Streaming
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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.
Playboi Carti‘s new album is off to a strong start on streaming platforms.
Following its release on Friday (March 14), the Atlanta rapper’s long-awaited third studio album, MUSIC, became Spotify‘s most-streamed album in a single day in 2025 so far.
“Carti’s MUSIC is already making history,” the streaming giant captioned its announcement on X on Saturday.
In the lead-up to the album’s release, Spotify supported the rollout by putting up billboards in major cities such as Los Angeles, New York City, and Miami, displaying messages like “STREETS READY,” “SORRY4 DA WAIT” and “I AM MUSIC MF.”
MUSIC was preceded by the official single “All Red,” which reached No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and No. 3 on Billboard‘s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. Carti also released several tracks on his YouTube and Instagram, including “2024,” “BACKR00MS” featuring Travis Scott, and “H00DBYAIR.”
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Additionally, Carti performed unreleased songs during his headlining set at Rolling Loud Miami in December 2024, including “Lose You” featuring The Weeknd. Carti and The Weeknd’s collaboration “Timeless,” from The Weeknd’s Hurry Up Tomorrow album, reached No. 3 on the Hot 100 last year, following the success of their platinum-certified hit “Popular” with Madonna.
MUSIC features star-studded collaborations from Young Thug, Travis Scott, Future, Kendrick Lamar, The Weeknd, Lil Uzi Vert, Skepta and Ty Dolla $ign. It also boasts an impressive list of producers, including Cardo, Metro Boomin, Southside, F1lthy, Ye, Cash Cobain and the production duo Ojivolta, among others.
The 30-track project arrives five years after Carti’s last album, Whole Lotta Red, which topped the Billboard 200 and the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. The 2020 set featured collaborations with Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) on “Go2DaMoon,” Kid Cudi on “M3tamorphosis,” and Future on “Teen X.”
Carti is set to headline Rolling Loud California on Sunday (March 16). The festival posted on X earlier this week, noting that his 2018 debut album, Die Lit, dropped the day before Rolling Loud Miami, and he’s continuing that tradition by releasing MUSIC the day before Rolling Loud California opens.
When it comes to the value of music royalties, some artists have an advantage based on where they live.
Nigerian artists earned more than $43 million from Spotify in 2024, according to the streaming giant’s latest Loud and Clear report. A “significant” portion of those royalties came from outside Nigeria, with exports of the country’s music increasing 49% over the last three years. In other words, people in other countries — many of which provide better royalties than are available in Nigeria — are listening to Nigerian artists, effectively sending their money to the West African country.
Spotify’s Loud & Clear report provides good insight into how royalties are split between superstars, merely popular artists and everybody else. In 2024, 71,200 artists earned at least $10,000 in royalties from the streaming service, up from 66,000 in 2023, while 670 artists earned more than $2 million, an increase from 570 the prior year.
Read between the lines of the Loud & Clear data and you’ll see that royalties have different values to musicians in different countries. If you’re a recording artist in India, where free, ad-supported listening dwarfs relatively cheap subscriptions, you’re better off receiving your royalties from a country like the U.S. where subscriptions are many and prices are high. If you’re an Afrobeats artist in Nigeria, a U.S. stream is worth more than a stream at home.
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Economist Will Page found that almost a third of all streams inside the U.S. in 2023 came from artists outside the U.S. The top music exporter to the U.S. was the U.K. — which has roughly the same royalty rates as the U.S. — but the No. 2 exporter was Mexico, a country where a Spotify individual subscription costs the equivalent of $6.49. Colombia, where a Spotify subscription costs the equivalent of $4.12, was No. 6. As Page wrote in his roundup of 2023 global recorded music revenues, Mexican artists’ U.S. streams were worth more than three times what they would have earned had they originated in their home country. For Colombian artists, their U.S. streams were worth more than six times what they would have earned in their home country.
In a global music business driven by streaming platforms, artists can earn more by tapping into more lucrative markets. A Nigerian artist should want more U.S. fans. A Colombian artist gets more from a U.S. stream. It’s a form of arbitrage — buying low and selling high.
