramatic example of just how profoundly the music business is changing — and how quickly. Lean is the new black. Bloat, or anything that evokes it, is out. The old ways of finding, developing and marketing artists no longer work the way they used to. How big a radio promotion department does a label need — how many radio promotion departments does its parent company need — at a time when radio no longer plays as important a part in breaking hits? Social media and data analysis might matter just as much. So could developing markets that once didn’t account for much revenue.
UMG’s next focus, chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge wrote in a memo to staff in early January, will be “creating the blueprint for the labels of the future” by building the technology to do more work in-house, expanding in developing markets and finding ways to better monetize superfans. That requires moving resources away from the “legacy business,” Muir said in the October earnings call, to “benefit from all of the opportunities that we see ahead.” What that will mean for how UMG reshuffles its organizational chart remains to be seen, but it is already building an artist services business with Virgin Music Group and making aggressive moves in developing markets with investments in TM Ventures in India and Chabaka in the United Arab Emirates.
Other music companies are also reassessing their priorities. BMG’s staffing changes were spurred by new CEO Thomas Coesfeld as a response to an international marketing structure that didn’t meet expectations and duplicated the efforts of local teams, he wrote in a memo to staff.
“Businesses are repositioning themselves slightly to become more competitive,” Downtown Music president Peter van Rijn says. “One must always be mindful to not get complacent,” he adds, noting that his company needed to stay nimble enough to respond to the marketplace. “What you do see, in general, is the music industry is maturing. The digital growth is still there, but it’s slowing down.”
The world is changing, too. Along with the major labels, companies like Believe and Reservoir Media are investing in Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and other regions where music revenue is growing. And both new companies and the established majors are expanding their artist services businesses to court creators who can now choose from among an increasing number of alternatives to a traditional major-label deal. Sony acquired the artist services company AWAL in 2022, UMG is building up Virgin, and WMG’s Kyncl wrote in an early-January memo that he wants to augment services to the “middle class of artists” and scale up the company’s publishing administration business.
Public companies in the music industry face pressure from investors to constantly improve their bottom lines, especially as streaming growth levels off. “Two-and-a-half years ago, we started making cuts because we knew the market was no longer about just growth,” says Rob Ellin, CEO of music streaming company LiveOne, which is cutting up to 100 staffers in a restructuring. “You had to be profitable.”
The growth-over-profits era finally ended at Spotify, too. When the streaming giant announced it would cut 17% of its global workforce in December, CEO Daniel Ek explained that costs were too high, efficiency was too low and too few people “contribut[ed] to opportunities with real impact.” Cutting roughly 1,500 jobs and seeking a replacement for CFO Paul Vogel, Ek wrote in an open letter, were necessary to become “relentlessly resourceful.”
Record labels and music publishers have better margins than Spotify, which will rarely turn a profit — but investors also expect more of them. In the first half of 2021, UMG — then a subsidiary of Vivendi — had a margin of 21.5% in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization and told investors in August it expected to reach the “mid-20s” soon. Two years later, revenue had increased 34% but its EBITDA margin was almost unchanged at 21.5% (or 14.9% after deducting 345 million euros of noncash, share-based compensation for senior management). With layoffs can come better margins. Restructuring saved Warner $19 million in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, and Barclays analysts estimated UMG’s layoffs could save the company $70 million annually.
To those who remember the crisis caused by the death of the CD, this talk of restructuring might have a familiar ring. As piracy ravaged the music business, the majors scaled back their physical distribution businesses, sold their CD pressing plants and retooled for a digital world. That’s why Grainge reminded investors that UMG is no stranger to managing disruption. “We’ve got decades of experience in executing cost-cutting programs in the various cycles of the industry, right back to the piracy days,” he said during the October earnings call. And currently, “we’re seeing a change in the business.”
Share of streaming among the top 10,000 tracks measured by Luminate in its recently-released 2023 Year End Music Report went down by 3.8 percentage points since 2021. Which begs the question: Where did that 3.8% go?
It went fully into the streaming share of Spanish language tracks, which went up by 3.8%.
Indeed, today, Spanish is the second most consumed language in music, both in the U.S. and globally.
In the United States, the top three languages in music consumption by percentage of the total are, of course, English (88.8%), followed by Spanish (8.1%) and Korean in a distant third (0.7%).
