The $31.7 Billion Music Industry Figure Is Not What Listeners Spent

by Amara Diallo · September 14, 2026

Culture & Entertainment Writer, The Globe Ledger

Every March a single number defines how the world talks about the music business for the following twelve months. This year it was US$31.7 billion — the global recorded music revenue figure published by IFPI, the trade body representing the recording industry, in its Global Music Report 2026 on 18 March 2026. The same release recorded growth of 6.4 per cent in 2025 and described it as the eleventh year of consecutive growth.

The figure is widely reported as the size of the music industry. It is not. It is a measure of one specific thing, defined in a methodology document IFPI publishes alongside the report, and the definition excludes a great deal that listeners would assume was included.

IFPI's own wording is the place to start. Trade value, the Global Music Report 2026 methodology states, is "record companies' revenue from the sale/licensing of recorded music products and content to DSPs, domestic retailers/intermediaries, net of discounts, returns, taxes and sales allowances."

Read closely, that sentence draws the boundary at the wholesale level. It measures what record companies received from digital service providers and retailers — not what subscribers paid those services, and not what a shopper handed over at a till. The gap between the two is the retailer's and the platform's share, and it never enters the headline.

The exclusions are itemised. IFPI's methodology removes "promotional goods, non-music/non-sound recording artist related income, deletions, cut-outs, distribution fees and income from legal settlements from anti-piracy cases" from the trade value line. Each of those is money that moves through the industry; none of it counts as revenue from selling or licensing recordings.

Just as important is what the figure does not attempt to cover at all. Trade value is a measure of record companies' recorded-music revenue. Songwriting and publishing royalties, live performance, merchandise and touring income are not record-company sales of recordings and are not inside the line — the methodology does not list them among its exclusions because they were never within its subject. A reader who treats US$31.7 billion as the total economic weight of music is combining a wholesale figure with an assumption about scope that the methodology does not support.

Within those limits, the composition of the 2025 figure is detailed. IFPI reported that total streaming revenues surpassed US$22 billion and accounted for 69.6 per cent of global recorded music income. Paid subscription streaming alone grew 8.8 per cent and made up 52.4 per cent of total revenues, drawn from what IFPI counted as 837 million users of paid streaming subscription accounts.

The categories themselves are defined rather than assumed. Digital revenues, per the methodology, cover subscription streaming, ad-supported audio streaming, ad-supported video streaming, social media and short-form video platforms, downloads, mobile personalisation and other digital revenues, while excluding minimum guarantees. Subscription streaming is defined more narrowly still: income from subscription services' premium tier, including fitness platforms, and from subscriptions bundled with other services.

Performance rights are counted separately and defined as income collected by recording industry music licensing companies from third parties for the use of sound recordings and music videos in broadcasting, in public performance venues such as nightclubs, bars, restaurants and hotels, and in certain internet uses, together with private copying levy income. IFPI reported that performance rights revenues reached US$2.9 billion in 2025 and grew by 0.3 per cent — close to flat in a year when the overall figure rose 6.4 per cent. Synchronisation revenues, defined in the methodology as flat fees or royalties from the use of sound recordings in television, films, games and adverts, form their own line.

Physical formats, long written off, grew 8.0 per cent in 2025 on IFPI's numbers, with vinyl up 13.7 per cent in what the trade body described as its nineteenth consecutive year of growth. Because trade value measures the wholesale transaction, a vinyl record contributes what the label received from the retailer or distributor, not the price on the sleeve.

How the data is assembled is the part most readers never see. IFPI states that all revenues are reported to it in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards, which are incorporated into the IFPI Global Market Reporting Standards 2026. Where labels and artists do not report, IFPI says it works with the local IFPI National Group and chart compilers in each market to apply a "coverage factor" to the figures to account for non-reporting independent labels and DIY artists, "therefore representing 100% of the market."

Those coverage factors are a modelled component inside a reported number. They are a reasonable response to a real problem — a growing share of releases never passes through a company that files returns to a trade body — but they mean the published total is a combination of collected data and estimation, and the balance between the two is not disclosed market by market.

Currency handling introduces a further layer. "Local currency values are stated at independently sourced 2025 average exchange rates," IFPI's methodology says, and it adds that "IFPI restates all historic local currency values on an annual basis. Market values can therefore vary retrospectively as a result of foreign currency movements." A national market can appear to grow or shrink between editions without a single additional stream being played.

That retrospective restatement is the reason year-on-year comparisons should be drawn from within a single edition rather than across editions. A figure for 2024 as printed in the 2026 report is not necessarily the figure for 2024 as printed a year earlier, and the difference need not reflect anything that happened in the music business.

The regional pattern in the 2026 report is where the wholesale lens matters most. IFPI recorded growth of 17.1 per cent in Latin America, 10.9 per cent in Asia, 5.6 per cent in Europe, 3.5 per cent in the United States and Canada and 1.5 per cent in Australasia. Because trade value follows what labels receive rather than what audiences pay, differences in subscription pricing, bundling and local licensing terms are folded into those rates.

None of this undermines the figure. IFPI is unusually transparent about its construction — the definitions quoted here are published, not inferred — and a consistently defined wholesale series is genuinely useful for tracking one industry over time. The error is in the retelling: a number describing what record companies booked from platforms and retailers, restated annually at average exchange rates and topped up with coverage estimates, is not a measure of what the world spent on music.