State Champ Radio money makers
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Taylor Swift, who seems to break industry records with every album and tour, just had the career week of her lifetime: in its first week of availability, her latest album, The Life of A Showgirl, rang up about $135 million in revenue, Billboard estimates.
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That total revenue number comes from the album’s massive first-week haul — it debuted with 4.002 million equivalent album units, according to Luminate, the only album to pass 4 million in the modern era, and accounted for 50.01% of all current albums in the U.S. that week — but also to an overdrive marketing campaign launched by the Swift camp and her record label, Republic. While global album unit numbers are not available through Luminate, in its first week of availability, the songs on The Life of A Showgirl garnered 1.4 billion global streams, which Billboard calculates by adding up Luminate global stream counts reported for each song on the album.
The Showgirl album came with 38 variants across about a dozen different editions. That included a number of different colored vinyl versions — with each including add-ons like a poster or autographed photos or an acoustic bonus track — with several limited editions or deluxe versions as well. Those variants drove an incredible buying frenzy among Swift fans. What’s more, most of those variants — because of the extra bells and whistles — resulted in wholesale prices above cost levels usually offered to retailers for CD and vinyl formats.
Since the preorder launch in August, most of the editions exclusive to Swift’s webstore were sold for limited windows of time. Target had an exclusive CD, and there was one widely available standard CD, while four CD variants with bonus tracks launched during street week and were initially exclusively sold in Swift’s webstore, before becoming available at indie record stores.
But the biggest revenue driver is that non-traditional channels — online CD stores like Amazon and the official Taylor Swift webstore, as well as Christian stores and chains like Urban Outfitters — accounted for 70% of all the album’s consumption units. Within that, Billboard estimates that Swift’s own store garnered the overwhelming bulk of that, or more than 65% market share of Showgirl’s total first week of 4.002 million album consumption units.
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That provided another revenue boost in that the Swift store charged retail pricing, similar to what brick and mortar stores were charging, rather than a wholesale price. For example, while retailers say the wholesale price for the Swift vinyl was $23.49 and $10.34 for CDs, the Swift webstore sold the vinyl album for $29.99, or 27.6% above wholesale; and the CD for $12.99, or 25.6% above wholesale. In other words, the albums sold through Swift’s webstore delivered at least 25% higher per-unit revenue than what she received from brick-and-mortar retail, giving her and Republic a higher profit margin. (Republic Records did not respond to a request for comment.)
The Swift store also offered two CD box sets, which featured the album bundled with a Showgirl hoodie and a Showgirl cardigan, priced at $65 to $70, respectively, delivering even more revenue.
All told, Showgirl sold 1.76 million CDs, 1.334 million vinyl album copies, 358,000 album downloads and 26,000 cassette albums and accumulated 523,000 stream equivalent albums in the U.S., thanks to the album’s nearly 682 million on-demand streams in the first week, according to Luminate. Setting aside streams, the sales figures accounted for 71% of all the albums sold in the U.S. that week; 77% of all CDs sold; 66% of all vinyl sold; 58% of all digital albums sold; and 72% of all physical albums sold.
Even Showgirl’s streams are doing somewhat better in terms of revenue than a typical pop album. For example, her streaming equivalent album units break out to 1,306 streams per unit, while an album like the Kpop Demon Hunters soundtrack averaged 1,423 streams per stream equivalent album (SEA).
What’s the significance of this? The industry and Luminate count 1,250 paid streams per one streaming consumption unit, and 3,750 ad-supported streams per one streaming consumption unit. So the closer the number of streams is to the 1,250 paid streams count — such as Showgirl’s 1,306 streams — shows that her fans were mainly accessing her music through a paid service, while the Kpop Demon Hunters album was somewhat more dependent on the lower-paying ad-supported per-stream rate.
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So how does that add up to $135 million? Considering retail pricing on her webstore, wholesale prices quoted from merchants, the standard wholesale cost for downloads (70% of retail) and the standard blended rate of $0.0053 per stream, Billboard calculates that in its debut week, Showgirl accumulated $80 million in revenue in the U.S. for Republic and Swift. Extrapolating for global activity, Billboard estimates that total revenue totaled about $135 million for its debut week.