In the digital era, choosing where to live is also a form of arbitrage. People with the ability to work remotely are increasingly choosing to live somewhere more affordable. Millions of Americans have moved to states with lower costs of living in recent years, with some leaving the country for safe havens in Europe as political discourse turned sour. States such as Texas, Florida and Tennessee are attractive for the (relatively) cheaper costs of living and lack of state income tax. Digital nomadism goes internationally, too, as people work remotely from faraway places — co-working spaces have sprouted on the Indonesian island of Bali, for example — with a substantially lower cost of living. Dozens of countries offer a digital nomad visa, called a remote working visa.
Musical nomadism isn’t a thing — yet. And this is more of a thought experiment than a serious proposal. Moving to a foreign country would take artists away from a large, lucrative concert market. And unless a musician plans to infiltrate the local music scene in their new home, they would be without the networking and personal connections that foster both creativity and commerce. An artist with children and a spouse would also have to pull deep roots to leave the country. But if an artist only wants to record and release music online, living elsewhere — not just Texas or Tennessee, but a country where the cost of living is far lower than in the U.S. — would improve the economics of music streaming.
Given the value of listeners in mature streaming markets, a stream in the U.S. and U.K. is worth far more than a stream in many other countries. Spotify costs $11.99 per month for an individual in the U.S. In Nigeria, an individual Spotify subscription costs the equivalent of $0.84 per month. And if Nigeria is like other developing markets, ad-supported streaming — which returns less value to artists and rights holders — is far more popular than paid subscriptions.
In Nigeria, $1 in the U.S. has the spending power of over $8, based on the difference between Nigeria’s gross domestic product in nominal dollars and purchasing power parity. In other words, goods that cost $1 in Nigeria would cost $8 in the U.S. Other countries provide similar boosts in spending power. In Indonesia, $1 feels like $3.30 in the U.S. In Colombia, $1 has the spending power of $2.70. In Mexico, having $1 is like having $1.90 up north.
Differences in costs of living would make royalties seem far more valuable. A typical 0.35-cent per-stream royalty would feel like 2.8 cents in Nigeria, 1.2 cents in Indonesia, 0.95 cents in Colombia and 0.66 cents in Mexico. An American artist who earns $5,000 from a synch placement would get more from that income by walking across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Musicians who are hesitant to become digital nomads can find solace in the slowly improving streaming economics in developing markets. Mature streaming markets are driven by subscriptions, while developing markets tend to be driven by ad-supported streaming. But it’s widely believed that subscription uptake will improve over time, making those foreign streams worth more over time. And in the U.S., artist-centric policies, rising prices and upcoming super-premium tiers will bring more value to artists and rights holders. In other words, don’t dig out your passport just yet.
For decades, rock music dominated the sales charts, with bands like the Beatles, AC/DC, the Eagles, the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin among some of the top-selling acts in recorded music history. But while rock music remains the second-biggest genre in the U.S., it lags far behind market leader R&B/hip-hop and third-placed pop when it comes to streaming.
For the prior year ended Jan. 2, 2025, R&B/hip-hop led the U.S. industry with 27.2% of audio consumption units, besting rock by just 1.7%, the latter coming in at 25.5%, according to Luminate. (These figures subtract activity from titles unassigned to any genre.) But for current market share — defined by Luminate as releases from the last 18 months — rock’s share of the market slips to 11.9%, less than half of that 25.5% mark that includes catalog titles, too.
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That might help explain some of the weakness of rock’s biggest acts in the streaming era. For decades, the music industry measured success using numbers in the millions: an album or song that sold 1 million copies was a platinum record; a diamond record, at 10 million copies, was a smash success. But while those milestones still apply for albums, the streaming era means the industry measures success in the hundreds of millions — and, increasingly, in the billions for huge success stories.
That makes 1 billion annual on-demand U.S. streams a reliable barometer of success for the biggest acts in the country, with the 2 billion stream plateau seemingly the measure of superstar status. But it’s heavily skewed towards genres — like R&B/hip-hop and pop — that have thrived in the streaming format. In 2024, streaming accounted for 91.2% of U.S. album consumption unit totals, vs. 8.8% from sales; while rock leads in market share for the sales formats with 35.8%, it trails R&B/hip-hop in streaming by a whopping 10 percentage points, 19.69% to 29.78%, respectively.
