How did the global music industry do in the first half of 2025? Let’s take a look.

Luminate, a company that tracks the health of the recorded music industry, has released its midyear report for 2025. Here’s what we learned.

• On-demand streams of songs reached 2.5 trillion in the first six months of the year. This is up 10.3% from the same point last year.
• The US was a laggard with growth of only 4.6%. If you remove the US from the rest of the world, global streaming was up 12.6%.
• Streaming in Canada was up by 5.2%. We also bought 1% more physical music (vinyl and CDs).
• The US is still the biggest streaming market with 765 billion online audio and video streams. Next up is India (235.5 billion), Mexico (226 billion), and Brazil (195.4 billion)
• Less than 25% of streams were from songs 0-18 months old. The rest of listening goes to songs 18-60 and 60+ months old.
• Looking at music consumers, they can be categorized this way:
  • 20% are less-than-casual music fans. They’re not terribly engaged.
  • 14% are casual music fans. They’ll use streaming music services
  • 30% are “active” music fans, people who pay for streaming and also buy physical music.
  • 18% are “engaged” music fans. They follow artists through several different means.
  • 18% are “superfans.” They’ll do anything to engage with their favourite artist(s).
• One-third of US listeners are “somewhat” or “very” comfortable with the use of AI to create instrumentals. But 44% are uncomfortable with full songs generated by AI.
• Fans’ biggest frustration? Increased costs, especially for concert tickets.
• R&B/Hip-hop remains the number one genre in the US, followed by rock, pop, and country.
• The genre that showed the most growth these last six months? Rock! And of that, the biggest sub-genre was…alt-rock!
• In the US, 23%.8 of sales and streams went to R&B/Hip-hop. Rock was second with 19.6%.

Which countries export the most music? I’ve buried the lede here.

1. The US
2. UK
3. Canada(!!!)
4. South Korea
5. Germany

A few other stats:

1. Most-watched music documentary: Becoming Led Zeppelin
2. Fewer people intended to attend music festivals.
3. Biggest song of the first half of 2025? “Die with a Smile” from Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars with 1.920 billion streams.
4. Top Canadian album: Morgan Wallen and I’m the Problem (231,000 units)
5. Top Canadian song: “Die with a Smith” from Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars
6. Top-selling vinyl record: GNX by Kendrick Lamar.
7. Somehow, Chappell Roan has sold 8,000 cassettes in the US so far this year.