Luminate has released its 2023 Year-End Music Report looking at global consumption and trends in music in the past year.
Global music streaming volumes reached new records in 2023.
The global total of on-demand song streams (audio and video) was 7.1 trillion (up 33.7% year on year), while global on-demand audio song streams broke the four trillion mark for the first time in 2023, totalling 4.1 trillion streams (up 22.3%).
Some 436,000 tracks were streamed one million or more times globally in 2023, up 16.7% on the prior year.
Taylor Swift dominated US consumption, making up 1.79% of the market and one in every 78 US audio streams.
In the US, on-demand audio streaming grew 12.7% to 1.2 trillion in 2023, accounting for approximately a quarter of all songs streamed globally. Consumption of catalogue music (defined as tracks older than 18 months) continued to grow in the territory, increasing by 0.4% to 72.6% compared to 27.4% of current music consumption.
You can read the BPI UK market figures for 2023 here.
In 2023, Luminate noted the increasing influence of film, TV and on-demand platforms like Netflix in boosting music discovery and streaming metrics for both current and heritage artists.
The release of the Wham! Netflix documentary in July had a positive impact on the music streaming metrics of both Wham! and George Michael. In the three weeks following the documentary's release, there was a 21.2% surge in combined global music streaming. Wham! secured their first Christmas No.1 with Last Christmas in the UK.
Taylor Swift, Talking Heads and Beyonce also enjoyed a significant boost in their on-demand global audio streaming performance in the three weeks after the release of their concert films in 2023: Taylor Swift with a 42.46% increase, Talking Heads with 14.10% and Beyonce with 24.57%.
The share of English language on-demand audio and video in the Top 10,000 Global Tracks has continued to decline since 2021 (down 11%), while Hindi-language content grew alongside India’s streaming market in the same period (up 4%).
The streaming share of English language audio and video remains the most popular globally at 54.9%, but that’s down from 67% in 2021. Spanish language music follows in second place at 10%, with Hindi at 7.8% (up from 3.8% in 2021), Korean at 2.4% and Japanese at 2.1% (up from 1.5% in 2021).
As well as the impact of concert films and audiovisual content on streaming figures, the report highlights further key trends in the consumption and creation of music, including virtual experiences for legacy artists.
The success of the ABBA Voyage virtual concert tour, which launched in May 2022 for a minimum two-year run, has opened up new revenue streams for other legacy acts, according to the report.
ABBA saw a global surge of on-demand audio streams right after the launch of its virtual concert. In 2023, audio streams of the band were 16.7% higher than in 2022.
Luminate’s data on the US revealed the influential role that superfans play in driving the surge in sales for CDs, vinyl records and music merchandise. US direct-to-consumer (D2C) market sales were up 38.6% in 2023 to 11.8m. Vinyl D2C sales were up 39.8% year-on-year and CDs up 12.9%. More than 60% of all US D2C sales were current titles.
According to the report, superfans spend 76% more on music per month than the average US music listener. They spend 126% more on artist merch than the average music listener.
Meanwhile, the average K-Pop fan is 50% more likely than other fans to purchase merch for a music event they did not attend.
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