Last year, 51 artist catalogs passed the 2 billion stream mark in the U.S., not including any collaborations, according to Luminate. Of those artists, only one core rock artist hit that milestone: Linkin Park, at 2.25 billion. Meanwhile, four country artists — Morgan Wallen, Zach Bryan, Luke Combs and Chris Stapleton — achieved that distinction, as did three Latin artists, Bad Bunny, Peso Pluma and Fuerza Regida. Another 11 artists that passed the 2 billion stream mark could be considered pop, including Taylor Swift (16.5 billion on-demand streams); Billie Eilish (5.16 billion); and Noah Kahan (3.2 billion). That means the vast majority of artists with over 2 billion streams in 2024 — 32, to be exact — could be considered R&B/hip-hop, led by Drake, the artist with the second-biggest stream count in the U.S. at 10.1 billion streams in 2024, down slightly from the prior year’s 11.5 billion. (Equivalent album units and streaming figures cited in this story include user generated content (UGC) on-demand streams, which are not factored into any of Billboard‘s chart rankings.)
So while it might be easy to think that rock bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Elton John, the Beatles, the Eagles, Metallica, Bruce Springsteen and the Rolling Stones are among the biggest artists in the U.S, the big names in R&B/hip-hop swamp the iconic rock bands when it comes to streaming counts.
For example, not only did none of the above recording acts pass the 2 billion stream mark in 2024, but none of them have hit that milestone in the last five years. By comparison, attaining the 2 billion stream milestone is fairly routine for R&B/hip-hop acts — in fact, a strong contingent of R&B/hip-hop and pop artists annually surpass even 3 billion on-demand streams each year.
Billboard analyzed more than 90 of the top acts in the U.S. and compiled an average of each act’s annual stream count over the five-year period of 2020-2024, with Taylor Swift (10.74 billion average annual streams) and Drake (9.2 billion annually) leading the way. And many of the R&B/hip-hop artists analyzed showed hugely impressive averages. For that 2020-2024 period, those artists include NBA YoungBoy, whose five-year annual average for the U.S. on-demand streams stands at 6.2 billion; Juice WRLD (4.8 billion); The Weeknd (4.6 billion); Kanye West (4.043 billion); Eminem (4.037 billion); Future (3.7 billion); Kendrick Lamar (3.3 billion); J. Cole (3.15 billion); and Travis Scott (2.79 billion), according to Billboard calculations based on Luminate data.
Among rock artists, it’s a completely different story; only in the last two to three years have some of the other big-name rock artists hit the latter milestone.
Nevertheless, of the 45 or so big-name rock acts that Billboard examined for this article, eight have achieved the 1 billion milestone in each of the past five years, and one band — Imagine Dragons — reached 2 billion twice (2.3 billion in 2022 and 2.47 billion in 2023), making it the only rock act to average north of 2 billion over the period (2.04 billion).
Of the remaining bands with five years all over the 1 billion stream mark, one of those rock acts is the most famous band in the world, the Beatles; and, at a 1.91 billion average, they are the only other rock act even close to 2 billion annual streams. The other rock acts to reach the mark every year are Queen (1.38 billion annual average streams); AC/DC (1.2 billion annual average); Linkin Park (1.5 billion average, having broken the 2 billion mark in 2024); Maroon 5 (1.73 billion); Coldplay (1.6 billion); and Twenty One Pilots (1.24 billion).
Four other rock acts averaged over 1 billion streams annually during the period, but only hit the mark four times: Metallica (1.26 billion); the Red Hot Chili Peppers (1.15 billion); Panic! At the Disco (1.1 billion); and the Eagles (nearly 1.1 billion). Elton John (1.02 billion average) hit the mark in three of the years from the five-year period, as did Elvis, whose annual average was just shy of 935 million.
The Rolling Stones (958 million annual average) and Creedence Clearwater Revival (955 million) each hit 1 billion streams twice during the past five years, while Green Day, Billy Joel and Radiohead accomplished it once.
That leaves some major names that have yet to reach the 1 billion mark. Of the bands Billboard chose to examine, that includes Led Zeppelin, who averaged nearly 931 million streams annually over the last five years; and Pink Floyd, at an annual average of 844 million streams. Guns ‘N Roses, Aerosmith, Van Halen, The Beach Boys and the Killers all averaged between 500 million and 800 million streams annually for the period, while David Bowie, the Police, Grateful Dead and Creed were between 300 million and 500 million annually.