Still, as amazing as that debut week was, her catalog so far this year is still trailing the torrid pace her music set in the prior two years, when her Eras Tour and The Tortured Poets Department album drove incredible business for her entire catalog. So far in 2025, her full catalog’s total U.S. album consumption units, including the contributions from Showgirls’ record-breaking first week, stands at 11.23 million units as of the week ending Oct. 16, or week 41 in Luminate calendar year terms. At the end of the 41st week last year, her catalog had accumulated 15 million units; in 2023, it stood at 12.3 million units.
By the end of those two years, she wound up with nearly 19 million album consumption units each year in the U.S. To put that number into perspective, Swift’s 37.4 million U.S. album consumption units across those two years dwarf Drake‘s figure of nearly 16 million album consumption units in the U.S. Globally, Swift’s catalog racked up 90.3 billion streams during the period, compared to Drake’s 36.7 billion global streams.
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During those two years of 2023 and 2024, Billboard estimates that the entire Swift catalog annually averaged about $350 million in revenue. So far this year, Swift’s catalog, including Showgirl, has generated around $265 million. That catalog estimate also includes revenue from activity from the second week of Showgirl‘s availability, which clocked in at nearly 339,000 album consumption units, including 1,000 track equivalent albums, bringing total sales of the album to 4.3 million units as of the week ending Oct. 16.
Another financial wrinkle: While most artists on major labels are still tied to a royalty rate percentage or, for superstars, a profit-sharing arrangement, Swift owns her entire catalog. That means that for physical product, she is likely reaping at least 70% of revenue collected after production, distribution and marketing fees are paid to Republic and Universal. For digital downloads and streaming, she might be realizing 85% to 90% of such revenue collected by UMG, or maybe even slightly above 90%.
And all of that is without calculating her music publishing — which in the case of 2023 and 2024 combined could be in the range of $100 million to $200 million, depending on her share of the songwriting — and merchandise, which could bring in untold additional millions. Across 30 different Showgirl-themed pieces of merch through her webstore, the numbers could be mind-boggling.
Doechii’s “Anxiety” entered its third-straight week at No. 1 on Billboard’s Radio Songs chart on Monday (June 9) after spending a total of 12 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at No. 9. But the song, which samples of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” isn’t just a megahit for the Florida singer and rapper.
Billboard estimates that the publishers of the Belgian-Australian indie rocker Gotye and the Brazilian born jazz-pop artist Luis Bonfá — whose 1967 hit “Seville” is sampled in “Somebody” — could earn as much as $72,000 each from the success of “Anxiety.”
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“Sampling is a big business,” says Michael Poster, chair of music acquisitions and financing at law firm Michelman & Robinson, LLP. When an old hit is revived through a sample, both the masters and publishing rightsholders stand to earn a cut; the publisher becomes a co-owner of the new song; and the old song will likely see an uptick in streaming activity and synch opportunities, industry sources say.
Doechii’s “Anxiety,” Gotye’s “Somebody” and Bonfá’s “Seville” have all seen “a significant increase… in popularity and consumption” since the March release of Doechii’s hit, says Pär Almqvist, CEO of Sweden-based publishing administration company AYO.
As of Monday (June 9), “Anxiety” has generated nearly 1.2 million song consumption units in the United States, where it has racked up nearly 165 million total on-demand streams and roughly 284,000 airplay spins, according to Luminate.
Billboard estimates that those streams, spins and sales of Doechii’s “Anxiety” have generated about $1.165 million in master recording and publishing revenues combined so far this year.
It is unclear exactly how much Gotye directly stands to earn from that amount, but “Anxiety” credits three songwriters: Jaylah Ji’mya Hickmon, or Doechii; Walter André De Backer, or Gotye; and Bonfá.
DMG Clearances, which secured consent from the copyright holders of “Somebody That I Used to Know” for Doechii’s team, declined to comment on the terms of the licensing deals, citing confidentiality.
Deborah Mannis-Gardner, owner/president of DMG Clearances, says that because “Anxiety” lifted directly from the original recording of “Somebody” to incorporate it into a new song, DMG secured consent from both the master and publishing rightsholders. (Songs that interpolate, rather than sample, earlier hits only need to get consent from the publishing side.)
Mannis-Gardner says that sampled songs see twofold benefits: First, the publisher gets an ownership stake in the new song, thereby increasing the size of its catalog. Additionally, fans of Doechii’s “Anxiety” may find their way to streaming Gotye’s “Somebody,” which could then lead them to “Seville” — and both of those songs are likely to field synch inquiries.
