Midia Research has published its latest recorded-music market estimates, covering the first half of 2025. The company claims that global revenues grew by 5.9% to $18.3bn, although that growth is less than in the two previous years. “Significantly, growth not only slowed in percentage terms, the absolute amount of revenue added was also smaller,” wrote MD Mark Mulligan in a blog post.
While these figures cover recorded music, Midia also offered some insight into its estimates for different companies across the ecosystem. “Some areas of the music business are enjoying significantly stronger growth than others, namely music publishers and DSPs,” explained Mulligan. “The DSPs were the fastest-growing part of the music industry in H1 2025 and perhaps most significantly, they added more than twice the revenue added by the rights companies… A major swing since the first half of 2022 when DSPs added only a third as much as the rightsholders did.”
Midia thinks this points to “a value shift across the streaming value chain towards DSPs”. A sentence that may end up pinned on the metaphorical dressing-room walls of the major labels before their next set of licensing renewals with those DSPs…