Still, 300 million streams is nothing to sneeze at. These days, that would bring in nearly $1.6 million in master recording revenues alone, Billboard estimates.
Streaming remained the dominant force in the recorded music in 2024, but its impact dropped slightly.
For the first time, streaming’s share of total recorded music revenue did not increase from the previous year, according to MIDiA Research’s latest annual tally. In 2024, streaming accounted for 61.3% of total revenue, down from 62.4% in 2023.
Streaming revenue also had a slower rate of increase than in prior years, growing 6.2% compared to 10.3% in 2023 and 8.3% in 2022. And streaming drove less industry growth than in years past. In 2024, streaming accounted for 58.5% of annual revenue growth, down from 64.6% in 2023.
Platforms such as Spotify accounted for $22.2 billion of revenue last year and accounted for the lion’s share of the $36.2 billion of global revenue. That, too, marked a slowdown, as the 6.5% increase in total revenue was down from 9.7% in 2023 and 6.7% in 2022.
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As MIDiA Research succinctly put it: “The much anticipated streaming revenue deceleration—despite recent price increases—has now arrived.”
Price increase in 2023 by Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music Unlimited and Apple Music helped fuel that year’s near-double-digit streaming gain. Spotify raised prices in the U.S. in 2024, too, and gave subscribers the option to opt into a less expensive, audiobook-free tier, although a Morgan Stanley survey found that just 17% of individual premium subscribers had done so last year.
Faced with the realities of market growth, the growth-minded record industry is looking to streaming services to continue raising prices and offer super-premium tiers at elevated prices for subsets of subscribers. In March, Universal Music Group chief digital officer Michael Nash stated the company is in talks with multiple streaming platforms about super-premium tiers. “We think this is going to be an important development for segmentation of the market,” he said.
The decline in streaming’s influence aren’t likely to be seen in other organizations’ annual figures because MIDiA Research’s global revenue estimates includes expanded rights such as merchandise, licensing and touring (as well as production music). In 2024, global expanded rights revenue reached $4.1 billion, up from $3.5 billion and $3.0 billion in 2023 and 2022, respectively. As a share of total revenue, expanded rights rose to 11.3% in 2024 from 10.0% in 2023 and 9.7% in 2022. If expanded rights are removed from the total figures, streaming’s share of revenue falls just barely to 69.2% in 2024 from 69.3% in 2023.
Elsewhere in the global industry, segments other than Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group gained market share in 2024.
UMG again had the largest market share with revenue of $10.5 billion, but the company’s percentage share of the global market fell one percentage point. Sony Music Group grew its market share to 21.7% and was the fastest-growing major label for the second consecutive year.
Artist direct revenue—which covers independent artists that use do-it-yourself distributors such as TuneCore, CD Baby and DistroKid—were $2.0 billion, and the 4.7% growth rate bested the 4.5% growth of 2023. The growth of the number of independent artists using these distributors grew three and a half times as fast as revenue.
Non-major labels increased their market share for the third straight year, improving to 29.7% in 2024 from 29.2% in 2023. Those non-majors had revenue of $10.7 billion, up 8.2% from the prior year. Non-majors’ streaming revenue increased 8.4% to $5.4 billion. Expanded rights income—companies such as HYBE and SM Entertainment in South Korea represent multiple aspects of their artists’ careers—grew to $1.6 billion, and 66% of that revenue came from four Asian record labels. Non-majors’ physical sales fell 6.4%, however.
Spotify released its annual Loud & Clear report on Wednesday (March 12), trumpeting the growing number of musicians earning robust royalty income from the platform, along with its users’ increasingly global listening patterns.
“The number of artists generating $10,000, $100,000, and $1 million dollars on Spotify alone has at least tripled since 2017,” says Sam Duboff, the platform’s global head of marketing and policy, music business.
And those artists are coming from a wider variety of countries. “Ten years ago, you probably had to be singing in English and maybe Spanish to have a really high ceiling,” Duboff adds. “Now we see eight languages where songs are generating $100 million a year [in royalties] just on Spotify” — not only English and Spanish, but also German, Portuguese, French, Japanese, Korean and Italian. In addition, “the majority of artists generating significant revenue on Spotify have the majority of their royalties coming from outside their home market.”