Poster and Mannis-Gardner both say that in typical sample deals, the publisher owns a percentage of the copyright to the new song. Industry sources say it is also typical that publishers will negotiate a one-off, non-recoupable licensing fee of at least a few thousand dollars in addition.
If, as one-third co-writers, Gotye’s and Bonfá’s publishers negotiated 30% of the songwriting credit for “Anxiety,” that could result in nearly $72,000 each to Gotye and Bonfá’s publishers, with Gotye and Bonfá netting anywhere from $36,000 to almost $68,000, if they own their own publishing and have administration deals, Billboard estimates.
Industry sources say Gotye’s and Bonfá’s publishers’ likely got smaller cuts than that. However, what the artists stand to earn from the streaming and synch bumps to their catalogs, though harder to calculate, will also add to their bottom line.
“A sample elevates and increases the value of a song,” Mannis-Gardner says. “But keep in mind, music licensing, including sampling, is an emotional business. Approvals, denials and sample values are not based on a rate sheet. It is how the sampled copyright holder and creator feel about the new use.”
When Chappell Roan called on the music industry to pay artists a living wage and give them health insurance during her Grammys acceptance speech in February, she sparked a debate about labels’ responsibility to the acts they sign, including the artist’s potential — and the label’s investment — that is put at risk if mental health struggles take center stage.
Nearly three-quarters of some 1,500 independent musicians reported struggling with mental illness, according to a 2019 survey by the digital distribution platform Record Union. Even among unionized musicians and performers, rates of mental health problems and substance use disorder are higher than among the general population, according to Sound Advice, a book written by music journalist Rhian Jones and performance coach Lucy Heyman.
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Over the past several months, Billboard asked more than a dozen artists, managers, financial planners, music executives and therapists about creatives’ single biggest out-of-pocket health care expense, and the answer was consistently the same: therapy.
Sobriety coaches, on-tour therapists and mental skills training offer potentially career-saving — even lifesaving — support for singers battling anxiety so intense it can rob them of their voices.
But they come with eight-to-10-figure medical bills, these sources say. And health insurance, for those fortunate enough to have it, often covers just a fraction of the cost.
“It’s $250 a session for someone who is good and qualified,” says Chief Zaruk, joint-CEO of The Core Entertainment, an entertainment company launched with Live Nation that represents Bailey Zimmerman, Nate Smith, Nickelback and others. “If you’re a beginner artist without a record deal, maybe a publishing deal, you’re making $2,500 a month, and you’re like, ‘Wait, I’m going to take more than a third of that and put it toward a therapist?’ They just can’t do it.”
Zaruk and Core co-founder and CEO Simon Tikhman provide their employees with 10 free sessions with a therapist, a life coach or business coach each year. Tikhman says they extend the service to many of their artists, including those just starting off, because, “If you help yourself now when you are playing in 200-300 person venues, it will give you the tools to help you manage [feelings of] overwhelm when you are in arenas.”
Ariana Grande, who has made millions of dollars of free counseling available to fans through a partnership with app-based therapy company Better Help, called on record labels in February to include therapy coverage in young artists’ contracts.
At least one major music company explored the cost of providing those services, according to a former executive from the company who spoke on condition of anonymity. That former executive, who advocated that the company offer therapy as a recoupable expense, says internal researchers determined around 2020 that coverage was ultimately too costly.
While therapy is expensive, the cost of foregoing needed mental health care is enormous, says Dr. Terry Clark, director of The Conservatory at Canada’s Mount Royal University.
For more than two decades, Clark has studied how mental skills training is used to equip classical musicians and dancers with tools to cope with stage fright and anxiety after failed auditions. Some of the lessons involve setting goals and picturing oneself achieving those goals on stage, like an imaginary rehearsal where the artist can make mistakes and envision how the show could go on.
“Careers can go on a long, long time,” Clark says. “But if you burn yourself out and there isn’t a later, the cost is enormous when you look at what you’ve lost.”
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Lorde described successfully treating her paralyzing stage fright with the psychoactive drugs MDMA and psilocybin, a therapy commonly used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, though that is still awaiting approval for use in the United States.
For others, substance use disorders can be part of their mental health struggles.
Kristin Lee, founder of the Los Angeles-based business management firm KLBM, says her musician clients’ biggest out-of-pocket health care expense is treatment for addiction and substance use disorders.
A number of organizations, including MusiCares, Music’s Mental Health Fund, Sweet Relief and Backline, provide financial assistance to help independent artists pay for mental health care. Lee estimates 35 percent to 40 percent of her clients get subsidized health insurance through SAG-AFTRA, and those who don’t qualify for it often pay $700 to several thousand every month for private insurance for themselves and employees.
