Luminate’s Mid-Year Report Nominates Rock and Latin as Highest-Growth Genres

Research firm Luminate has released its 2025 mid-year report. Its data is derived from technology processing “over 30 trillion data points across more than 200 million recordings, spanning more than 60 markets and, in some cases, analyzing data that extends back beyond three decades.” Some of its key findings are:

Streaming trends:

• Global On-Demand Audio streams (excluding YouTube views and not-on-demand services like Pandora) reached 2.5 trillion, up 10.3% on the same period last year.

• The figure was dragged down slightly by the US figures, where streams were up just 4.6%, compared with 12.6% global growth.

• Overall, however, this points to a slowing in streaming, given that global streaming grew by 15% in 2024, and US streaming by 8%.

Purchasing trends:

• Total album sales, including physical and digital, were down 6% in the US on the same period last year, from 43.6 million to 41 million.

• Digital sales dropped 17.7%, from 8.3 million to 6.8 million.

• Physical (LP, CD, cassette) sales dropped 3.2%, from 35.3 million to 34.2 million.

Genre trends:

• R&B/hip-hop remains the top US On-Demand Streaming genre (171.1bn), followed by rock, pop and country.

• Rock is the highest growth genre, followed by Latin, country and Christian/Gospel.

Current vs Catalog:

• US On-Demand Audio streaming of Current music (defined as tracks that are 18 months old or newer) declined 3.3% in volume compared with the first half of 2024 (168.5bn v 174.3 bn).

• The R&B/hip-hop core genre declined the most in Current streaming volume at -9.2%.

• