Global recorded-music revenue passes $30 billion
IFPI’s Global Music Report 2026 says recorded-music revenue reached $31.7 billion in 2025, an all-time high and the industry’s eleventh consecutive year of growth.
The report places annual growth at 6.4 percent, up from 4.7 percent in 2024. Subscription-streaming revenue increased 8.8 percent, and IFPI counted 837 million users of paid subscription accounts. Every region recorded growth for a sixth consecutive year.
Growth is global, but not evenly distributed
Latin America was the fastest-growing region at 17.1 percent, according to IFPI, while Brazil and Mexico both appeared in the global top ten markets. The report says 57 of 58 measured markets grew during the year.
Those totals show a resilient global business, but aggregate growth should not be confused with equal outcomes. Market expansion can coexist with difficult economics for individual artists, uneven access to paid audiences, changing label and distributor terms, and major differences between recorded-music and songwriting income.
Subscriptions remain a central engine
Paid streaming continues to be one of the strongest drivers of industry revenue. For creators, that reinforces the importance of metadata, release delivery, catalog maintenance, territorial availability, and discovery systems. It also strengthens the case for understanding how recording and composition rights flow through different organizations.
AI is now part of the market structure
The 2026 report gives substantial attention to artificial intelligence, licensing, authorization, transparency, and compensation. That places AI beside streaming growth as a core structural issue rather than a separate technology story. The industry is simultaneously seeking licensed product models and challenging uses it considers unauthorized.
What creators should take from the report
A growing market creates more potential paths, not a guaranteed path for every release. Artists should evaluate where audiences are growing, preserve accurate rights and credit records, build direct relationships alongside platforms, and understand the agreements behind any generative tool they use.
The headline is important: recorded music has passed a new global revenue threshold. The more useful question is how that growth becomes sustainable creative work across different roles, regions, and levels of the industry.
Source: IFPI Global Music Report 2026, reporting full-year 2025 market data. Figures are presented as published by IFPI.