The fruits of\u00a0megastardom\u00a0<\/strong>are everywhere.<\/p>\n BTS\u00a0<\/strong>are back with a new album, Netflix-streamed concert<\/a>, and huge 82-date world tour.\u00a0Harry Styles<\/strong>\u00a0is ripping up the record books, with\u00a030 (!)<\/a>\u00a0dates booked for Madison Square Garden, plus 12 at Wembley Stadium. And, of course,\u00a0the Grammys<\/strong>\u00a0just rolled into L.A. \u2013 celebrating global hitmakers like\u00a0Bad Bunny<\/strong>,\u00a0Billie Eilish<\/strong>,\u00a0Olivia Dean<\/strong>, and\u00a0Kendrick Lamar<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Yet bubbling under the\u00a01%\u00a0<\/strong>of the industry, a separate narrative is getting louder.<\/p>\n According to my analysis of\u00a0Luminate<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0<\/strong>recently-issued\u00a0annual report<\/a>, 2025 brought an important milestone to the US industry: For the first time, over\u00a075%<\/strong>\u00a0of all annual audio streams in the States were of \u2018catalog\u2019 rather than \u2018current\u2019 music. (Whereby \u2018current\u2019 music is 18 months old or younger.)<\/p>\n Total streams of\u00a0\u2018current\u2019\u00a0<\/strong>music actually\u00a0fell in real terms\u00a0<\/em>year-on-year, said Luminate, down by over\u00a05B\u00a0<\/strong>plays from\u00a0339.3B\u00a0<\/strong>in 2024 to\u00a0334.0B\u00a0<\/strong>in 2025.<\/p>\n New music is not only getting less popular as a percentage of the market.\u00a0It\u2019s getting less popular full stop.<\/strong><\/p>\n This shouldn\u2019t be misinterpreted as a sign that the\u00a0average US consumer<\/strong>\u00a0is suddenly filling their playlists with\u00a0The Rolling Stones<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Muddy Waters<\/strong>.<\/p>\n After all,\u00a0Luminate\u2019s<\/strong>\u00a0data shows that\u00a0nearly half\u00a0<\/strong>of all audio streams played last year were of music released since 2020.<\/p>\n This continued dominance of\u00a0recent-ish tracks<\/strong>\u00a0fuels the frontline record label mantra:\u00a0\u201cYou can\u2019t have timeless catalog records tomorrow\u2026 without investing in new music today.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Even so, digging deeper into\u00a0Luminate\u2019s data<\/strong>\u00a0reveals substantial changes to US listenership in 2025 \u2013 changes that will surely influence record company strategy in the years ahead.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the biggest of all:<\/p>\n In 2024, music released in the\u00a0previous five years<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 i.e. 2020-2024 \u2013 claimed a\u00a049.6%<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0market share of all on-demand US audio streams.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n In 2025, music released in the\u00a0previous five years\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 i.e. 2021-2025 \u2013 claimed a\u00a043%<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>market share of all on-demand US audio streams.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n That\u2019s a YoY drop of nearly\u00a0seven hundred basis points<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>in this category\u2026 in the space of 12 months.<\/p>\n Considering the total number of audio streams in the US last year was\u00a01.4 trillion<\/strong>, we\u2019re talking about a potential swing of\u00a0nearly 100 billion annual plays\u00a0<\/strong>away from music released in the past five years, towards older releases.<\/p>\n So if \u2018new\u2019 and \u2018new-ish\u2019 music lost market share last year, which\u00a0catalog vintages<\/strong>\u00a0gained?<\/p>\n Hits from the\u00a01980s\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a01990s<\/strong>\u00a0had a banner 12 months. Records from these two decades jointly claimed a\u00a09.7%<\/strong><\/span> market share <\/span>in 2025 \u2013 a significant jump from 6.9% <\/strong><\/span>in 2024.<\/p>\n Music released from\u00a02000-2009\u00a0<\/strong>also saw a slight boost in market share, up to\u00a011.1%<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0from\u00a010.4%<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0a year earlier.<\/p>\n No wonder, then, that so much buzz around potential 2026 big-money catalog deals is swirling around staples of the \u201880s and \u201890s:\u00a0Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Oasis\u00a0<\/strong>etc.<\/p>\n Interestingly, music from the 1970s and earlier fared\u00a0less\u00a0<\/em>well last year, down from a\u00a03.2%<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>market share in 2024 to\u00a02.7%<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>in 2025, according to my read of Luminate\u2019s reports.