Half of all paid music streams globally still take place in just 4 countries (and other highlights from Luminate’s latest report).

The total number of audio streams worldwide reached yet another record high in 2025, according to data from market research firm Luminate.

But new figures from the company reveal extreme concentration in the geographical source of those streams on a paid subscription basis.

Just four countries – the United States, Mexico, Brazil and Germany – accounted for 48.9% of premium streams globally in 2025, says Luminate’s data.

The US, the world’s largest recorded music market, represented 31% of paid streams worldwide.

The data suggests substantial room for growth in paid subscriptions globally, particularly in markets where ad-supported listening currently dominates.

In its year-end report for 2025, Luminate – the company whose data powers the Billboard charts – said that global on-demand audio song streams topped 5.1 trillion in 2025, up 9.6% YoY from the year before. (see below)

On-demand audio song streams in global markets excluding the US, meanwhile, reached 3.7 trillion, up 11.6% YoY (see below).

Meanwhile, in the world’s largest recorded music market, the United States, total on-demand audio song streams reached 1.4 trillion, up 4.6% YoY.

Total album consumption (TAC) in the US grew by 4.8% YoY to 1.138 billion, Luminate reported.

The research firm’s “total album consumption” (TAC) metric combines all on-demand track streams, plus all track downloads and all physical and digital album sales. Luminate equates 1,250 paid subscription streams, or 3,750 ad-supported streams, to one album “sale.” Ten digital track purchases/downloads also count as an album sale equivalent.

Broken down by genre, R&B/Hip-Hop remained the most popular genre among US listeners, with 349.9 billion streams, followed by Rock (260.5 billion streams) and Pop (167.2 billion).

The fastest-growing genre in the US was Rock, which Luminate said improved its market share by 0.3 percentage points.

The second-fastest was Christian/Gospel, which increased market share by 0.25 percentage points and garnered 30.0 billion streams, followed by Latin music, up 0.04 percentage points with 120.9 billion streams.

Luminate also revealed the expanding volume of tracks uploaded to music streaming services, reporting that over a quarter of a billion (253 million) music tracks were sitting on audio streaming services at the close of 2025.

That was up by 37.9 million tracks YoY – an average of 106,000 uploads per day. As reported by MBW on Wednesday, most of this music was far from popular, with almost half of the 253 million files (120.5 million) hosted by audio platforms receiving fewer than ten streams last year.

Here are five other highlights from Luminate’s 2025 Year-End Music Report, which you can access through here.

1. India is CATCHING UP QUICKLY ON PAID STREAMING volume

While India is primarily an ad-supported market (84% of streams), its premium streams grew by 42% YoY, adding 23.3 billion new premium streams in 2025.

Japan was another notable standout, with premium streams rising by 10.3% YoY, adding 14.2 billion new premium streams.

By volume rather than percentage, the largest increases in premium streaming were seen in the US (up by 65.5 billion), Mexico (up 50.9 billion) and Brazil (up 38.6 billion).

(It’s worth noting that streaming services charge very different prices in low-income versus high-income countries, so the increase in streams in countries like Brazil and Mexico yields less in additional royalty revenue than the same increase would in a market like the US or Japan.)

Luminate found that, among US listeners, fans of R&B/Hip-Hop, Latin and Electronic Dance Music (EDM) had the highest likelihood of signing up for a paid streaming subscription in the next six months.

“Paid US music streamers make up 42% of the US general population yet they account for 76% of all US music spend (including physical music, live events, and artist merch),” the report noted.

Elsewhere in the report, Luminate noted that the “most local” market was India, where 79.2% of total on-demand streams (audio and video) were from local Indian artists.

The most local market in Europe was Turkey (69.9%), while the most local market in Latin America was Brazil (75.2%) and in the Middle East and Africa, Nigeria was the most local (62.2%).

2. the ‘Fundamental shift’ in music industry

One major trend Luminate flagged is what it calls “transmedia integration” – the increasing monetization of music across other entertainment media.

“Over the past 12 months, we watched our industry undergo a fundamental shift as we moved away from the decade-long ‘growth at all costs’ mentality that marked the early streaming era,” Luminate CEO Rob Jonas wrote in the preamble to the year-end report.