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Perhaps more than past iterations of Loud & Clear, the latest report aimed to push back on popular complaints about the streaming era.
One frustration voiced frequently about streaming is that the platforms’ payouts have crippled most aspiring artists’ ability to build a career. Last year, for example, Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) introduced the Living Wage for Musicians Act in the House of Representatives; the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW), which helped draft the act, said it was necessary because “artists continue to be underpaid, misled and otherwise exploited by streaming platforms.” Across the Atlantic, members of the European Parliament also called on the music industry to explore “fairer models of streaming revenue allocation.”
Spotify has a sunnier view of the streaming economy: Loud & Clear notes that “more artists than ever before are generating royalties at every career stage.” The company argues that much of the discontent with the modern music landscape stems from the fact that an unprecedented number of people are uploading music to streaming services, and “the sheer volume of uploaders means the fraction [of acts] who find success appears smaller over time.”
On Spotify, the number of artists making at least $10,000 grew nearly 8% in 2024, to 71,200, according to the platform’s data, while the number of acts making at least $100,000 from Spotify increased a similar percentage, rising to 12,500.
Those royalty-income brackets on Spotify grew faster than total music consumption in the U.S. last year (5.6%, according to Luminate) but not as fast as they did in 2023. “There are always fluctuations,” Duboff says. He is unconcerned by chatter about streaming growth tapering off, especially in the U.S. and Western Europe. “We still see a ton of growth in mature markets,” he says. “We also see a lot of really exciting growth in emerging markets.”
Another idea targeted by Loud & Clear as a “misconception”: the notion of per-stream payouts. “One of the top conversations we have with artists is about this perception of our per-stream rate,” Duboff explains. “The way you hear people on social media talk, you’d think every streaming service pays out based on per-stream rate.
“But no major streaming service pays out based on a fixed per-stream rate,” Duboff continues. “Every major streaming service pays out based on stream share,” meaning the royalty pool is divided up according to rights holders’ portion of total streams.
Duboff hopes that Loud & Clear can start to “demystify the idea of stream share” and “help artists think through the actual ways in which royalties are generated.” Though it’s possible that, even after thinking this through, acts might still advocate for alternative payout methods, like the user-centric model that was in vogue a couple of years ago. The Living Wage for Musicians Act proposed to fund additional royalty payments — one penny per stream partially generated by charging an extra fee for every streaming subscription — on top of the current payout system.
Spotify also hopes to change perceptions about its highest earners. “When I ask people what type of artist would be generating $1 million a year just from Spotify, the first assumption is it’s the biggest stars with the biggest hits,” Duboff says. “The second thing we hear a lot is, ‘It’s just a lot of legacy acts who were popular decades ago.’ The third is that it must be American, Canadian and Western European artists.”
Spotify’s data flies in the face of those assumptions, according to Duboff. For the second year in a row, 80% of the $1 million earners — close to 1,500 artists — never had a track crack Spotify’s Global Daily Top 50, he says, and more than half of them started their career after 2010. Plus, those acts sing or rap in 17 different languages.
With “momentum on Spotify, you have access to hundreds of millions of listeners all over the world,” Duboff adds, “and the revenue that they bring in.”
The U.K. streaming market rose to record levels in 2024 as it crossed the £1 billion ($1.28 billion) revenue barrier for the first time, according to annual figures from labels trade body BPI published Wednesday (March 12).
Subscription, ad-supported and video-streaming revenue totaled £1.02 billion ($1.3 billion) to make up 68.1% of the country’s recorded music revenue, a rise of 5.7% compared to the previous year. In an accompanying statement, the BPI suggested that the increase is in part the result of multiple streaming platforms raising their subscription prices.
Combined with sales of physical music and digital downloads, along with synch and public performance revenue, the U.K. recorded music market saw total revenue rise 4.8% to £1.49 billion ($1.9 billion), marking a decade of continuous growth. The report notes that since 2014, annual streaming revenue has increased by more than 800% to become the dominant format for recorded music in the U.K.