The most recent numbers show Spanish language music’s market share among the country’s most popular songs almost doubled over the past two years — jumping from 4.2% of the top 10,000 tracks in 2021 to 8.1% in 2023. Overall, consumption of Latin music in the U.S grew by 19.4 billion on-demand audio streams in 2023, a 24.1% jump. In total number of streams, it was second in growth only to country, which grew by 20.4 billion streams.
Worldwide, English-language music consumption among the 10,000 most listened to tracks fell substantially in 2023, from 67% in 2021 to 54.9% in 2023. Spanish-language music consumption also dipped, from 12.4% in 2021 to 10.1% in 2023, while consumption of music in Hindi grew from 6.1% to 7.8%, and in Japanese from 1.3% to 2.1%. However, all told, Spanish is still the second most listened to music language in the world, according to the study.
In the U.S., Spanish-language music’s growth has been a very gradual process that’s come with the growth of streaming, a bigger Latin population, and with a major cultural shift that accepts that there are more cultures and languages that can coexist. Chief among them is Spanish, which benefits from being the lingua franca of an entire continent, plus Spain. While Latins are not monolithic, as many have long pointed out, they are all (with the exception of Brazilians) united by language; go to any Latin music concert in the U.S., and you’ll find a plethora of nations gathered under the same roof enjoying the same music, regardless of its origin.
The shift in consumption has been noticed by mainstream labels; 25 years ago, Latin acts like Shakira and Ricky Martin, had to record in English to garner widespread promotion. Spanish, the language which has long defined “Latin” music, was conversely, widely seen as stepping stone on the path to international superstardom but not as the goal.
Today, for the first time, mainstream labels are signing and developing artists who record solely, or almost solely in Spanish, such as Yahrtiza y su Esencia to Columbia Records and Xavi to Interscope.
There is strength in numbers, and those numbers opened the door for Latin artists to scale the charts by singing only in Spanish, as well as for predominantly Spanish-language series –like “Narcos” and the new “Griselda”—to score big viewing numbers despite what many would have perceived as a language barrier years ago.
But clearly, today there is a growing number of non-Spanish speakers who also listen to music in Spanish. According to recent consumer research insights from Luminate, for example, 25% of U.S. music listeners (ages 13+) said they engage with Spanish-language music, even though Hispanics account for 19% of the population.
People may not speak Spanish, but they’re definitely listening to the music.
Taylor Swift dominated the U.S. market in 2023 by accounting for 1.8% of music consumption and one out of every 78 audio streams, according to Luminate’s 2023 year-end report released Wednesday (Jan. 10). But even without Swift, last year Americans streamed a record amount of music and purchased more albums than the year before.
U.S. music consumption grew 12.6% in 2023 to 1.1 billion units (measured as album sales plus track equivalent albums and streaming equivalent albums). With that double-digit gain, the U.S. market easily exceeded the 9.2% improvement from 2022 and had its biggest one-year gain since consumption grew 15% in 2019.
The streaming market picked up momentum in 2023 despite on-demand services already reaching mainstream status and subscription prices increasing in recent years. On-demand song streaming — both audio and video — climbed 14.6% to 1.5 trillion streams, an improvement on the 12.2% growth in 2022 and 10% growth in 2021. On-demand audio streams from services such as Spotify and Apple Music rose 12.7% to 1.2 trillion.
It was another good year for vinyl LPs and CDs as consumers continued to keep the album format alive in an era of single-serving music. Overall U.S. album sales rose 5.2% to 105.3 million — a rebound from 2022, when overall sales fell by 8.2%. Physical album sales grew 8.9% to 87 million while digital album sales fell 9.3% to 18.3 million.
Repeating a trend seen in recent years, the music Americans consumed in 2023 got a little older. The share of album consumption for catalog — releases more than 18 months old — was 72.6%, a slight increase from 72.2% in 2022. Total catalog album consumption increased 13.2% to 796.8 million units. Current music’s share of album consumption dropped to 27.4%, though current album consumption still increased in unit terms, rising 10.9% to 300.4 million units.
