Where is the music industry at mid-year? Luminate as a report and it shows a BIG new music problem.
Luminate, the company that tracks how the music industry is doing, has issued its mid-year report for 2026. And this is the data point that screams at me:
60% of Gen Z (ages 13-24 for this survey) say they listen to music from the 90s or earlier the most That’s up from 18% in 2021.
Wow. What does that tell you about the quality of today’s music? And doesn’t it validate some feelings about what you’ve been thinking?
Here’s how things look.
- Global on-demand song streams grew by 9.8% over the same time last year. The total number of songs streamed was–wait for it–2.8 trillion. That’s 2,800,000,000,000.
- Streams grew by 4.8% in the US, the biggest music market in the world. The rest of the world saw growth of 11.8%.
- The biggest exporters of music to the world are: (1) the US, (2) the UK, (3) South Korea, and (4) Canada. The South Koreans jumped ahead of us, largely because of the return of BTS and the rise of K-pop Demon Hunters.
- The most-streamed song of 2026 so far? “Golden” by K-pop Demon Hunters with 1.124 billion on-demand streams.
- The most popular music documentary? The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel. It was followed by Man on the Run, the Paul McCartney and Wings doc.
- Millennials and Gen Z are not only buying vinyl, but they’re also into CDs. Over 50% of them who bought a CD in the first half of 2026 don’t even own a CD player.
Some Canadian stats:
- Album consumption: Up 3.2%
- On-demand song streams: Up 3.6%
- Total physical album sales in Canada so far in 2026: Up 4.2%
- While we may have fallen to fourth place in music exports, Canada remains the number one country for importing music.
What kind of music are people streaming? Here’s a handy chart for the US. No real surprise here. I wish they had one for Canada.