“Touring is probably the absolute worst thing to do while you’re trying to be sober. It’s a rigorous way of life with no downtime, and it’s entertainment, so it’s supposed to be fun,” Lee says. She says some of her clients have hired sobriety coaches to go on tour with them at a cost of $70,000 a year.
Sobriety coaches are meant to be a resource a patient needs less over time, and so the cost eventually declines. Regardless, the investment for many is worth it.
“Rehab is expensive, too,” Lee says.
As the sex trafficking trial against Sean “Diddy” Combs kicks off with jury selection in New York this week, radio DJs have all but dropped the Bad Boy Records founder’s catalog from their airwaves, Luminate data reviewed by Billboard shows.
Songs by Puff Daddy, P. Diddy and Diddy accrued just 1,671 airplay spins year to date, an 86% decline from the same time frame last year when the artists’ catalog racked up 11,870 airplay spins, according to Luminate. For a comparison, Diddy collaborator and Bad Boy artist Notorious B.I.G.’s catalog accrued 63,390 spins since the start of the year, Luminate data shows.
The decline in commercial radio play doesn’t just reflect a public turn away from the artist who is accused of running a large-scale criminal operation for his own “sexual gratification.” It also means the artist’s catalog could generate less than the $3 million in revenue that Billboard estimates it generated annually from master recording and publishing revenue from streams, sales and radio airplay between 2021 and 2023.
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Representatives for Diddy did not respond to requests for comment.
Revenue from music streaming subscriptions is still the most significant source of income for music companies, artists and other owners’ music rights. However, commercial radio play remains a significant source of income for the publishing side, sources said.
“For a mature catalogue, such as Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs … that portion of income impacted by a sharp decline in radio airplay is limited to 6 percent to 9 percent of total publishing royalties,” says Barry Massarsky, a partner at Citrin Cooperman and head of the firm’s music and entertainment valuation practice. Massarsky cautioned that only the catalog’s publishing revenue can be analyzed because there is no entitled performance right for sound recordings played on U.S. commercial radio.
In the United States, the performance rights organizations ASCAP and BMI pay a base rate of roughly 50 cents to publishing companies per radio spin. As radio airplay can influence stream counts, there is a residual paid out on the master recording royalties that brings the total payment per airplay stream to roughly $1. Popular songs can earn additional bonus money.
While the Diddy catalog’s airplay spins did not put him within reach of any bonus money — bonuses are typically paid out for songs that top 135,000 spins in a quarter — Billboard estimates his catalog’s publishing revenue was $10,200 less for the first 16 weeks this year compared to last year. If Diddy’s songs continue to generate the same average per-week-radio airplay spins they did at the start of the year — an average of 117 per week — it would mean a year over year decline of $34,300 compared to last year.
As of June 2024, Diddy owned his master recording catalog and publishing, which Billboard estimated earned about $2.4 million in master recording revenue and $600,000 in publishing revenue annually for the years from 2021 to 2023. Diddy’s share was $2.625 million in each of those years, Billboard estimated. Those estimates do not include credits and royalties for music assets beyond his own artist catalog.
It is unclear to what extent the accusations and lawsuits against Diddy may have contributed to the decline in airplay because airplay spins for his catalog rose for roughly the first four months of both 2023 and 2024, when several allegations that would later lead to lawsuits were already public.
Last year, Diddy’s catalog had the best start of the year in terms of airplay spins that it has had for any similar 16-week period since 2020, when the catalog accrued about 7,700 airplay spins. The second best 16-week period for Diddy’s catalog in terms of airplay spins was the start of 2023, when the catalog racked up nearly 11,000 spins.
Despite the decline in airplay, Diddy’s catalog remains popular on streaming platforms, though streaming activity during this period was almost half of what it was last year and was the lowest for this period than during any of the past five years.
In the first 16 weeks of this year through April 24, Diddy’s catalog accumulated roughly 29 million U.S. on-demand streams compared to nearly 52.7 million U.S. on-demand streams for the same period in 2024. The only other start-of-the-year stretch over the last five years when Diddy’s catalog had such a low stream count was in 2020, when it racked up 29.7 million on-demand streams from Jan. 1, 2020, to April 23, 2020.
