Recently, Luminate, a music and entertainment data analytics company, released their 2024 Mid-Year Global Music Report, detailing key industry insights. From January to June this year, the global on-demand audio and music streaming volume was 2.29 trillion, an increase of 15.1% compared with the same period last year.
This year, United States on-demand audio streaming volume was 665.8 billion, up 8% from last year. However, with rapid growth in other markets, United States' share of global streaming is also declining, from 31% to 29%.
India's share of premium streaming is 9.7%, and according to Luminate's previous calculations, India's streaming traffic for the whole of 2023 is 1.04 trillion, second only to United States in traffic last year. It's also worth noting that smaller markets such as Chile (65.4%) have a large share of premium streaming, with Spotify's personal plan costing around $5 at current exchange rates. Globally, music traffic from Mexico, Brazil and France grew the fastest, while the United Kingdom, United States and Canada saw the fastest declines in audio streaming share.
Hip-Hop and R&B share remain the highestAccording to United States statistics, hip-hop and R&B have the highest share of total sales by format and genre at 24.6%, followed by rock, pop, country and Latin. Meanwhile, Latin music is the fastest-growing genre in the United States, followed by rock and pop. Overall, Latin grew 15.1% in on-demand audio streaming.
In terms of traffic, R&B and hip-hop accounted for the largest number of music streams (released in 18-60 months), accounting for 26.7%, while rock music accounted for the deepest library plays (released in more than 60 months), accounting for 70.5%.
The market share of independent issuances is still growing
In the first half of 2024, independent artists accounted for 62.1% of United States artists with on-demand audio streaming between 1 million and 10 million United States. In the first half of 2024, the percentage of independent artists who received more than 500 million on-demand audio streams increased by more than 2% compared to the second half of 2023, which is an impressive 2%.
In the first half of the year, tracks with 50 million to 100 million views increased by 1.8 percent, with a whopping 5,222 artists streaming between 10 million and 50 million views.
So, in the first half of 2024, how many artists will get between 1 million and 10 million views? The data shown in the report is 29,253 people, of which 62.1% are not major label behavior. This is great news for the huge and growing music creators who sit somewhere between obscurity and superstars.
So, do "middle-level" artists do better? Yes, they attract more attention. That being said, some news outlets covered the story and used the term "middle-class artist."
When discussing whether "middle-level" artists are doing better, we want to be clear about one key point. "Mid-level" artists are typically defined as groups of artists who fall somewhere between "niche and superstar" in terms of audience size and commercial success.
But in the literal sense, "middle class" is often associated with a specific economic status or income level, rather than directly referring to an artist's audience size or market position. Thus, referring to "middle-class" artists as "middle-class artists" may be somewhat misleading to the reader's misleading impression that the economic situation of these artists is generally at a middle-class level.
In reality, the financial situation of "mid-tier" artists can vary depending on a variety of factors, including but not limited to streaming revenue, downloads and merchandise sales, concert ticket sales, sync license fees, and more. The diversity and complexity of these sources of income makes it difficult to simply classify the economic situation of "middle-class" artists as middle class. Especially when the income needs to be shared by multiple collaborators, co-authors, etc., the actual income of each artist may be further reduced.
Obviously, "middle-class" artists do excel in audience size and commercial success, but their economic situation does not necessarily equate to that of the middle class. Therefore, when discussing this group, we should avoid confusion and should pay more attention to their actual performance in terms of artistic creation and business operations.
Regarding CD and vinyl sales, meanwhile, the report shows that physical sales in United States (cassettes, CDs and vinyl, among others) tracked by Luminate increased by 3.8% year-on-year to 24.7 million units in the first half of 2024. Of course, the results vary depending on the music genre, but the massive music engagement and the revenue of the entity is still driven by the purchase of CDs and vinyl.
In particular, paid subscription fans of K-Pop and Latin music are more inclined to buy products in physical format. Die-hard fans also love the various variants (CDs, vinyl, cassette, etc.), vinyl records in different colors, different album art options, bonus releases, etc.
Even with steady singles consumption, total album consumption in the United States, including corresponding items as well as tracks and streaming, increased 7.4% year-over-year to 527.3 million.