Global audio streams jumped 14% in 2024 to 4.8 trillion – with pop music the fastest-growing genre in the US

Global audio streaming volume reached new heights in 2024, with total streams worldwide nearing the 5 trillion mark, market monitor Luminate has revealed in its year-end report for 2024.

The new report confims – perhaps surprisingly – that the pop music genre grew faster than Latin music in the US in 2024, driven by Taylor Swift and other female artists, who dominated the top of the charts in 2024.

In fact, according to Luminate, pop music was the fastest-growing genre in the States last year, adding 0.48% to its annual market share of all on-demand audio streams in the territory (see below).

Luminate’s report also uncovered an increase in the share of superfans among music consumers, a slight increase in catalog consumption versus current music, and – again, perhaps surprisingly – a slight decrease in the number of songs being uploaded by streaming services by distributors. (More on all that below.)

In all, Luminate counted 4.8 trillion audio streams around the world last year, up 14% YoY from the 4.2 trillion counted in 2023.

A large part of that growth came from outside the US, the world’s largest music market.

Ex-US streams grew 17.3% YoY, while on-demand audio streaming in the US grew by 6.4%, to around 1.4 trillion streams. (The numbers exclude video streaming of songs.)

One notable tidbit in this data: The number of weekly on-demand audio streams has roughly doubled in the world outside the US in just the past three years, to around 70 billion streams per week.

Looking at paid subscription streams (as opposed to ad-supported streams), Luminate said emerging markets are the “new growth frontier.”

Asia saw the largest increase in subscription streams (up 10.7% YoY), while Europe saw 8% YoY growth, and Latin America clocked in at 6.1%.

Among individual countries, Turkiye saw the largest increase in subscription streams, up 17.8% YoY, followed by Croatia (up 16.1%) and Romania (up 15.7%).

“With the global music industry reaching nearly 5 trillion streams in 2024, engagement continues to grow on an international level,” said Rob Jonas, CEO of Luminate.

“The trends we lay out in this year’s analysis paint an even fuller picture of some areas for which we’ve led discussions over the past few years; from super fans and ex-US streaming activity, to genre shifts, the value of audience data for brands, and live event attendance, to name a few.

“For some others, like the impact of music documentaries, what their viewership means for catalog investments, and how to track publishing activity using enriched songwriter metadata, we are able to dive deeper thanks to expanded innovations and capabilities developed at Luminate over the past year.”

“With the global music industry reaching nearly 5 trillion streams in 2024, engagement continues to grow on an international level.”

Rob Jonas, Luminate

Total album consumption in the US grew by 5.6% YoY to 1.1 billion, Luminate reported.

The research firm’s “total album consumption” (TAC) metric combines all on-demand track streams, plus all track downloads and all physical and digital album sales. Luminate equates 1,250 paid subscription streams, or 3,750 ad-supported streams, to one album “sale.” Ten digital track purchases/downloads also count as an album sale equivalent.

Importantly, this year’s TAC metrics exclude indie store retail sales, which Luminate says is meant to “avoid a trend break” from a change in methodology the research firm implemented at the start of 2024.

Here are five key highlights from the latest Luminate report (which you can access through here):

1: Catalog consumption in the US outgrew current music (slightly)

Luminate defines “current” music consumption as that which was downloaded or streamed within 18 months of release, while anything older is classified as “catalog.” Music downloaded/streamed more than five years after release is considered “deep catalog.”

The report found that total album consumption of catalog music grew slightly in the share of overall music consumption, to 73.3% from 72.7% a year earlier.

Total album equivalent sales of catalog music rose 6.5% YoY to 788.9 million, while current album sales rose 3.2% YoY to 287.6 million.

However, when it comes to streams, rather than TAC, the numbers tell a somewhat different story.

Tracks released since 2020 accounted for nearly half (49.6%) of all streamed music, while music released since 2010 accounted for eight in 10 audio streams (79.5%).

Music from the 1960s (The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Diana Ross and the Supremes) accounted for just 0.7% of audio streams, while music from the 1970s (Pink Floyd, Elton John, Stevie Wonder) accounted for 1.8% of all streams.

2: Female artists led the way as pop outgrew Latin music in the US

Though catalog music saw its share grow, Luminate says it was actually new music that fueled the increase in US streaming volume in 2024.

This was driven by a “resurgent love for pop music,” led primarily by female artists, Luminate said.

By on-demand audio streaming volume in the US, Taylor Swift was 2024’s top artist, with 12.8 billion streams.

That was followed by Billie Eilish (4.46 billion streams), Sabrina Carpenter (3.71 billion), and Ariana Grande (3.12 billion).

In fact, of the top 10 artists in the US in 2024, seven were female, with the highest-ranking male (Benson Boone) landing in seventh place.

