The music business is becoming a fandom business
Global recorded music revenue reached $39.5 billion in 2025. Overall market growth came in at 9.4% including expanded rights and 7.7% without. Last year, MIDiA forecasted global revenues to grow by 7.1% in 2025 (excluding expanded rights), making the actual 7.7% growth a notable beat on forecast.
Watch Mark Mulligan break down what is driving this change, where the real opportunities are emerging, and what it means for the future of the music business.
Global recorded music revenues reached $39.5 billion in 2025
Global recorded music revenue reached $39.5 billion in 2025. Overall market growth came in at 9.4% including expanded rights and 7.7% without.
Last year, MIDiA forecasted global revenues to grow by 7.1% in 2025 (excluding expanded rights), making the actual 7.7% growth a notable beat on forecast.
Expanded rights were the fastest-growing
Expanded rights revenue (labels' share of merch, live, and branding) grew 21.5% in 2025.
As streaming growth stabilises, labels increasingly find upside by deepening their stake in artist fandom
Non-major labels grew their share of total recorded music revenue in 2025
Non-major labels grew their share of total recorded music revenue in 2025, but lost it when expanded rights were excluded.
Major labels are thus enjoying more success, relative to non-major labels, growing their traditional rights business.
Labels distributed by majors grew streaming revenue faster
Labels distributed by majors grew streaming revenue faster than those not, pointing to the infrastructure and services advantages major distribution can bring independent labels.
The Global South represents the next structural shift
Major labels dominate North American and European revenues but are little more than bit-part players in Rest of World where non-majors dominate market share.
Global South might not yet be seriously competing for global revenue share, but when it does, the Western majors will benefit significantly less than from Western growth – unless they are able to meaningfully increase share.
Artists Direct lost share as streaming payout thresholds took effect
Self-releasing artists saw streaming volumes grow faster than revenue, a direct consequence of artist-centric licensing models that reallocate portions of revenue toward bigger, more established artists.
"2025 was a good year for the recorded music business, with strong growth across all major revenue sources — even downloads stopped a decade-long decline.
But expanded rights is where the strongest growth was found. The music business is increasingly becoming a fandom business. As streaming settles into steadier growth, monetising fandom is becoming the market's key driver."
Global recorded music revenues grew faster in 2025 than 2024, underpinned by a stable streaming sector and booming expanded rights revenue. Though expanded rights are still only a minority of total revenues, they are where the dynamic growth is and represent one of the key building blocks of tomorro...
This report analyses the results of MIDiA’s survey of 1,000 US merch, physical music, and / or ticket buyers conducted in Q3 2025. To qualify for the survey, respondents had to have purchased at least one of the following in the prior 12 months: concert ticket, music merchandise, physical music.
After a buoyant 2023, recorded music revenue growth slowed again in 2024, the fourth year of alternating growth rates. It was a year of varied fortunes across both formats and labels, but perhaps most crucially of all, a growing divergence between label streaming growth and DSP growth.
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