5.1 Trillion Audio Streams in 2025, But Most Music is Invisible, Report Finds

The global music industry reached a historic milestone in 2025, surpassing 5.1 trillion on-demand audio streams, according to the Luminate 2025 Year-End Music Report released on January 14, 2026. While this 9.6% year-over-year increase signals a thriving digital economy, the underlying data reveals a harsh reality for the independent artist: the vast majority of music is essentially "invisible". Of the 253 million tracks currently hosted on digital service providers (DSPs), a staggering 88% received fewer than 1,000 annual streams. Even more sobering is the "bottom tier" of the market, where nearly half of all available songs—roughly 120.5 million tracks—registered between zero and ten plays for the entire year.

This data arrives as the industry's "artist-centric" payout models undergo their most significant stress test. Under these policies, tracks must hit a minimum threshold of 1,000 streams within a 12-month period to qualify for any royalty payments. Luminate’s findings confirm that nearly 9 out of 10 songs currently fail to meet this basic financial benchmark. This has created a "barbell" economy where around 541,000 tracks that make up the consumption "backbone" account for 49.4% of all global streaming volume. Meanwhile, the daily deluge of new music continues unabated, with an average of 106,000 new tracks uploaded every single day in 2025, a 7% increase from the previous year.

The Rise of "AI Noise" and the Independent Struggle

The widening gap between the "invisible" majority and the "backbone" tracks is increasingly attributed to the explosion of AI-generated content and DIY distribution. According to Luminate, 96.2% of all new daily uploads in 2025 came from independent or DIY sectors, while major labels (UMG, Sony, Warner) accounted for just 3.8% of the new supply. This oversaturation has forced DSPs to implement stricter "quality control" measures, such as the 1,000-stream rule, to prevent a "payout dilution" where millions of micro-payments for low-engagement tracks drain the royalty pool from professional artists.