Yet it really was Taylor’s year. The superstar had (yet another) banner year in 2024, with the release of her latest album The Tortured Poets Department, and the conclusion of her The Eras tour, which wrapped up as the highest-grossing tour of all time, having generated more than USD $2 billion.

All of that added up to make Taylor Swift the most influential artist of 2024, Luminate said.

The research firm’s inaugural “Luminate Index,” launched this year to measure the relative influence of music artists worldwide, ranked Swift in first place, followed by Adele in second and Beyoncé in third.

This list, too, is dominated by women, with only two men making the top 10 – Elton John in fourth place, and Eminem in sixth.

The Luminate Index measures artists on five metrics: streaming, social media footprint, awareness, public perception, and fan engagement.

But Swift wasn’t just the top artist of 2024 – she was also the most streamed songwriter. Based on the number of songs that a songwriter had in the top 1,000 streamed tracks, Taylor Swift came out on top in 2024, with 30 tracks.

That was followed by Max Martin (Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time, Backstreet Boys’ I Want It That Way) ranked second, while The Weeknd came in third and Daniel Nigro (Olivia Rodrigo’s Driver’s License, Chappel Roan’s Good Luck, Babe!) ranked fourth.

Luminate’s rankings of the top songwriters is based on data from the first 45 weeks of 2024.

3: 20% of US music listeners are superfans

With superfans becoming an increasingly important part of the music industry’s monetization strategy, Luminate has focused on this market segment for the past several years.

In this year’s report, the market research firm estimated that 20% of US music listeners are superfans, up from 18% in 2023. Given that Luminate estimates 75% of the US population are music listeners, this implies that 15% of the general population are superfans.

Superfans are those who are willing to pay more for a better experience – be it higher quality sound, merchandise, exclusive access to artists and/or pre-release content, or physical music purchases. They are also among the likeliest to attend live music events, which “benefitt[ed] substantially” from superfans in 2024, Luminate said.

Luminate’s superfan numbers reveal exactly why the music industry has put so much effort into building new products and services for this segment.

Superfans spend on average $113 per month on live music events, 66% more than the average listener, Luminate said. They also spend, on average, 105% more on physical music purchases than listeners overall – $39 per month, compared to $19 for all fans.

Seventy-three percent of superfans buy artist physical merchandise, versus just 26% of music listeners overall.

(Speaking of physical sales, Luminate found more evidence that the relationship between artist and fan is becoming more direct, with direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales of physical albums accounting for 63% of first-week sales.)

Additionally, 90% of superfans engage with artists by attending a live show, compared to 59% of overall music listeners.

4: The number of songs uploaded to streaming platforms is… falling?

The music industry has seen its anxiety levels spike in recent years over the absolutely massive amount of new music being released every day.

Amid the proliferation of low-cost music distribution services and tech innovations that make it easier than ever to be a DIY artist, the supply of new music has soared, with Luminate estimating that 120,000 new tracks were being uploaded to streaming services every day in Q1 of 2023.

That has raised questions over how new professional artists can be discovered amid an influx of AI-generated music and low-quality tracks whose only purpose is to snag a chunk of streaming services’ royalty payouts.

However, in its latest year-end report, Luminate reported “just” 99,000 new tracks uploaded daily, as tracked by their International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) number. That’s down 4.4% from the 103,500 average recorded in 2023, Luminate said.

It may be digital service providers (DSPs)’s efforts to rein in the proliferation of fake artists and low-quality tracks on their platforms are beginning to pay off.

A year ago, Spotify demonetized tracks with fewer than 1,000 plays over 12 months, while Deezer has pioneered the implementation of an artist-centric model that rewards artists who have significant fan bases and are actively searched for. Additionally, Deezer said in 2024 that it had removed 26 million fake and low-quality tracks from its library.

Notably, Luminate says that 8.2% of the tracks uploaded in 2024 came from major distributors, while 91.8% came from indie distributors. This implies that some 8,100 songs are being uploaded daily by major music players – not an insignificant flood in and of itself.

5: Music from English-language countries continues to decline in market share

The rise of new genres such as afrobeats, K-pop, and Latin music, along with the glocalization trend that has made local-language music increasingly popular in many countries, has made the music industry more international and diverse.

But it has had one notable downside: The traditional English-speaking countries that have been the world’s top music exporters have seen their market share shrink in recent years. Luminate said the trend continued in 2024.

While the US, UK, and Canada remain the top three music exporters worldwide, respectively, their share of global premium (i.e. paid-for) music streams declined in 2024.

Combined, the three countries accounted for 56.22% of global premium streams, down from 57.52% in 2023.

On this metric, the largest riser was Mexico, whose share of global premium streams rose to 5.57%, from 4.69% a year earlier. In second place was Brazil (4.47% in 2024, compared to 4.14% a year earlier) and India (1.42% in 2024, versus 1.21% in 2023).Music Business Worldwide