On Sunday (March 23), two days after a South Korean court ruled that ADOR, an imprint of K-pop giant HYBE, retains the right to manage the groundbreaking girl band NewJeans, the five-member act performed its first and possibly only concert in Hong Kong under a new moniker, NJZ — a result of its attempt to break free from the label. After debuting a new song, “Pit Stop,” the group announced to the sold-out crowd that it was going on hiatus “out of respect for the court’s decision.”
The pronouncement added another twist to a nearly year-long battle between HYBE-owned ADOR and its biggest act, who allege they were mistreated by the label. (ADOR disputes these claims.)
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It’s a fight that could have industry-wide ramifications. The country’s five largest pop music organizations argued at a press conference in February that if NewJeans/NJZ was allowed to break its contract with HYBE/ADOR, it could “break the K-pop industry from the inside,” according to Seoul newspaper Korea JoongAng Daily.
A separate lawsuit to determine if NewJeans/NJZ can legally terminate its contract with ADOR begins April 3, but if the court sides with HYBE/ADOR and the group refuses to make new music, industry insiders wonder whether a legal win would be a pyrrhic victory for HYBE.
HYBE/ADOR and NewJeans/NJZ declined to comment on the financial impacts of the disagreement. An ADOR spokesperson said only that its exclusive contract with NewJeans/NJZ is legally binding and called the group’s performance in Hong Kong as NJZ and its “unilateral announcement of a suspension of activities” regrettable. The members of NewJeans/NJZ filed an objection to the court ruling against its independent activities on Monday (March 24).
HYBE is the company behind one of the highest-selling K-pop acts of all time, BTS. When members of BTS took time away from the group for military service in recent years, the company sought to diversify beyond its tentpole artist with other acts — often through imprints like ADOR — and such acquisitions as Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings, Atlanta hip-hop label Quality Control and Latin music company Exile Music Group.
In its fiscal 2024, HYBE reported its highest revenue-generating year in its nearly 20-year history, having generated revenue of 2.25 trillion Korean won ($1.58 billion). But operating profit, a financial metric that subtracts operating costs like legal fees from a company’s gross profit, fell 38% from the prior fiscal year to 184 billion won ($128.7 million), a decline the company attributed to BTS’ temporary break, a shift in sales mix due to new debuts, and strategic investments in infrastructure and new businesses.
The controversy with ADOR and NewJeans/NJZ coincided with a steep decline in HYBE’s share price in 2024. HYBE stock was priced at 230,500 won ($172.33) on April 19, the day HYBE launched an investigation into whether ex-ADOR CEO Min Hee-Jin — who is a defendant in the lawsuit — usurped management of NewJeans/NJZ. Min was asked to resign, and in the weeks that followed, HYBE accused Min of trying to take ADOR independent and, with it, NewJeans/NJZ. On Sept. 23, after a YouTube video of the NewJeans/NJZ members demanding that Min be reinstated went viral, HYBE’s stock price plunged to a 52-week low of 158,000 Korean won ($112), down 31.5% from that April high.
While its share price has rebounded — on Tuesday (March 25), it was worth 240,000 Korean won ($163.49), 14.5% from a year ago — the dispute with NewJeans/NJZ may lead to sunk costs.
As with A&R across the music industry, the model for producing a K-pop supergroup is costly at the outset. It can cost between 1 billion Korean won ($681,000) to 10 billion won ($6.8 million) up front, according to a K-pop executive quoted in Korea JoongAng Daily. K-pop companies first pay off debt, then investors, before paying the artists. If the artists break their contract to go to another agency before ultimately turning a profit, the agency is left holding the bag, the executive told the paper. Bunnies, the official fan club of NewJeans/NJZ, criticized this statement, saying the group is seeking creative autonomy and a better deal.
NewJeans announced in February it wanted to go by a new name — NJZ — and member Pham Ngoc Han, who goes by Hanni, told CNN she hoped the new name would help the group turn “this rough period into something more exciting.” ADOR requested Billboard refer to the group as NewJeans, saying, “The Korean court … confirm[ed] ADOR’s status as the legitimate exclusive management agency of the NewJeans members and prevent the Artists from entering into advertising contracts independently without ADOR’s approval.”
The five women in the group — who perform as Minjin, Danielle, Haerin, Hyein and Hanni — formed NewJeans/NJZ in 2022, and they now range in age from 18 to 21. Several have said they are concerned the legal battle with ADOR would define their careers.
