Global recorded music revenues up 9.4% in 20252025 was a good year for the recorded music business. After a modestly performing 2024, revenues grew by 9.4% in 2025 to reach $39.5 billion. See MIDiA’s ‘Recorded music market 2025 | Rise of the fan economy’ and accompanying 12 sheet dataset for MUCH more detail.

It was a year that saw strong performance across the board – to the extent that even downloads stopped its decade-plus race to oblivion. But there was one revenue category that left all others for dust: expanded rights (labels’ participation in merch, live, brand etc), growing by a whopping 21.5%. Expanded rights and physical – which also had a strong 2025 – are the centre pieces of record labels’ fandom strategy. 

The fan economy has fast become a central part of the recorded music business, from the global success of K-pop, through indie sales on Bandcamp, to major label D2C strategy. This is why MIDiA has been including expanded rights as part of our recorded music market value since 2020 – during which time revenues for the segment more than doubled.

2025 represented a milestone for the rise of the fan economy: for the first time in the streaming era, streaming revenues grew slower than the total market, due to strong increases in expanded rights and physical. In fact, the contribution of expanded rights was so significant that using the traditional measure of recorded music (i.e. not including expanded rights), total revenue growth was a significantly smaller 7.7%.

To be clear, 7.7% is still strong growth and a welcome rebound from the 4.2% growth registered in 2024. This 2025 uptick was underpinned by a good year for streaming, with the growth rate increasing from 2024, indicating that there is still plenty of momentum left in the market. Streaming still represents the majority of revenues and contributed more new revenue than any other segment. Yet in percentage growth terms, physical licensing and expanded rights all grew faster in 2025.

The key signal here is that the recorded music market is diversifying. Streaming is the industry engine room, but labels are building an increasingly multifaceted business on and around it.

A mix of currents flowed underneath the headline global market figures: 

Latin America recorded the fastest regional growth

Non-major labels grew market share with expanded rights but lost it without

Artists Direct (self-releasing artists) saw their market share fall as streaming payout thresholds took effect – despite strong growth in streams

In fact, streaming is the place where all the complexity lies, with factors such as Artist Centric, Discovery Mode, audiobook licensing carveouts, price increases, major label distribution of independents and many other dynamics bringing an unprecedented degree of nuance to the market. 

2025 threw the recorded music business no end of challenges and disruption, not least of which being AI. The industry’s response? Grow revenues faster than in 2024, diversify income streams, optimise existing models and license new ones. Growth requires more work and effort now than it did during streaming’s peak growth years, but the fact it is increasingly spread across multiple formats, reduces risk and over-reliance on streaming. This state of affairs will prove invaluable in the years of fast change that will lie ahead.

‘Recorded music market 2025 | Rise of the fan economy’ ’ is available now for MIDiA members. If you are not a client but would like to learn how you can gain access to this report, please reach out to enquiries@midiaresearch.com.