In the year it celebrated its 50th anniversary, hip-hop was the most popular genre in the United States with a 25.3% share of album units (album sales plus track equivalent albums plus streaming equivalent albums) — even though no hip-hop song topped the Hot 100 until Doja Cat’s “Paint the Town Red” did it in September. Rock was No. 2 with a 19.4% share and pop was No. 3 with a 12.3% share. Country and Latin rounded out the top five with 8.4% and 6.9% shares, respectively.
Rock led album sales with a 41.5% share, more than triple No. 2 hip-hop’s 12.9% share and No. 3 pop’s 12.7% share. Country was No. 4 with a 7.8% share and World — mainly K-pop — was No. 5 with a 6.9% share.
In terms of growth rate, World music — which also includes J-pop, or Japanese pop, and Afrobeats — topped all other genres with a 26.2% increase in U.S. on-demand audio streams to 5.7 billion. No. 2 Latin was close behind with 24.1% growth but was far larger with 19.4 billion on-demand audio streams. Country was No. 3 in terms of growth, up 23.7% and with a total of 20.4 billion on-demand audio streams.
On the other end of the spectrum was comedy, which excels at YouTube and TikTok but lost 10.2% of its on-demand audio streams in 2023. New age fell 6.9% and children’s music dropped 6.2%.
Led by Peso Pluma, Regional Mexican grew 60% to 21.9 billion U.S. on-demand audio streams, with Peso ranking No. 43 overall in U.S. on-demand audio streams with 1.9 billion. Another rising Regional Mexican artist, the group Eslabon Armado, amassed 1.3 billion U.S. on-demand audio streams — good for No. 71 overall.
J-pop totaled 1.67 billion on-demand audio streams (of J-pop tracks ranked in the top 10,000 world music songs). J-pop’s success comes from a youth movement: Fans are 95% more likely than the general population to be Generation Z and 94% more likely to identify as LGBTQ+, according to Luminate.
Direct-to-consumer album sales increased 38.6% to 11.8 million units as record labels put greater resources behind selling albums to their fans from artist and label websites. Rock was the D2C leader with a 38.6% share, followed by pop with 18.3% and R&B/hip-hop with 13.2%. D2C vinyl sales grew by 1.9 million to 6.8 million, up from 4.8 million in 2022. D2C CD sales rose 400,000 units to 3.9 million, up from 3.5 million.
The average U.S. monthly spend on music increased to $116 in the third quarter of 2023 from $96 in the prior-year quarter. That was about even with the $117 average monthly spend seen in the full-year 2021. Live music accounted for 62% of average monthly spend.
Globally, on-demand song streams — both audio and video — reached 7.1 trillion, up 33.7% from 2022. Global audio on-demand streams totaled 4.1 trillion, up 22.3%.
The United States ranked first globally in total streaming volume with 1.45 trillion, approximately 40% ahead of No. 2 India’s 1.04 trillion and nearly four times No. 3 Brazil’s 374 billion. But India ranked No. 1 in new net streams with 463.7 billion, an increase of 81% from 2022, while the United States ranked No. 2 with 184 billion net new streams and Indonesia was No. 3 with 93.1 billion net new streams (and No. 5 in total streams with 235.5 billion).
By almost every metric, the music business in 2023 has been defined by Taylor Swift and Morgan Wallen. Collectively, they have led the Billboard 200 and the Hot 100 for 23 of the 52 weeks of the year, with Swift topping Billboard’s year-end Top Artists chart and Wallen ruling both the year-end Billboard 200 Albums and Hot 100 Songs charts with One Thing at a Time and “Last Night,” respectively.
Combined, the two recording artists have an astounding 2.49% in overall U.S. album consumption unit market share, according to Luminate. (Year-to-year percentages are based on data from Dec. 29, 2022, through Dec. 28, 2023.) Their domination underscores a year of explosive growth for country — of the two rerecorded albums Swift released in 2023, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) qualified in the genre — which is up 21.8% year over year. That’s almost double the 12.6% year-to-year growth of recorded music overall for the same period and nearly five times the 4.8% increase the genre had from 2021 to 2022.
Country music accounted for 8.40% of the recorded-music market in 2023, up from 7.76% the year prior — and Swift and Wallen weren’t the only acts fueling those gains. Hit albums by Zach Bryan, Luke Combs and Bailey Zimmerman helped country’s current market share — defined as releases that arrived within the past 18 months — surge from 7.97% to 10.37% year over year, a 30% gain. And while that’s only good enough for third place when the genres are ranked by current market share, No. 1 hip-hop and No. 2 pop both fell year over year: the former from 26.72 % to 22.32%, the latter from 13.07% to 11.13%.
