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Despite last year’s challenges in the music business — from generative AI songs breaking onto the charts to the growing issue of streaming fraud — overall recorded music revenues accelerated globally in 2025, marking the 11th straight year of growth, according to the IFPI’s latest figures. For the first time, global music revenue topped the $30 billion mark, with gains across every top region of the world, from the U.S. and Canada to Sub-Saharan Africa.
Overall, the report showed that subscription streaming remained the biggest revenue driver in 2025, accounting for more than half of global revenue. The number of paid subscribers increased to 837 million, up from 752 million just one year prior.
While the U.S. remained the No. 1 music market worldwide, accounting for 38.7% of all revenue, its rate of growth (3.3%) paled in comparison to other top 10 markets like China, Mexico and Brazil, which saw double-digit gains. All of which shows just how truly global the music industry has become.
Below, check out six big takeaways from this year’s IFPI report.
Overall revenue growth accelerated, largely thanks to gains in Asia.
The IFPI’s last annual report showed that global revenue growth slowed to 4.7% in 2024, roughly half the rate of the previous year — leading some to fear that recorded music revenues were in danger of plateauing. However, this year’s report may bring some measure of relief, as revenue growth accelerated to 6.4% in 2025 — a small but significant gain.
A good chunk of that growth seems to have come from Asia, where recorded music revenue increased nearly tenfold — from 1.3% in 2024 to 10.9% last year. This was driven in large part by massive revenue gains in China and a rebound in the world’s second-largest music market, Japan, where growth essentially flattened in 2024 (-0.2%) before increasing to 8.9% last year. (Japan, a market that is still heavily reliant on physical sales, still has a long way to go in terms of digital growth, though it faces some cultural and institutional obstacles to achieving that.) In fact, Asia was one of only two regions — alongside the U.S./Canada — where growth gained momentum in 2025.
China overtook Germany as the world’s fourth-largest music market.
China and Germany swapped spots on this year’s list of the top 10 music markets, demonstrating the power of the still-emerging Chinese market, where revenue grew 20.1% in 2025 — more than double the previous year. With a population of approximately 1.4 billion people, China is a massive, and relatively young, market, where a wealth of potential paying subscribers remains untapped.
Those paid subscribers are growing — not to mention the number of paid subscribers who are willing to pay more than the standard price, elevating the market’s average revenue per user (ARPU) and helping super-charge streaming revenue gains. As seen in this week’s earnings release from Tencent Music — the largest music streaming service provider in China, which operates Kugou Music, QQ Music and Kuwo Music — the number of users on its super-premium “Super VIP” tier grew 12% over midyear 2025 and now make up roughly 15.7% of the service’s 127.4 million total paying subscribers.
Latin America continued to surge.
Though percent of revenue growth in Latin America was down year-over-year — falling from 22.5% in 2024 to 17.1% in 2025 — it nonetheless grew for a 16th straight year, with streaming accounting for more than 88% of all recorded music revenue in the region. Bright spots include Mexico, which increased revenue by 13.3% and remained the No. 10 recorded music market globally, and Brazil, which overtook Canada to become the eighth-largest recorded music market.
In Mexico, exports of Música Mexicana have led to consistent growth, as labels continue investing in the region and increased streaming adoption allows music to circulate more easily across borders than ever before. As Tomas Rodriquez, president of Warner Music Mexico/Música Mexicana, said in this year’s report, “Música Mexicana didn’t suddenly appear — it’s always been big. What changed is how easily it can now travel.” Recent forays into Mexico by the major labels and companies including HYBE, which launched a regional Mexican label in September, indicate more growth is on the horizon.
In Brazil, years of investment by the major U.S. labels also helped lead to revenue increases — from Sony Music acquiring the top Brazilian label Som Livre for more than $250 million in 2021 to Warner Music bolstering its presence there in 2024. In its Q3 results last October, Universal Music Group also reported double-digit subscription growth in the Brazilian market.
Physical revenue grew more quickly than digital.
For only the second time on record, physical revenue growth outpaced digital growth (8% vs. 7.7%). That was partially driven by the aforementioned rebound in Japan — the largest market for physical music worldwide, whose downturn in 2024 helped lead to a 3.1% decline in physical revenue globally. Last year’s spike in physical revenue can largely be attributed to the continued popularity of vinyl, which saw a 13.7% revenue gain last year. Notably, that increase can at least partially be attributed to the format’s growing price tag and the trend of artists capturing more revenue from superfans by releasing multiple vinyl variants, a relatively new phenomenon that didn’t exist when vinyl was king in the ’70s and ’80s.
Artists’ share of industry revenues increased.
Though artists’ share of industry revenues saw only a slight uptick year-over-year — from 34.8% in 2024 to 35.5% in 2025 — that share has grown significantly over the last decade; in 2016, artists’ share of recorded music revenue sat at 31%. This indicates more generous revenue splits for artists, who now have more choice in where and how to release and finance their music — and therefore more leverage when it comes to negotiating deals — than ever before.
“Deepfake” songs have become an increasingly pervasive problem.
During the global launch event for the IFPI report, Dennis Kooker, president of global digital business & U.S. sales at Sony Music, claimed the company has requested the removal of more than 135,000 AI-generated “deepfake” songs from streaming services impersonating Sony artists including Beyonce, Harry Styles and Queen (per the BBC). “In the worst cases, [the deepfakes] potentially damage a release campaign or tarnish the reputation of an artist,” Kooker reportedly said.
“The problem with deepfakes are they are a demand-driven event,” Kooker continued. “They are taking advantage of the fact an artist is out there promoting their music. That is when deepfakes are at their worst — building off and benefiting from the demand the artist has created [and] ultimately detracting from what the artist is trying to accomplish.”
Sony’s claims underscore the fact that, more than a decade into the streaming revolution that shored up the industry’s bottom line, bad actors are now harnessing an even more powerful technology and threatening to erode industry revenues once more.
English (US)