“In its place, we witnessed the rise of a more sophisticated, intentional and data-driven era in which music is defined not just by a stream but by its deep integration into the total global entertainment experience.”

“We witnessed the rise of a more sophisticated, intentional and data-driven era in which music is defined not just by a stream but by its deep integration into the total global entertainment experience.”

Rob Jonas, Luminate

Indeed, 2025 was a year in which the integration of music into the broader entertainment ecosystem may have been more obvious than ever – as evidenced by the success of numerous tracks from the soundtrack to Netflix’s Kpop Demon Hunters on the streaming services.

But while Demon Hunters may have stolen the spotlight this year, many other integrations paid off. Luminate noted that the Netflix documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin led a “sustained” 16% increase in global on-demand streams of Led Zeppelin’s music.

“Gaming platforms are now critical to artist marketing strategies,” Luminate said, reporting a 47.9% jump in Daft Punk streams in the first week after The Daft Punk Experience debuted on Fortnite.

This “cross-platform surge” is now “the new standard for success,” the report stated.

“As we look to the year ahead, the path to success is no longer about wide, shallow reach. It requires a deep understanding of how music interacts with film, gaming, regional cultures and the evolving habits of a modern audience,” Jonas added.

Luminate says its year-end report is built from 30 trillion data points, including data from CONNECT, the company’s subscription-only database and analytics platform, its Artist & Genre Tracker, and film and TV metadata, among other sources.

3. US Vinyl sales saw 19th straight year of growth

Vinyl sales in the world’s largest recorded music market grew 8.6% YoY to 47.9 million. According to Luminate, more than 4 in 10 vinyl records were sold at indie record stores. Meanwhile, 1 in 3 CDs were purchased through e-commerce sites.

Luminate reports that Direct-to-Consumer sales now make up 13.6% of all physical albums sold. Broken down by format, the report reveals that 14% of vinyl sales took place via Direct to Consumer channels in FY 2025.

Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl was the biggest-selling vinyl release in the US last year, with 1.601 million units sold.

Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend was the second-biggest-selling vinyl release in the US last year, followed by Kendrick Lamar’s GNX, with 292,000 and 279,000 sales, respectively.

4. K-pop listeners are the biggest superfans in the US

Luminate also analyzed the state of the superfan market, that sought-after contingent of music listeners who are highly engaged and are among the biggest spenders on music experiences.

Luminate estimates that 20% of US music listeners can be categorized as superfans, with K-pop enthusiasts being the most likely (one in three) to be superfans.

US superfans are a third more likely to listen to music from outside the US than overall music listeners.

Luminate defines a ‘superfan’ as a music consumer who engages in at least five different ways with artists and their music, including attending live shows, talking about an artist with friends or family, purchasing physical copies of music, purchasing merchandise, posting about an artist on social media, and others.

5. AI music racks up hundreds of millions of streams

Luminate broke out total streams for certain AI artists, finding that Xania Monet was the most-streamed AI “artist” of 2025, with around 125 million streams globally and around 70 million in the US.

Xania Monet is an AI-generated avatar created by Telisha “Nikki” Jones, and it was reported last autumn that Jones had landed a multi-million-dollar record deal with Hallwood Media, a music company founded by ex-Geffen Records President Neil Jacobson. The company is a major investor in AI music platform Suno.

(Notably, Monet’s popularity appears to be fading at the moment. The AI act has 1.2 million monthly listeners on Spotify, down from 1.4 million in November).

Luminate’s research found a music audience that is somewhat more tilted against AI in music than for it. Listeners were most uncomfortable with the idea of “a new original song performed by an AI voice,” with 46% of respondents in the US saying they are very or somewhat uncomfortable with it, while 25% said they were very or somewhat comfortable with it. Fully 29% said they were indifferent.

The idea of AI song instrumentals faces the least resistance, with 38% saying they are very or somewhat uncomfortable with it, while 31% say they are very or somewhat comfortable with it.

Millennials and 13-17-year-olds are the most comfortable with generative AI in music, with 36% of millennials and 37% of teens saying they don’t have a problem with AI-generated lyrics.

And perhaps the key data point here: Around 44% of respondents in the US said they would be less interested in listening to music if they knew it was produced using generative AI, Luminate’s research found.