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The 2024 revenue figure is the highest ever achieved in the U.K. in one year. However, after adjusting for inflation, annual revenue is still hundreds of millions of pounds lower compared to where the music industry should have been in real terms since 2006, the first year when public performance and synch were included in the annual total, reports the BPI.
Breaking down streaming revenue, ad-supported streams enjoyed the biggest annual growth in the market last year with an 8.9% increase to £77.9 million ($100 million). However, paid subscriptions to services such as Amazon, Apple, Spotify and YouTube continue to make up the vast majority of total streaming revenue, bringing in £875.5 million ($1.13 billion) in 2024.
Although the physical market generated more revenue in the U.K. than in any year since 2017, growth slowed last year despite high vinyl and CD sales of new albums by artists including Coldplay (Moon Music), Sabrina Carpenter (Short n’ Sweet) and Taylor Swift (The Tortured Poets Department). Total revenue from vinyl, CD and other physical music formats increased by 1.3% in 2024 to £246.5 million ($317.9 million) after climbing 12.8% the year before. Within this, revenue generated by vinyl LPs rose by 2.9% to £145.7 million ($188.2 million), while CD revenue fell by 0.5% in 2024 to £96.7 million ($124 million).
Despite slowing growth in physical formats, the BPI attributed the continued strength in vinyl partially to the enthusiasm of new generations of music fans. In 2024, eight of the year-end top 10 across vinyl were current records, led by Chappell Roan (The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess), Charli XCX (Brat) and Fontaines D.C. (Romance). In 2014, half of the top 10 sellers were catalogue titles.
At the start of the decade, CD revenue in the U.K. suffered from a series of year-on-year double-digit percentage declines, but over the last three years, it has stabilized. Like vinyl, the CD market is led by new releases.
Elsewhere, public performance revenue climbed 5.6% year-on-year to £161.7 million ($206.5 million), while synch revenue ended the year with a new annual high of £43.9 million ($56.7 million).
In terms of individual songs, four singles generated more than 200 million audio and video streams last year: Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” with 233.1 million streams, Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” with 219.3 million streams, Carpenter’s “Espresso” with 202.8 million streams and Teddy Swims‘ “Lose Control” with 201.6 million streams. Kahan and Carpenter’s tracks each spent seven weeks atop the Official U.K. Singles Chart, while Boone enjoyed two weeks atop the summit. Swims, meanwhile, peaked at No. 2 but earned the most-downloaded single of 2024 in the U.K., with 67,000 units sold.
More than a dozen other tracks scored over 100 million audio and video streams in the U.K. in 2024. These included “Stargazing”, the breakthrough hit by BRITs Rising Star 2025 winner Myles Smith, as well as releases by fellow British artists Cassö, RAYE, D-Block Europe (“Prada”), and Artemas (“I Like The Way You Kiss Me”).
Despite gains in each area of the U.K. recorded music market, Dr. Jo Twist, BPI’s CEO, stressed the importance of raising awareness around the government’s potential future approach to generative artificial intelligence training. At present, a data mining exception to copyright law is being discussed, meaning that AI developers could use songs for AI training in instances where artists have not “opted out” of their work being included.
Last month, over 1,000 artists, including Kate Bush, Damon Albarn, Annie Lennox and Hans Zimmer, contributed to a new “silent” album to protest this proposal. Titled Is This What We Want?, the album featured recordings of empty studios. In an accompanying statement, the use of silence was said to represent “the impact on artists’ and music professionals’ livelihoods that is expected if the government does not change course.”
“After a decade of growth, it is all too easy to take for granted the success of UK recorded music and the vital role record businesses play in this, underpinned by copyright, by investing billions to nurture and promote diverse talent from across the UK,” said Twist in a statement. “But in the face of intensifying global competition, it’s essential they’re empowered by a supportive policy environment to keep British artists on the world’s top step.
“Crucially, this requires the exciting potential of AI to be realised by the government safeguarding the UK’s gold-standard copyright framework and not siding with global big tech at the expense of human artistry and our world-leading creative industries,” Twist continued.
Get ready for a new era of innovation by streaming services. That was the message sent by Universal Music Group (UMG) chief digital officer Michael Nash during the company’s fourth quarter earnings call on Thursday (March 6), during which he noted that the label is currently in talks with all of its streaming partners — not just Spotify — about super-premium tiers.