“We’ve known from the start that this journey wasn’t going to be easy and even though we accept the court’s ruling and this whole process, we had to speak up to protect the values that we believe in,” the members said at the end of their hour-long headlining performance in Hong Kong on Sunday, adding it’s a decision they “don’t regret at all.”
Whether it was Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” LiAngelo Ball’s “Tweaker,” or the six songs at the heart of Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s epic rap battle last year, Billboard has recently spent a lot of time reporting on how much money a hit song generates.
For a look back at our coverage, we estimated how much the top 10 songs of 2024 earned, what GELO’s locker room anthem has netted, and the millions made from Drake and Lamar’s diss tracks.
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These stories sparked questions from readers, including one that came up repeatedly: Does a hit song today make more money than a hit did before streaming took off?
We asked this question of roughly a dozen music economists, entertainment industry bankers, and record label and streaming company executives, and they largely agreed that streaming has increased the long-term value of a hit song. However, hit songs used to drive album sales, which may have been more lucrative upfront.
It is difficult to directly compare the value of a hit song in 2024 to a hit song in 1999 — the year that record industry revenue peaked in the modern era — because the business largely moved away from issuing singles by the late 1990s. To hear a hit song, then, a fan would buy an album for as much as $18.98.
In 1999, when albums were the dominant configuration for music, 88 albums sold more than 1 million units in the U.S., according to Billboard. Albums often sold for more than their wholesale price of $12, which could mean certain older hits had a greater upfront value. However, the sources Billboard spoke with for this story all agreed that after a fan owned an album, they had little incentive to pay for that particular music again — so after about 12-18 months, the album would stop making much money.
In contrast, streaming keeps all music closer to fans’ fingertips, and hits tend to continue making money over a longer period, as opposed to a brief hype window in the album sales era.
One longtime record label executive who asked to remain anonymous estimated that a gold record in 1999 generated more than $6 million in sales, based on a wholesale price of around $12. Adjusted for inflation, that’s the equivalent of $11.3 million in 2024 dollars, according to the U.S. Federal Reserve.
In 2024, the biggest hit was Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” and Billboard estimated it generated $10.7 million from U.S. audio, video and programmed streams, digital downloads, and radio airplay spins. But due to streaming’s long tail, which has helped keep “A Bar Song” in the top five of the Billboard Hot 100, the track has continued earning significant streams in 2025: more than 140 million on-demand audio and video streams, or $192,000 in additional streaming revenue, just this year.
“[Back then], after a huge spike in revenue, a hit would have decayed over time by 60%, 70%, 80%, and eventually the song would drop to a much lower base,” says Concord CEO Bob Valentine. “Now in the streaming world, a song comes out, you get the huge pop from consumption and revenue, and because of the way algorithms keep a song in playlists and rotation, the song is much stickier. It has a higher base.”
Valentine says this is why companies like his have been able to persuade outside investors that music royalties can be securitized and sold to institutional investors like insurance companies. Concord has become the music industry’s model for raising money from such asset backed securitizations (ABS), having raised more than $5 billion to date.
While Concord is known for owning famous catalogs from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, it scored a top 10 hit in 2024 with Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby,” which Billboard estimates generated around $7.4 million.
If Concord’s catalogs are like bonds — generating consistent revenue that can be relied on for decades — hits are more like venture capital. After an initial investment, a hit can present substantial upside, Valentine says. Concord is now comfortably the fourth or fifth largest music company thanks to the strength of its publishing division and catalog, so it can afford to take risks to get more hits, which is why it’s pushing to develop its front-line business to release more songs like “Million Dollar Baby.”
The music industry globally made $41.3 billion in 2023, according to the most recent data from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the Confédération Internationale des Sociétés d´Auteurs et Compositeurs (CISAC).
The IFPI, which reports figures on an absolute dollar basis, not adjusted for inflation, says global recorded music revenues are at their highest level since it began tracking them in 1999.
Several sources interviewed for this story noted that, despite record-high revenues in the music industry, not everyone who contributes to making or performing a hit song makes more money today, and that many songwriters may have made more money in 1999.
For one thing, the number of songwriters credited on a hit song has increased significantly in the last decade, according to an analysis by Chris Dalla Riva in 2023. Dalla Riva found that the average number of songwriters per Hot 100 No. 1 hit rose from 1.8 during the 1970s to 5.3 in the 2010s. He noted that with interpolations, many songs credit far more songwriters: For example, Beyoncé’s Renaissance song “Alien Superstar” listed 24 songwriters.
