The Steady Rise of (Paid) Music Streaming

Thanks to continuing growth in streaming subscriptions, global music industry revenues grew by 6.4 percent in 2025. According to the IFPI’s latest Global Music Report, 2025 marked the 11th consecutive year of growth for the music industry that had previously struggled with declining revenues for 15 years.

Streaming accounted for 70 percent of global recorded music revenues last year, as the number of users of paid streaming subscriptions offered by Spotify, Apple and other platforms continued to see double-digit growth. In 2025, paid streaming services gained 85 million new users, bringing the total number of users to 837 million 17 years after the European launch of Spotify rang in the the streaming era.

As the following chart shows, streaming subscriptions have grown relentlessly over the past decade. Starting out at 8 million in 2010, the number of users of paid music subscriptions passed 100 million in 2016, 250 million in 2018 and 500 million in 2021. At the current growth rate, it will likely take just two to three more years for music streaming services to reach one billion paid users, a milestone that seemed out of reach just a decade ago.

All statements in this article attributable to IFPI represent Statista’s interpretation of data, research opinion or viewpoints published as part of the IFPI Global Music Report in March 2026, and have not been reviewed by IFPI. Each IFPI publication speaks as of its original publication date (and not as of the date of this article’s publication).