Country’s growth almost outstripped Latin music’s strides. Which isn’t to say Latin had a down year — the genre grew 21.9% year over year, the third-highest mark in the industry, largely due to the mainstream success of such new acts as Peso Pluma and Eslabon Armado, and its volume growth (13.5 million units year over year) bested that of pop (11.6 million). In 2021, Latin’s share of the overall industry was 6.33%; in 2023 that number has jumped to 6.86%, and its 37.8 billion on-demand streams for current releases is the third-highest among genres.
R&B/Hip-Hop Slips Again
R&B/hip-hop remains firmly entrenched as the No. 1 U.S. genre with 25.27% of the market, largely because of its outsize percentage of on-demand streams. (The genre accounts for more than one in four streams.) But some metrics indicate that hip-hop’s dominance — it commanded nearly 30% of the overall market in 2020 — may be waning.
The genre’s market share has dipped every year since that 2020 peak, as has its share of on-demand streams, which stood at 30.11% in 2021 and is now at 26.63%. Current consumption of R&B/hip-hop has also slipped 7.4% from 2022 to 2023 and is down in every format for the same period — including the genre’s strong suit, streams, which dropped 7.0% to 93.2 billion. Despite No. 1 Billboard 200 releases from Travis Scott, Drake and Rod Wave, among others, hip-hop albums have continued to lose share since the midyear headlines that the genre had not produced any full-length chart-toppers. That said, its 93.2 billion current streams is more than double the 38.8 billion racked up by 2023’s second-place genre, pop, which sustained overall growth this year. And while R&B/hip-hop’s overall growth, at 5.9%, was 10th among genres, it finished third on that metric in overall volume, adding 15.6 million equivalent album units over last year, behind only rock and country.
Tipping The Sales Scales
While overall album sales have seesawed over the last few years, they have shown growth this year — up 5.2% after a down 2022. Driving sales once again is rock, which has a monumentally large share of the market: 41.47% of all album sales and 43.36% of physical sales. Those numbers are larger than the next four genres — R&B/hip-hop, pop, country and World music, in that order — combined and largely stem from immense catalog sales. Rock sales account for 47.50% of the entire catalog category — defined as music older than 18 months — a 4.0% year-over-year increase. Rock catalog album sales totaled 30.8 million units in 2023, more than the combined sales — current and catalog — of the next two genres, pop and R&B/hip-hop.
Latin music’s album sales growth is the inverse of rock. With just 0.57% of overall album sales in 2023, the genre ranks 14th out of the 15 core genres tracked by Luminate — lower than blues, jazz, classical and holiday/seasonal. Only new age placed below it.
Like hip-hop, Latin’s huge overall growth comes mostly from on-demand audio streams, but also a big chunk of the on-demand video streaming market, 10.0%, which is larger than its 6.86% overall market share. Pop is the only other genre on this chart where its market share of on-demand video streams exceeds its overall percentage by that much: 17.35% to 12.33%.
World Music’s Gains
Latin is just one genre of non-English-language music that occupies more and more of the mainstream U.S. music market. The umbrella genre of World music, which includes K-pop and Afrobeats, among other styles, has grown massively. In 2019, World music accounted for 1.69% of the overall industry; in 2023, that’s up to 2.73%, a 35.3% jump. That growth is most evident when looking at album sales. World music captured 6.93% of the market this year, with physical sales totaling 7.96% of that figure. The bulk of those sales is attributable to K-pop, which surged 88.8% year over year. Afrobeats also had a big impact on the genre, particularly in on-demand streaming, where it was up 54.3% year over year.
Titanic Taylor
Swift’s dominance of music and popular culture this year has been well documented. But how big is she in genre terms? With 18.89 million in album consumption units so far this year, her industry market share is 1.79%. If Swift was her own genre, she’d rank at No. 9 based on the data used here — just a few thousand units shy of Christian/gospel’s 1.76% market share and ahead of children music’s 1.11%. In 2023, Taylor Swift is bigger than jazz.