“There is more money, we can all agree, but there are way more mouths to feed,” former Spotify chief economist and author Will Page said in an interview with the BBC in January.
Songwriters don’t just make less money because more of them work on major hits; they also make less because of the way streaming changed payouts, sources say. When the industry revolved around album sales, a songwriter on a less popular song earned the same as a songwriter on the album’s most popular song.
The rising tide effect no longer applies today because fans stream songs on a mostly a la carte basis.
Additional reporting was contributed by Ed Christman.
The breakout rap hit “Tweaker” from the middle Ball brother, LiAngelo Ball, has generated nearly $640,000 since it first began its meteoric rise from NBA locker rooms to the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Released on Jan. 3 under the moniker GELO — Ball also raps under the alias G3 —“Tweaker” came out on Ball’s family label, Born […]
Heidi Montag’s 15-year-old dance-pop album Superficial has generated nearly $150,000 from streaming and digital sales since the MTV reality show star lost her home to the Pacific Palisades wildfire in Los Angeles in early January.
In the days following the destruction of the couple’s home on Jan. 7, Montag’s husband Spencer Pratt took to TikTok, sharing videos of the ashes and their children’s burned toys and asking viewers to stream wife Heidi’s music. Pratt later told Variety in a Jan. 17 article that he made a combined $24,000 from donations on TikTok, but he had no idea if they were making any money from her music.
His plea appears to be paying off. From Jan. 3 to Jan. 23, Montag’s 2010 album Superficial and its individual songs have generated $147,011.61 from streaming, digital album and song sales and publishing revenue, according to Billboard estimates based on data from Luminate.H
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This month, Montag made her first appearance on the Billboard Artist 100 chart, which ranks the most popular artists of the week, and Superficial and its songs landed on the Billboard 200, Top Album Sales, Top Dance Albums and Hot Dance/Pop Songs charts for the week of Jan. 25. Her appearance on those charts may translate into additional revenue for her new album Superficial 2, which the artist released last Friday (Jan. 24).
Montag has also benefitted from widespread support. TikTok launched a Heidi hub with a link to create content using a sped-up version of her song “I’ll Do It.” (TikTok says that, as of Jan. 28, there are more than 2.8 million creations using the track — both the original and sped-up remix.) The online marketing hub LinkTree paid for a billboard in Times Square with the message “Stream Superficial by Heidi Montag” and Montag appeared on Good Morning America, according to her TikTok posts.
The ramp-up in revenue has been swift. In the first week of January, Billboard estimates that the album produced $1,762.97. Following Montag and Pratt’s request, the album and songs produced $98,002.57 in the second week of January and $48,009.04 in the third week of January.
Digital album sales have contributed the greatest amount of revenue so far, generating revenues of $82,497.22, based on Billboard estimates.
In the first week 2025, nine digital copies of the album were sold, worth about $50. In the second week of 2025, 11,258 digital copies of the album were sold, worth about $62,930; and in the third week of 2025, 3,484 digital copies of the album were sold, worth about $19,475.
Montag and Pratt did not respond to requests for comment made to their publicists.
Additional reporting by Ed Christman.
Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” was the most streamed, downloaded and highest grossing song of 2024 in the United States, according to a Billboard review of Luminate’s annual report published on Wednesday (Jan. 15).
The anthemic hip-hop-infused country song generated $6.59 million from digital song sales and on-demand audio streams in the United States for the year spanning from Dec. 29, 2023 to Jan. 2, 2025, having spent a historic 19 weeks in the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Hot 100.
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The top 10 most digitally consumed songs of 2024 as identified by Luminate generated a combined $53.4 million from on-demand audio streams, such as when the song is played on Spotify, and digital song sales, like when a digital download is purchased through Apple’s music store.
Another country crossover hit, Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help” featuring Morgan Wallen, took the No. 2 spot on Luminate’s list, and generated $5.76 million from sales and on-demand audio streams, while Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” came in third on that list, and generated $5.65 million. Those royalties are paid out to an artist’s record label and music publisher; Billboard was not able to determine the artists’ share of those earnings.
The remainder of the top 10 most digitally consumed songs were Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” which earned $5.57 million; Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” which earned $5.63 million; Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” which earned $5.2 million; Zach Bryan’s 2023 release featuring Kacey Musgraves, “I Remember Everything,” which generated $5.03 million; Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby,” which earned $4.99 million; Billie Eilish’s “BIRDS OF A FEATHER,” which earned $4.53 million; and Hozier’s “Too Sweet,” which generated $4.39 million.
