Global Recorded Music Revenue and Streaming Grew More Slowly in 2024

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. 

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.