Music copyright generated $47.2 billion in 2024, up $2.3 billion on 2023
Just before Christmas economist Will Page published his annual study of the wider music rights business - combining 2024 data that was published earlier in 2025, and then filling some gaps.
Earlier in the year we got figures for global recorded music revenues in 2024 via trade body IFPI ($29 billion) and then - in November - for how much money flowed through songwriter collecting societies around the world from CISAC ($13.6 billion).
Page’s annual study combines figures for both recording rights and song rights, pulling together both IFPI and CISAC data. Once those are published, he also adds in estimates for how much money was paid directly to music publishers - for example through sync deals and some digital licensing - which isn’t captured in the CISAC report. When all that is put together, we get the $47.2 billion figure.
Page notes that when he first did this study in 2014 the total value of music rights was just over $25 billion, so that’s a lot of growth in ten years. Back then 55% of revenues flowed to the recording rights and 45% to the song rights, whereas now its 62% to recordings and 38% to songs.
That’s because a lot of the growth has been powered by streaming, where up to 80% of income is allocated to the recordings. Many songwriters and publishers believe that split is inequitable, of course, and they are currently fighting hard to ensure revenues from any AI licensing deals are split more like 50/50.
UK streaming revenues topped £2 billion in 2025, but physical revenues saw more growth
Trade body ERA published its interim year-end revenue figures for streaming services and entertainment retailers in the UK, revealing that music streaming and retail combined together generated £2.45 billion in revenues last year, up 4.2% on 2024. The vast majority of that comes from streaming service subscriptions, which generated £2.05 billion, up 3.2% year on year.
However, revenues from CD and vinyl sales saw more growth, at 11.5%, generating £368.1 million. Pretty much all that growth came from vinyl, although don't forget the mighty cassette revival too. Physical products other than CD and vinyl only account for £4.6 million in revenue, but that category was up 95% year-on-year, most of it from cassette sales to idiots.
These are retail figures remember, so they include the platform and retailer’s cut of the money, as well as what flows to the music industry. These interim figures may be revised in a fuller report from ERA later in this year, although subsequent tweaks are usually modest.
ERA stats also cover video and gaming. UK video revenues were up 8% to £5.44 billion, nearly all of which now comes from digital services. Gaming revenues were up 7.4% to £5.37 billion.
7.6 million vinyl LPs were sold in the UK last year, up 13.3%
While ERA’s year-end figures focus on the money, record label trade body BPI tells us about the number of units shifted across the year. Those figures also track the vinyl revival, reporting that when it comes to vinyl LPs, 7.6 million units were sold in 2025, up 13.3% year-on-year from 6.7 million in 2024.
And, in case you’re interested, that’s a 30-fold increase compared to 2008, the year when the vinyl revival began. If you combine sales for all physical products, 17.6 million units were sold in 2025, up 1.4%.
The BPI’s figures, based on Official Charts data, also include consumption stats for streaming, with 210.3 billion streams occurring in 2025. The BPI’s number crunchers then combine the physical sales data with the streaming data in a sneaky way nobody really understands to declare that, in 2025, the equivalent of 210.3 million albums were consumed, which is a new high. Make of that whatever you will.
Vinyl sales were up 20% in Ireland last year
Having digested all those figures for the UK recorded must market, what about Ireland? Well, according to the Irish Recorded Music Association, the growth in vinyl sales was even more impressive in the Irish market, surging 20% to 478,000 units sold.
Taylor Swift helped shift a decent number of those records, IMRA says, but so did Irish artists like Fontaines DC, CMAT, Kingfishr, Amble and Kneecap. CD sales were up 4.5% in terms of units sold, while cassette sales grew 64%.
As for streaming, IRMA says there were 13.2 billion audio streams in Ireland last year, which is a 6% increase on 2024 and 60% up on 2020. Of the most-streamed songs of 2025, Irish artists made up just over a fifth, with 22 individual tracks by or featuring Irish artists in the top 100, three times as many as in 2024.
33% of major festivals in Europe were targeted by some form of protest or boycott
We knew that the music festival sector was dealing with more politics than ever in 2025, but the European Festival Report, produced by IQ Magazine with YOUROPE, has put a figure on that challenge. Based on a survey of festival promoters across Europe, it reveals that “33% of major festivals had been the target of some form of protest or call for a boycott”.
An increasing number of festivals have been called out over their sponsors or owners in recent years, usually because those sponsors or owners have investments in Israel or in the fossil fuel industries. Those protests often result in artists booked to play targeted festivals being pressured to pull out.
With a third of European festivals facing political protests of one form or another last year, IQ’s James Drury notes that “larger festivals sit at the intersection of global finance, political discourse and mass audiences, making them more exposed to reputational campaigns, whether related to ownership structures, brand partners, environmental concerns or geopolitical positions”.
Other challenges facing festival promoters highlighted in the report include rising production costs, identified as the “most significant challenge” for 28% of established festivals, while for new festivals booking artists is the single biggest challenge, cited by 31% of respondents.