Lamar’s “Not Like Us” ranked fifth, behind Swims’ “Lose Control,” on the list of most streamed and downloaded songs. However, “Not Like Us” generated slightly more money than “Lose Control” — “Not Like Us” netted $5.63 million compared to $5.57 million for “Lose Control” — because it was streamed 37.7 million more times. While “Lose Control” had more digital downloads, and a single digital download pays out more than a single stream, digital sales for both songs only totaled 430,000.
As the music industry’s leading data provider, Luminate tracks consumption data from more than 500 retailers, streaming and radio companies, among others. This top 10 list from Luminate’s report focused on digital song sales and on-demand audio streams because around 90% of music consumption activity comes from digital formats in the U.S. Luminate stripped out video streams from this year’s chart because of a change in how one company provided video data in 2024.
These 10 songs made an additional $30.3 million from video streams, programmed streams, such as a play on satellite radio, and radio airplay spins in the U.S. Including that revenue, Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song” was still the top money-making hit with $10.74 million, but Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” came in second with $10.22 million, largely because of its success on radio and programmed streams. The songs would have also made additional revenue from sales and streams around the world, metrics that are not included in Luminate’s ranking.
Some songs did particularly well on video. Lamar’s Drake diss track “Not Like Us” had more than 216 million on-demand video streams in the U.S. last year, which generated over $1 million from master recording and publishing rights, Billboard estimates.
Here is Luminate’s full list of the top 10 songs of 2024 ranked by sales and streaming-equivalent units based on on-demand audio streams with Billboard‘s estimates on how much money each song generated from those categories.
When Brookfield Asset Management invested $2 billion in Primary Wave roughly two years ago, a representative from the Canadian fund predicted that just as there has been a wave of comic book superhero movies, there would a wave of musician biopics.
“Music is going to be like the Marvel and DC comic catalogs,” Angelo Ruffino, who was then the managing partner at Brookfield behind the Primary Wave investment, said in October 2022. “There are just so many ways to monetize music that I think are in the early innings.”
Hollywood has churned out superhero films, from Batman to Black Panther, but the genre has been drawing smaller audiences of late. With a flurry of music biopics set for release in the next few years — including feature films about Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Queen Latifah, four films about each member of The Beatles, and maybe one about The Bee Gees — have we reached peak biopic?
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The top post on Reddit’s subreddit page about Dylan as of this writing is titled, “On not being interested in A Complete Unknown,” and it is far from the only gripe about dramatizations of currently touring musicians on the Internet.
However many factors are contributing to a packed pipeline of musician biopics, and consumer demand just one. By that measure, many recent music biopics have been hits. About half of the 25 highest grossing music biopics of all time, according to boxofficemojo.com, were released since 2014, with Bohemian Rhapsody about Queen at No. 1 with $216.4 million, Straight Outta Compton about N.W.A. at No. 2 with $161.2 million and Elvis at No. 3 with $151 million all in gross revenue in the United States.
Natalia Nastaskin, chief content officer at Primary Wave, which as involved with the 2022 release “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody”—No. 24 in the top 25 grossing biopics—says demand remains high. But the years it can take to land the starring actors, directors and producers essential to making a hit movie may mean these films continue to trickle out over the coming years.
“I do think we are going to see more of these biopics because we are always fascinated by the stories of our rock stars and the behind-the-scenes story of their lives,” Nastaskin tells Billboard. “How many more biopics will we see? Really hitting that cultural zeitgeist may take several years.”
Primary Wave is currently involved in biopics about Boyz II Men and Boy George—both in production.
Another factor that has the potential to disrupt the normal line between demand and supply are the different ways Hollywood and the music industry make money off these films. Hollywood defines a successful movie by the revenue it grosses; the music industry is more interested in how it drives moviegoers to stream the music, buy merch and the tangential licensing opportunities delivered by the music’s resurging relevance.
By those definitions, Elvis was a smash. All of the activity that the Baz Luhrmann biopic drove for Elvis’s music and brand boosted the Presley estate’s estimated value to around $1 billion 2022 from an estimated $400 million to $600 million in 2020.
It may take years to measure the impact of Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal of Bob Dylan on his catalog, at least until 2025, which is when the Michael Jackson biopic is slated for release. With The Beatles films expected in 2027, there seems like no shortage of musician biopics to come.
