A Decade of Growth for Music Streaming

This article is published in collaboration with Statista

by Felix Richter

Thanks to continuing growth in streaming subscriptions, global music industry revenues grew by 7.4 percent in 2020. According to the IFPI’s latest Global Music Report, 2020 marked the sixth consecutive year of growth for the music industry that had previously struggled with declining revenues for 15 years.

Streaming accounted for more than 60 percent of global recorded music revenues last year, as the number of users of paid streaming subscriptions continued to soar. Last year alone, more than 100 million people jumped on the streaming bandwagon, bringing the total of global subscription users to 443 million by the end of 2020.

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 only to quadruple again over the next four years.

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