Growth did not just continue. It sped up.
A year ago, IFPI’s Global Music Report 2025 presented a recorded music business that was still expanding, but doing so at a measured pace. Global revenues reached US$29.6 billion in 2024, up 4.8% year on year. Then came the Global Music Report 2026, which pushed that picture forward: recorded music revenues climbed to US$31.7 billion in 2025, up 6.4%.
That shift matters because it changes the tone of the story. The global market is not simply holding its ground. It is still finding room to grow, and at a faster rate than the previous cycle suggested. Paid streaming remains the centre of that expansion, even if the details are becoming more nuanced. Subscription streaming revenue grew 9.5% in 2024, then 8.8% in 2025, while global paid subscription accounts reached 837 million in 2025. The model is still deepening, even if subscription revenue growth has cooled slightly year on year.
That is an important distinction. The streaming model is no longer new enough to rely on novelty, yet it is still pulling more people into the paid ecosystem. The bigger shift is not disruption in the format mix, but deeper entrenchment. The growth story is becoming less about one dramatic leap and more about scale, retention, and how efficiently value is captured.
The map of momentum shifted
The more revealing change between the two reports is not the headline total. It is where momentum now sits.
In IFPI’s 2025 report, MENA led regional growth at 22.8%, with Sub-Saharan Africa close behind at 22.6% and Latin America at 22.5%. By the time the 2026 report arrived, the order had changed. Latin America moved into first place at 17.1%, while MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa were tied at 15.2%.
That reshuffle says something bigger about the current moment. Growth is no longer coming from a single predictable cluster of markets. Different regions are moving at different speeds, and the balance can change quickly.
Some of the largest markets also regained their footing. Asia, which had posted only 1.3% growth in 2024, jumped to 10.9% in 2025. China overtook Germany to become the world’s fourth-largest recorded music market, while Japan returned to growth at 8.9%. That is not just a regional footnote. It shows that the centre of gravity in recorded music keeps shifting, and that scale markets can reassert themselves fast.
Even the format mix became less straightforward. Physical revenues, down 3.1% in 2024, returned to growth in 2025 with an 8.0% increase, while vinyl logged its nineteenth consecutive year of growth. At the same time, performance rights growth slowed sharply, falling from 5.9% to just 0.3%, even as total revenues held at US$2.9 billion. The market is still growing, but not every part of it is moving in the same rhythm.
Africa slowed on paper, but not in substance
For Sub-Saharan Africa, the temptation is to focus on the comedown: 22.6% growth in 2024, then 15.2% in 2025. But that framing misses the more useful point.
Africa remained one of the fastest-growing recorded music regions in the world in both reports. In 2024, regional revenues reached US$110 million, crossing the US$100 million mark for the first time. In 2025, that total rose again to US$120 million. The percentage eased, but the market itself kept moving forward.
That is what normalisation looks like. Breakout phases are rarely permanent. A region can slow from exceptional growth rates and still be one of the strongest stories in the business. In Africa’s case, the numbers suggest not a retreat but a market beginning to grow on a slightly larger base, with the early surge giving way to more sustained expansion.
There is, however, another layer to the story. South Africa remained the commercial anchor of the region, accounting for 75% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s revenues in 2024 and 78.1% in 2025. It was also the region’s largest market in both years, growing 14.4% and then 12.9%.
That concentration cuts two ways. On one hand, it underlines South Africa’s continued importance to the region’s recorded music economy. On the other, it points to the next challenge: whether more markets across Sub-Saharan Africa can scale meaningfully enough to broaden the region’s revenue base. Africa’s growth story is already real. Its next phase may depend less on headline percentages alone and more on how much deeper that growth can spread, how much infrastructure improves, and how well markets beyond South Africa convert momentum into durable catalogue value.
The global race is getting sharper
What changed between the two reports is not Africa’s relevance. It is the competitive context around it.
In 2024, Africa’s pace put it virtually at the top of the global growth table. In 2025, Latin America edged ahead, Asia rebounded hard, and MENA kept step with Sub-Saharan Africa. That means “Africa is growing fast” remains true, but it is no longer the whole argument.
The stronger case now is about what sits underneath the growth: infrastructure, rights readiness, clean ownership data, and the ability to convert market expansion into lasting value for creators and rights holders. A fast-growing market is important. A market that can identify, register, track, and monetise rights efficiently is far more durable.
That matters even more as the wider global market gets more complex. Paid streaming is still expanding, physical has found new energy, and the 2026 report gives more explicit weight to AI licensing and streaming fraud as market-shaping issues than the 2025 edition did. In that environment, growth alone is not enough. The systems around the music matter more.
Growth is good. Capture is better.
For African creators, rights holders, and catalogue owners, the most practical lesson from the two IFPI reports is not simply that the market is growing. It is that a growing market does not automatically produce better outcomes for the people making the work.
The money follows the rights, and the rights follow the data.
That puts pressure on the less glamorous side of the business: accurate metadata, clean splits, proper registration, and disciplined catalogue management. As competition intensifies and regional rankings tighten, the difference between value created and value captured becomes more important.
That is also where publishing administration and rights stewardship become more than back-office functions. They are part of the infrastructure that lets growth land properly. When a region is still expanding but the race is getting tighter, clean data and organised rights are not extras. They are how creators stay visible inside a more crowded market.
Africa is still one of the stories to watch
Taken together, IFPI’s 2025 and 2026 reports tell a clear story. The global recorded music business is still growing, and the latest cycle suggests it has picked up speed. The regional leaderboard has shifted. Large markets have regained momentum. Formats are moving in less predictable ways.
And Africa, even with slower percentage growth, remains one of the most significant growth regions in the business.
That is the real takeaway. Not that the region has cooled, but that it is beginning to move from breakout attention to a more sustained, more demanding phase of growth. The opportunity is still there. The question now is how much of that opportunity can be held, administered, and built on.
For creators, that means the work does not end when the song is finished. In a market that keeps expanding but keeps getting more competitive, the business around the song has to be as ready as the song itself.
For rights holders looking to tighten the business around their songs, the practical next step is simple: audit the catalogue, clean the data, and make sure the rights are ready to travel as far as the music can.
