Media Trends Executive

Media Trends

Axios Media Trends

While publishing, TV and film have struggled to financially weather the transition from analog to digital, global music industry revenues today are bigger than ever.

Why it matters: Strong copyright protections and collaboration between labels, artists and distributors have helped the music industry successfully pivot to a lucrative subscription model and rebuild in the digital era. 

State of play: Global recorded music revenues reached an all-time high of $31.7 billion in 2025, per the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the global trade group for the recorded music industry.

Today, the vast majority of that revenue (70%) comes from streaming, mostly in the form of subscriptions.

A stacked area chart showing annual global recorded music industry revenue between 1999 and 2025. Prior to the 2010s, physical media drove industry revenue. However, streaming has since risen sharply, from $1.3b in 2013 to $22b in 2025 and now accounts for the majority of revenue.

Global recorded music industry revenue

Data: IFPI; Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals

Catch up quick: Until the early 2000s, the recorded music business experienced decades of steady growth fueled largely by physical sales, such as vinyls and later 8-tracks, cassettes and CDs.  

The rise of peer-to-peer file-sharing services, such as Napster and LimeWire, in the early 2000s instantly challenged the industry's core business model by letting users download songs for free. 

Yes, but: Strong copyright protections helped the music industry save itself from an era of mass piracy through big lawsuits. (Napster was infamously sued out of business by major record labels.) 

In music, each track carries two copyrights, one for the composition and one for the recording. In film and TV, rights are usually bundled into a single piece of content. 

Between the lines: The music industry also strategically lobbied for reforms before streaming took off.

In 1995, the recording industry successfully pushed for the passage of the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act. It granted labels and artists a performance right for digital audio transmissions, turning streaming into something the industry could monetize.

"Fortunately, they had the foresight in the mid-90s to put that in place and I think that story is often lost in the retelling of the history of how this came to be such a robust market," said Larry Miller, NYU Steinhardt professor of music business.

In a rare show of unity, the entire industry — labels, publishers, songwriters and tech companies — came together in 2018 to shape the passage of the landmark Music Modernization Act, which established a blanket license for tech companies to stream songs. 

Reality check: The industry was positioned to power these types of reforms because of the early establishment of nonprofit licensing bodies that helped music rights scale across new venues, formats and technologies over decades. 

Founded in 1914 and 1939, respectively, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and Broadcast Music, Inc. collect and distribute performance royalties to songwriters and music publishers, ensuring every song played is monetized.

That structure helped pave the way in 2018 for the formation of a new royalties group, the Mechanical Licensing Collective, that paid songwriters and publishers royalties when music was streamed.

"It's really about licensing and the music industry is very lucky, because we have developed both free market and statutory licensing collectives," said Mitch Glazier, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America. 

Context: These types of consolidated third-party royalty bodies don't exist in the same way for news publishing, TV or film.

While Hollywood does rely on unions to collect residuals, those groups are much more fragmented. 

Zoom out: The digital era made it easier for users to discover and enjoy older hits, and for songwriters and publishers to monetize them.

Not only have catalogs helped create recurring revenue for older and retiring artists, they've also expanded the overall listenership, and therefore revenue, of the recorded music industry. 

Catalog music, or songs and albums released more than 18 months ago, made up more than 70% of total U.S. music consumption in 2023, per Luminate.  

In industries like news, there is not a large premium on dated material. As result, the discoverability of older content online isn't as valuable for publishers. 

The bottom line: The music industry's ability to pivot to streaming has benefited all players, in that higher engagement boosts everyone's bottom line. 

News publishers, which are generally more dependent on advertising, compete with Big Tech content distributors for ad revenue.

What to watch: The music industry's resilience will face a slew of new challenges as it fights to protect its IP in the AI era.

Currently, several landmark battles between record labels and AI companies are playing out in court.

Music publishers, record labels and artists are lobbying federal and state lawmakers on voice and likeness protections.

America's loudest export is cranking the volume

Music catalog sales surge as investors seek steady returns

Streaming payouts are still dominated by top artists

Superfan economy drives modern music careers

How the music industry survived the digital transition

Illustration of a woman singing with wavy lines and binary code coming out her mouth

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images

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While publishing, TV and film have struggled to <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="financially weather" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2026/03/31/video-market-stalls" data-vars-content-id="c3303327-d6c6-421f-b7a6-50ac96cb6138" data-vars-headline="How the music industry survived the digital transition" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2026/03/31/video-market-stalls" target="_self">financially weather</a> the transition from analog to digital, global music industry revenues today are bigger than ever.Why it matters: Strong copyright protections and collaboration between labels, artists and distributors have helped the music industry successfully pivot to a lucrative subscription model and rebuild in the digital era.

How the music industry survived the digital transition

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