Whose recorded music generated the most cash in 2022?
The IFPI is the trade body that represents the recorded music industry around the planet. It also keeps tabs on which artists are selling/streaming/having their music downloaded the most and thereby generating the most money. As far as I know, this is the only global ranking to measure music consumption in all its forms.
The numbers are in for 2023 and things shook out like this:
- Taylor Swift (Thanks to Midnights and its over 6 million album equivalents sold and the 1.791 billion streams from that record. Her catalogue is also massively popular. In fact, her combined global streams reached 36.6 billion.)
- BTS (K-pop boy band)
- Drake
- Bad Bunny
- The Weeknd
- SEVENTEEN (K-pop boy band)
- Stray Kids (K-pop boy band)
- Harry Styles
- Jay Chou (Taiwanese star)
- Ed Sheeran (He didn’t release a studio album in 2022 but his catalogue is so popular that he made this list anyway.)
- Eminem
- Kanye West
- YoungBoy Never Broke Again
- Kendrick Lamar
- Lil Baby
- Billie Eilish
- Post Malone
- Juice WRLD
- The Beatles
- Imagine Dragons
If narrow things down to just streams, the picture is a bit different. This is where we get to see how big Bad Bunny was last year. (Via MBW).
It would be interesting to see 1 more column added to the chart for streaming- Actual Revenue Earned.