According to Luminate, in today’s age, it is now easier than ever to let the world hear your music. Digital streaming platforms are no longer an exclusivity to those signed by major record labels but a pathway for anyone who wants to share their pieces and has $10 in their pocket.
With that amount of availability and ease of use, it has welcomed an exponentially larger amount of artists over the last few years than we have ever seen before. According to a new report from Luminate, previously known as MRC Data and Nielsen Music,120,000 ISRCs (International Standard Recording Code), also known as music audio files, were added to music streaming services in the first quarter of 2023.
His statistic is a substantial increase from 2022, as the average of new audio ISRCs added per day was just 93.4 thousand. To put it into even more perspective, Luminate’s Q1 findings of 2023 (10.8 million so far) are nearly equal amount of all ISRCs created in 2018 (16.4 million). That’s a lot of new music. But that’s just the first quarter findings. Luminate also suggests that if the average number of tracks uploaded per day stays consistent, then we could potentially see 43 million new tracks posted to Spotify by the end of the year.
With these stats also comes a rise in consumption. Luminate also reports that on-demand audio streams around the world grew 23% year over year in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the first quarter of 2022. And U.S. on-demand audio streams alone were up 14.2% from Q1 of 2022 to Q1 of 2023. Luminate’s findings also note that the fastest-growing genres in the U.S. are Latin, Country and World Music.
Whether you believe that the growing number of posts to DSPs is helping or hurting the music industry, one thing you can’t deny is that it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.
