Scared Hitless? – Music Business Worldwide

The fruits of megastardom are everywhere.

BTS are back with a new album, Netflix-streamed concert, and huge 82-date world tour. Harry Styles is ripping up the record books, with 30 (!) dates booked for Madison Square Garden, plus 12 at Wembley Stadium. And, of course, the Grammys just rolled into L.A. – celebrating global hitmakers like Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish, Olivia Dean, and Kendrick Lamar.

Yet bubbling under the 1% of the industry, a separate narrative is getting louder.

According to my analysis of Luminate’s recently-issued annual report, 2025 brought an important milestone to the US industry: For the first time, over 75% of all annual audio streams in the States were of ‘catalog’ rather than ‘current’ music. (Whereby ‘current’ music is 18 months old or younger.)

Total streams of ‘current’ music actually fell in real terms year-on-year, said Luminate, down by over 5B plays from 339.3B in 2024 to 334.0B in 2025.

New music is not only getting less popular as a percentage of the market. It’s getting less popular full stop.

This shouldn’t be misinterpreted as a sign that the average US consumer is suddenly filling their playlists with The Rolling Stones and Muddy Waters.

After all, Luminate’s data shows that nearly half of all audio streams played last year were of music released since 2020.

This continued dominance of recent-ish tracks fuels the frontline record label mantra: “You can’t have timeless catalog records tomorrow… without investing in new music today.”

Even so, digging deeper into Luminate’s data reveals substantial changes to US listenership in 2025 – changes that will surely influence record company strategy in the years ahead.

Here’s the biggest of all:

• In 2024, music released in the previous five years – i.e. 2020-2024 – claimed a 49.6% market share of all on-demand US audio streams.

• In 2025, music released in the previous five years – i.e. 2021-2025 – claimed a 43% market share of all on-demand US audio streams.

That’s a YoY drop of nearly seven hundred basis points in this category… in the space of 12 months.

Considering the total number of audio streams in the US last year was 1.4 trillion, we’re talking about a potential swing of nearly 100 billion annual plays away from music released in the past five years, towards older releases.

So if ‘new’ and ‘new-ish’ music lost market share last year, which catalog vintages gained?

Hits from the 1980s and 1990s had a banner 12 months. Records from these two decades jointly claimed a 9.7% market share in 2025 – a significant jump from 6.9% in 2024.

Music released from 2000-2009 also saw a slight boost in market share, up to 11.1% from 10.4% a year earlier.

No wonder, then, that so much buzz around potential 2026 big-money catalog deals is swirling around staples of the ‘80s and ‘90s: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Oasis etc.

Interestingly, music from the 1970s and earlier fared less well last year, down from a 3.2% market share in 2024 to 2.7% in 2025, according to my read of Luminate’s reports.

Cue industry hand-wringing over ‘decay curves’ and such like.

The shorthand version: culturally speaking, as the years tick by and the generations cycle, when do The Beatles become Elvis, as Elvis becomes Glenn Miller?

To reiterate: the US frontline ‘hits’ business is not in turmoil. Remember: releases from the 2020s still make up around half of all Stateside streams.

Harry Styles is doing just fine. Olivia Dean is well on her way to venues and chart positions of which she could once have only dreamed.

Yet it’s hard to deny that something significant shifted in 2025.

Those of a hits-focused persuasion may point to the lack of mega-smashes in the marketplace last year as a contributing factor, and it’s a fair argument.

The biggest streaming hit in the United States last year was Alex Warren’s Ordinary, with 746.2M on-demand audio plays, per Luminate.

That figure pales in comparison to annual hauls of the No.1 US streaming records in 2024 (Shaboozey’s Tipsy, with 913M) and 2023 (Morgan Wallen’s Last Night, with 1.01B).

Through a wider lens, this pattern is equally apparent.

The Top 10 streaming hits of 2025 in the United States jointly attracted 5.945 billion annual on-demand audio plays, per Luminate.

That’s the lowest figure seen since 2022 – despite the overall volume of streaming listeners, and listening, growing significantly in the interim.

As a result, the combined US market share of those Top 10 hits in 2025 was 0.42% – around half the share the equivalent Top 10 commanded as recently as 2019.

Catalog’s erosion of new music’s market share isn’t only a US phenomenon, of course.

Just look at the Top 20 of the UK’s weekly albums chart right now: nearly half of it is made up of catalog hits packages, including Fleetwood Mac (5), The Weeknd (6), Ed Sheeran (7), Michael Jackson (10), Linkin Park (12), Oasis (15), and ABBA (20).

None of this means the modern hits business is broken. But it’s becoming a smaller engine within a larger machine.

For decades, the record industry’s economic model has been built on a simple bet: invest heavily in new music, and the winners will pay for the losers.

That bet can still pay off, but the returns are diluted.

The long tail of catalog is getting fatter – and listeners are increasingly happy to stroke it.

Data Sources: (i) Luminate 2025 Year End Report; (ii) Luminate 2024 Year-End Report

Music Business Worldwide