Global electronic music industry value reaches $12.9 billion, IMS Business Report 2025 finds

The IMS Business Report also looks at the live market, and notes that after a post-Covid boom for events in recent years, things have now stabilised at an unprecedented financial high-point. Revenue figures in the sector now double what they were pre-pandemic. However, the report is quick to note that this is largely due to higher ticket prices, rather than an increase in volume of sales. 

Most of the financial benefit in the live sector is being felt by large venues and major label artists undertaking huge tours with high-ticket prices. Meanwhile, smaller venues, events and festivals are facing a period of immense financial difficulty, with many spaces facing uncertain futures due to the cost-of-living crisis, which has not only increased the price of operations, but left consumers less willing and able to spend money on attending. 

Expanding on this, Mulligan said: “Live music revenues are far higher now than they were pre-pandemic. Part of that was all the pent up demand from people desperate to get out again and hear great music. But much of what drove the lower levels of growth in 2024 vs 2023 was higher ticket prices. The live business prides itself on having such a high level of demand for its product that it can continually raise prices. We are now approaching the point where that will go no further. Consumers only have so much disposable income and we are seeing the first signs that prices are getting too high. In Ibiza and in the top 100 global tours, the number of tickets sold was actually down slightly in 2024, though higher ticket prices ensured revenues were still up.”

The revenues of listening and live sectors are intrinsically connected. Mulligan points to a potential push and pull effect in action between the consumption of physical media such as vinyl and the attendance of live performances.  “Physical has become a merchandise format,” he told DJ Mag. “It is an expression of fandom, and with record labels chasing super fans in the face of slowing streaming revenue, vinyl has become big business. But vinyl super fans are also — most often — live superfans also. So everyone is competing for their spending and they only have so much to spend. So, with rising ticket prices, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that physical revenues felt the impact in 2024.”

Listenership for electronic music across key markets such as the UK and Germany was reportedly up by 15% in 2024, with Mexico’s listenership increasing by a whopping 60%. Regions like Brazil and India also saw a significant increase. There were a reported 566 million new electronic music fans added across Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook in 2024. TikTok posts featuring electronic music outgrew the views of those with indie music, increasing by 45% from the previous year to 13 billion. 

Genre-wise, the report outlines the continued rise in popularity of Afro-house, which has gone from being the 24th to the 4th most-searched style on Beatport over the past 12 months. Meanwhile, amapiano continued to rise in popularity alongside resurgent styles such as UK garage, jungle and drum & bass, all driven by a younger generation of artists who are bringing fresh energy to classic sounds.

While electronic music is noted in the report as having the highest or second highest follower count on Spotify in nine out of 13 of its top markets — next to rock, hip-hop and Latin music — the IMS Business Report notes that, as streaming becomes an increasingly global fixture, analysing “trends” on a purely international scale becomes an increasingly less clear, and altogether less practical, exercise. Understanding trends with regard to the specific region they exist in, and observing how those trends move or don’t move into other markets, looks set to become a more useful tool. 

“We are entering an entirely new era for the global music business, in which ‘global’ will be less and less relevant as every year passes,” said Mulligan. “We will have two opposing forces, where more music from previously less-heard parts of the world will find global audiences, but music will regionalise much more. Hits will travel further from wherever they are from, but people in non-Western markets will increasingly prioritise music from their own parts of the world over Western hits.”