“There’s a continuing wave of innovation that we’ve seen really transform our business and transform the digital landscape in particular, over the last decade, and we anticipate that that’s going to continue as the market grows,” said Nash.
Not that streaming services haven’t been innovating since day one. Listeners have enjoyed new ways to discover music (the growth of playlists, personalized listening and algorithm-driven radio stations), follow their favorite artists (album pre-saves) and view concert listings and lyrics. From 2011 to 2014, Spotify allowed developers (Rolling Stone, Billboard, Tunewiki and Songkick, among others) to build apps that lived inside its platform and utilized its song catalog. Services such as Tidal and Qobuz have made high-fidelity audio a part of their brand identities. And over the years, the types of subscription offerings expanded from individual plans to encompass family plans and affordable student options.
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But the type of innovation that Nash referenced is different. Except for high-fidelity audio, streaming innovations haven’t resulted in greater revenue per user — all the features packed into streaming services haven’t cost the consumers anything extra. That’s going to change. The next wave of music streaming will have products and services that carry higher prices. After decades of providing the same service to all customers, streaming platforms will segment the market and offer premium products to a subset of their subscribers.
Super-premium streaming is one component of what UMG calls “streaming 2.0.” On Thursday, CEO Lucian Grainge explained that streaming 2.0 “will build on the enormous scale we’ve achieved thus far in streaming’s initial stage. This next stage of streaming will see it evolve into a more sustainable and growing, artist centric ecosystem that improves monetization and delivers great experiences for fans.” Offering multiple tiers rather than a single subscription plan, Grainge said, “enabl[es] us to segment and capture customer value at higher than ever levels.”
Conversations about superfan offerings have extended as far as concert promotion and ticketing. Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino revealed during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call that streaming services are interested in pre-sale ticket offers. “We’ve talked to them all about ideas on if they wanted inventory,” he revealed on the Feb. 20 call. “There’s a cost to that, and we would entertain and look at that option if it made sense for us in comparison to other options we have for that pre sell.”
Spotify is known to be working on a superfan product — CEO Daniel Ek revealed in February that he is testing an early version — but Nash suggested other streaming services could follow suit. “We’re in conversations with all of our partners about super-premium tiers,” he said. “We think this is going to be an important development for segmentation of the market.”
JP Morgan believes the customer segmentation that Nash referenced will be a component of UMG’s growth over the next 10 to 20 years. “In a streaming 1.0 world UMG was reliant on DSPs raising retail price rises if it was to benefit from a higher wholesale price; in a streaming 2.0 environment UMG has visibility on wholesale price rises that underpin its growth algorithm, while still having potential upside should DSPs raise prices above the minimum,” analysts wrote in a March 6 investor note.
UMG’s market research suggests that 20% of music subscribers are likely to pay for a superfan streaming product, according to Nash. If Spotify reaches that threshold, it will have converted roughly 53 million of its 263 million subscribers into higher-paying customers (as of Dec. 31). It’s already worked for at least one company outside the U.S., as Tencent Music Entertainment has already proven there’s demand for a high-priced, value-added streaming product: Its Super VIP tier, which costs five times the normal subscription rate, had 10 million subscribers at the end of September — over 8% of TME’s 119 million total subscribers. If other streamers can successfully follow suit, new superfan streaming products will generate more revenue for artists, rights owners and streaming platforms — and help the music business continue to grow for years to come.
Growth in recorded music, publishing and merchandise helped Universal Music Group (UMG) post strong revenue growth in both the fourth quarter and full year 2024, while cost savings from layoffs helped the company produce even better earnings gains.
Driven by an 8.2% increase in recorded music subscription revenue, full-year revenue was up 6.5% (7.6% at constant currency) to 11.83 billion euros ($12.8 billion). With a lower cost base, adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EDITDA) improved 13.8% to 2.66 billion euros ($2.88 billion), while adjusted EBITDA margin climbed to 22.2% from 21.3% in 2023.
During Thursday’s earnings call, CEO Lucian Grainge called 2024 “a tremendously successful year for us at UMG” and cited the company’s “healthy revenue and double-digit adjusted EBITDA growth for each and every year since 2021 when UMG became a standalone public company.” He rattled off a host of UMG’s accomplishments for the year, including having four of the top five artists on Spotify and nine of the top 10 artists — and all of the top five — on the IFPI Global Artist Chart. UMG also had the two biggest new artist breakthroughs of 2024 in Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter. Roan won the Grammy for best new artist in February.
