The size of the market you are competing in
Global revenue, and the two Luminate figures that explain why promotion costs what it does.
$31.7 billion. Global recorded music revenue in 2025, up 6.4% and the eleventh consecutive year of growth, per the IFPI Global Music Report published 18 March 2026. Streaming accounted for more than $22 billion, or 69.6% of the total, across 837 million paid subscription accounts.
Now the two numbers that matter more to a working freelancer, from Luminate's 2025 year-end report as detailed by Music Ally in January 2026:
106,000 new recordings were delivered to streaming services every day in 2025, up from 99,000 a day in 2024.
88% of the 253 million tracks available took fewer than 1,000 streams across the entire year. 120.5 million took ten or fewer.
A growing market and a collapsing chance of being heard in it are not a contradiction. They are the same fact seen from two ends, and they are why the promotion and submission costs elsewhere on this site exist at all.
The Luminate report is gated behind a form; those figures are as detailed by Music Ally rather than read from the primary document.
A figure here out of date? Send us the current source and we will update the page and date the change.
