Global music copyright revenues in 2023 were $45.5 billion, 11% up year-on-year, according to economist Will Page, who has just published his annual study that seeks to capture as many of the rights and revenues of the wider music rights industry as possible.
That said, Page admits that the actual value could be higher than that. His study reviews various industry reports, including those published by IFPI, CISAC, IMPF, MiDIA and Music & Copyright.
For calculating the total revenues figure, Pages relies on a combination of data from IFPI (recorded music), CISAC (song royalties collected by collecting societies) and Music & Copyright (music publisher direct income), before removing ‘double counting’ that happens by bringing together those figures.
However, depending on which of the full set of industry reports you choose to pull your figures from you’ll get a different global total, because each report employs a different methodology, with some including periphery but growing revenue streams that others don’t capture.
For example, media consultancy MiDIA’s reports include revenues from the DIY artist and production music sectors not necessarily included in the other reports.
Because it captures a wider range of revenue streams, MiDIA - Page notes - “estimates global recorded music revenue in 2023 to be $30.5 billion”, which is 6.6% higher than record industry trade group IFPI in its ‘Global Music Report’. As for music publishing income, MiDIA “puts the figure around $10 billion, a billion more than Music & Copyright”.
There are yet more gaps in the industry's reporting, says Page. “The United Nations recognises 193 counties, whereas the IFPI yearbook reports on just 56”, he writes. “Worse, Middle East And North Africa get grouped together, despite distinct market characteristics”.
On the songs side, the CISAC ‘Global Collections Report’, which aggregates data from songwriter collective management organisations across the world “isn’t global either”, Page adds, citing the Center For Music Ecosystems which “calculates that over 40 countries don't even have their own CMO”.
The big revenue streams and the big markets are all captured, of course, but a key takeaway from these industry reports is always that developing markets are increasingly important, both as contributors to overall market growth, and - in some cases - as increasingly notable exporters into more traditional music markets.
Elsewhere in his latest study, Page crunches stats from Luminate to look at some of the Latin American markets that have seen a notable surge in exports in recent years, and the impact that can have on the music industry back home.
Mexico is now the second biggest exporter of music into the US, the biggest music rights market of them all, having overtaken Canada and now sitting in second place behind the UK. Colombia has also seen an export surge into the US market, putting it in sixth place.
For the Mexican and Colombian music industries, streams in the US will always generate more money than streams back home, because streaming is a revenue share business and subscription prices are higher in the US.
Illustrating the impact of this, Page writes, “Mexican artists captured over $350 million worth of streams inside the US - $200m more than what those same streams would have earned back home. More striking is Colombia, whose artists captured almost $100 million worth of streams inside the US, over six times more than what those same streams would have been worth back in Colombia”.
To hammer home how big a deal that is, Page adds, “this estimated trade‑boost of exporting those streams to the US alone ($78 million) is worth more than their entire Colombian recorded music industry ($74 million)”.
All of which illustrates why - to truly understand the global music copyright business - we need stats that are truly global. “If the industry can up its measurement-game, there’s a double-tailwind that’ll drive the global value of copyright even higher”, Page concludes. “First, (re)emerging markets will catch up with rich ones and second, as they do, they’ll get more measurement-attention. More value, and more of it being tracked”.