<\/p>\n Cue industry hand-wringing over\u00a0\u2018decay curves\u2019\u00a0<\/strong>and such like.<\/p>\n The shorthand version: culturally speaking, as the years tick by and the generations cycle, when do\u00a0The Beatles\u00a0<\/strong>become\u00a0Elvis<\/strong>, as\u00a0Elvis<\/strong>\u00a0becomes\u00a0Glenn Miller<\/strong>?<\/p>\n To reiterate: the US frontline \u2018hits\u2019 business is not in turmoil. Remember: releases from the 2020s still make up\u00a0around half\u00a0<\/strong>of all Stateside streams.<\/p>\n Harry Styles<\/strong>\u00a0is doing just fine.\u00a0Olivia Dean<\/strong>\u00a0is well on her way to venues and chart positions of which she could once have only dreamed.<\/p>\n Yet it\u2019s hard to deny that something significant shifted in 2025.<\/p>\n Those of a\u00a0hits-focused persuasion<\/strong>\u00a0may point to the lack of mega-smashes in the marketplace last year as a contributing factor, and it\u2019s a fair argument.<\/p>\n The biggest streaming hit in the United States last year was\u00a0Alex Warren\u2019s<\/strong>\u00a0Ordinary<\/em>, with\u00a0746.2M<\/strong>\u00a0on-demand audio plays, per\u00a0Luminate<\/a>.<\/p>\n That figure pales in comparison to annual hauls of the No.1 US streaming records in 2024 (Shaboozey\u2019s\u00a0Tipsy<\/em>, with\u00a0913M<\/strong>) and 2023 (Morgan Wallen\u2019s\u00a0Last Night<\/em>, with\u00a01.01B<\/strong>).<\/p>\n Through a wider lens, this pattern is equally apparent.<\/p>\n The Top 10 streaming hits of 2025 in the United States jointly attracted\u00a05.945 billion<\/strong>\u00a0annual on-demand audio plays, per Luminate.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the\u00a0lowest figure seen since 2022<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 despite the overall volume of streaming listeners, and\u00a0listening<\/em>, growing significantly in the interim.<\/p>\n As a result, the combined US market share of those Top 10 hits in 2025 was\u00a00.42%<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0\u2013 around half the share the equivalent Top 10 commanded as recently as 2019.<\/p>\n Catalog\u2019s\u00a0<\/strong>erosion of new music\u2019s\u00a0market share<\/strong> isn\u2019t only\u00a0<\/strong>a US phenomenon, of course.<\/p>\n Just look at the Top 20 of the\u00a0UK\u2019s<\/strong>\u00a0weekly albums chart right now:\u00a0nearly half of it<\/a>\u00a0is made up of catalog hits packages, including\u00a0Fleetwood Mac<\/strong>\u00a0(5),\u00a0The Weeknd\u00a0<\/strong>(6),\u00a0Ed Sheeran<\/strong>\u00a0(7),\u00a0Michael Jackson<\/strong>\u00a0(10),\u00a0Linkin Park<\/strong>\u00a0(12),\u00a0Oasis\u00a0<\/strong>(15), and\u00a0ABBA<\/strong>\u00a0(20).<\/p>\n None of this means the\u00a0modern hits business<\/strong>\u00a0is broken. But it\u2019s becoming a smaller engine within a larger machine.<\/p>\n For decades, the record industry\u2019s economic model has been built on a simple bet: invest heavily in\u00a0new music<\/strong>, and the winners will pay for the losers.<\/p>\n That bet can still pay off, but the returns are diluted.<\/p>\n The long tail of\u00a0catalog<\/strong>\u00a0is getting fatter \u2013 and listeners are increasingly happy to stroke it.<\/p>\n Data Sources: (i) Luminate 2025 Year End Report;<\/a> (ii) Luminate 2024 Year-End Report<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Music Business Worldwide<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.musicbusinessworldwide.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MBW Reacts is a series of analytical commentaries from Music Business Worldwide written in response to major recent entertainment events or news stories. Only MBW+ subscribers have unlimited access to these articles. The below article originally appeared in Tim Ingham\u2019s latest\u00a0\u2018Tim\u2019s Take\u2019 email,\u00a0issued exclusively to MBW+ subscribers. The fruits of\u00a0megastardom\u00a0are everywhere. BTS\u00a0are back with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2275064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2275063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Scared-Hitless-Music-Business-Worldwide.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2275063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2275065,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275063\/revisions\/2275065"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2275064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2275063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2275063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2275063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/files\/2026\/02\/luminate-catalog-vs-current-streams-2024-vs-2025-2-80x44.png)
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