The 2026 Global Electronic Music Business Report: Industry Analysis

The IMS Electronic Music Business Report 2025/26 is out, written for the 4th year running by Mark Mulligan at MIDiA Research. It’s the 12th edition, and most of the lines are pointing up.

Dance music made 15.1 billion dollars in 2025, up 7% on the year before. Tech house is still on top. Afro house has arrived. The BPMs are climbing. And in 2 years, AI music tools went from a side conversation to a 333 million dollar industry with 63 million monthly users.

A 15.1 billion dollar industry, up 7%

The global electronic music business pulled in 15.1 billion dollars in 2025, against 14.2 billion in 2024. Growth was 7%, slightly above 2024’s 6%.

Almost every segment grew: labels, publishers, DSPs, merch, sponsorship, hardware. Live and creator tools were the only soft spots, dragged by venue closures and AI disruption respectively.

The wider recorded music industry grew 9% to 39 billion dollars, with streaming alone making up 24 billion of that. Expanded rights (labels running their own D2C, merch, and commerce) was the fastest-growing segment overall at 21%. Selling things directly to fans is now where the money is.

Tech house: 4 years at the top of Beatport

Tech house has held #1 on Beatport since 2022. House has held #2 just as long. The action this year was further down the chart.

The 2025 Beatport top 10:

1. Tech house
2. House
3. Melodic house and techno
4. Drum and bass
5. Techno (peak / driving)
6. Dance / Pop
7. Afro house
8. Deep house
9. Minimal / Deep tech
10. Progressive house

Melodic house and techno climbed to #3. Drum and bass dropped to #4. Afro house sits at #7 on Beatport, but as we’ll get to in a second, the picture on Splice is very different.

34% of Beatport sales now come from outside the top 10, up from 33% in 2024. The long tail keeps growing.

Afro house: from 10th to 2nd on Splice in 2 years

The Splice search data is where you can see the genre actually moving.

Afro house went from 10th place in 2023 to 2nd in 2025, with searches up 82% year on year.

Trap held #1 with 1.4 million searches. Reggaeton broke into the top 10 for the first time at #8. Drill fell out of the top 10 entirely.

If you produce, this is the chart that tells you what other producers are loading up. Afro house is the story of 2025 by that measure.

SoundCloud got harder and faster

The share of hardstyle, hardcore, and hardtekk tracks above 180 BPM has risen every year for 3 years. Schranz, the German hard techno style, is having a real moment: uploads grew 83% in 2025.

The fastest-growing electronic scenes on SoundCloud globally are mostly regional, mostly outside the West:

1. Indonesian breakbeat
2. Vinahouse
3. South Korean EDM
4. Colombian guaracha
5. Minimal / tech house

MIDiA’s read is that music tends to harden when global conditions feel unstable. Given where we are right now, expect 2026 to keep getting faster.

Germany still leads. Indonesia is the breakout.

Germany has the most Spotify monthly listeners for electronic music, with 604 million (those are cumulative listens, not unique people). The US is second. Australia, the UK, and the Netherlands all have monthly electronic listeners more than 5 times their total population, which makes them strongholds for the genre.

Indonesia had the biggest growth in 2025: electronic Spotify monthly listeners up 77%. Mexico went the other way, falling 34% and dropping from 5th to 12th. Spain grew 5% but slipped from 12th to 13th.

Across the top 13 markets, electronic music ranks 1st or 2nd by Spotify monthly listeners in 10 of them. Mexico is the only outlier, with Latin at #1 and electronic at #4. The Latin “global” trend is mostly a Spanish-speaking regional one. Three top markets account for 3.9 billion of its listeners.

AI music tools: 651% revenue growth in 2 years

Generative AI and stem separation tools grew revenue 651% from 2023 to 2025. The 2025 total is 333 million dollars, with 63 million monthly active users.

Traditional music software (excluding DAWs) declined over the same period.

The bigger story is on the consumer side. About half of all listeners now do some kind of music creation activity. The most common ones: singing (20%), playing an instrument (15%), watching how-to videos (12%), playing guitar (11%). 6% started learning an instrument in the past 12 months. 5% bought music-making software. 2% identify as DJs.

For a genre built by bedroom producers, the AI shift is going to land harder here than almost anywhere else.

Live: 30 billion dollars, double what it was in 2019

The leading live music companies brought in 30 billion dollars in 2025. Live grew 10% in 2025, up from 5% in 2024. Total live revenue is now more than double the 2019 pre-Covid figure.

US ticket sales fell in 2025. Average ticket prices rose. Live’s growth is being driven by ticket price, with volume going the other way. Anyone who’s looked at a festival ticket lately already knew that.

Ibiza club ticketing: 160 million euros

Ibiza club ticketing revenue hit 160 million euros in 2025, up 10 million from 2024. That’s ticketing only, so VIP and bottle spend isn’t included.

Average events per venue dropped from 153 in 2022 to 140 in 2025. Revenue per event has risen. Venues are doing fewer nights, with bigger production, at higher prices. The model has shifted, and the island’s economy is still climbing.

Catalogue deals: 18% were for electronic artists

18% of publicly announced music catalogue acquisitions in 2025 were for electronic artists. Q1 2026 already had 17 announced deals.

The average year of all acquired catalogues across the industry is 1990. For electronic catalogues specifically, it’s 2005. Newer catalogues have more streaming runway ahead of them, which is why the smart money is paying attention.

Recent electronic deals include Tiga, Mixmash Records, deadmau5, Mau5trap, Pack., !K7, Monstercat, MBMB Publishing, Cr2 Records, A-Trak, and Axtone Records. That’s a mix of household names and serious back catalogues.

Female DJs: 15% of registered AlphaTheta accounts

Female DJs were 15% of registered AlphaTheta accounts in 2025, up from 14% in 2024 and 13% in 2023.

Female headliner slots have grown faster than the underlying user base. The pace at the top is moving. The pace at the base is 1 percentage point a year. At that rate, real parity is decades away. The industry has more work to do.

UK charts: 10% share, but only 7 dance tracks in the top 100

Dance music’s share of the UK singles market held at 10% in 2025. The albums share held at 4%. Both have been steady for 3 years.

The number of dance tracks in the year-end UK top 100 fell from 12 to 7. Chrystal’s “The Days” was the top dance performer at #12.

Steady share with fewer top-100 hits says the audience hasn’t shrunk. It’s listening across more tracks instead of concentrating on a handful of crossover singles. The chart is becoming less of a useful read on what’s actually moving on the floor.

WEBKANDY is a leading Electronic Music growth agency that works with music industry clients. Past work includes Defected Records, Paharas Musica, Nervous Records, Onit Bookings DJ Agency, and TuneCutter. Get a free growth audit.

Source: IMS Electronic Music Business Report 2025/26 by Mark Mulligan / MIDiA Research. Full report at internationalmusicsummit.com.