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In the recorded music segment, full-year revenue increased 5.2% (6.4% in constant currency) to 8.9 billion euros ($9.63 billion). Adjusted EBITDA climbed 11.4% to 2.28 billion euros ($2.47 billion). Streaming revenue grew 5.9% to 6.04 billion euros ($6.54 billion), with subscription revenue doing the heavy lifting, rising 8.2% while other streaming revenue — namely ad-supported streaming — fell 0.8%. Downloads and other digital revenue dropped 13.0% but accounted for just 180 million euros ($195 million), or roughly 2% of recorded music revenue. Physical revenue fell 1.6% (up 1.1% in constant currency) to 1.36 billion euros ($1.47 billion). Licensing and other revenue jumped 12.9% to 1.33 billion euros ($1.44 billion).
In music publishing, full-year revenue rose 8.4% (9.0% in constant currency) to 2.12 billion euros ($2.29 billion) and adjusted EBITDA improved 8.7% to 511 million euros ($553 million). Led by strong streaming growth, digital revenue improved 12.4% to 1.27 billion euros ($1.37 billion) and accounted for 60% of total publishing revenue. Performance revenue grew 6.3% to 442 million euros ($478 million). Synch revenue fell 0.4% to 253 million euros ($274 million). Mechanical royalties dropped 4.6% to 103 million euros ($112 million).
Full-year merchandise revenue grew 19.3% to 842 million euros ($911 million), although adjusted EBITDA declined 8.5% to 43 million euros ($47 million). UMG COO/CFO Boyd Muir said the revenue growth reflected “robust superfan demand that is driving strong growth in both direct-consumer and touring revenue.” The lower EBITDA resulted from lower-margin touring merchandise sales, said Muir, though UMG expects merchandise margins to improve as the company ramps up its direct-to-consumer business.
UMG experienced 75 million euros ($81 million) of cost savings in 2024 in the first phase of a 250-million-euro ($270 million) cost savings program. Muir said the company will provide an update on the second phase of the program at a later date and added the implementation “remains on — if not slightly ahead of — schedule.” When UMG announced its cost-savings plan in February 2024, Grainge said the redesign “carefully preserves what we’re best at: creative A&R, marketing independence, unique label brand identities” and an entrepreneurial and competitive spirit.
Cash paid for catalog acquisitions grew to 266 million euros ($288 million) in 2024 from 178 million euros ($193 million) in 2023. Last year’s figure included the acquisition of the remaining stake in RS Group in Thailand and the completion of a 2023 catalog acquisition. UMG had a busy M&A year, buying the remaining share of [PIAS] and investing in Chord Music Partners, NTWRK and Mavin Global. As a result of that activity, free cash flow fell to 523 million euros ($566 million) in 2024 from 1.08 billion euros ($1.17 billion) in the prior year.
Comprehensive fourth-quarter revenue grew 7.2% to 3.44 billion euros ($3.67 billion), or 7.9% in constant currency. Adjusted EBITDA jumped 19.1% to 799 million euros ($852 million). Adjusted EBITDA margin rose to 23.2% from 21.1%. Excluding one-time items, fourth quarter revenue was up 6.1% in constant currency. That non-recurring revenue included the 20 million euros ($21 million) of DSP catch-up income and 40 million euros ($43 million) of legal settlements.
Recorded music subscription revenue climbed 7.9% (9.0% in constant currency) in the fourth quarter, safely within the company’s prior long-term guidance of 8% to 10%, though it suffered a one-percentage-point hit from a decline in revenue from fitness platforms. Ad-supported streaming revenue fell 5.1% (4.1% in constant currency). Combined subscription and ad-supported streaming revenue grew 4.6% (5.6% at constant currency).
YouTube now has 125 million subscribers across YouTube Music and YouTube Premium, according to an open letter from Lyor Cohen published on Wednesday (March 5). Cohen called this number — which includes trial users — “an incredible milestone that many laughed off as impossible when we first launched. This momentum is critical to our goal […]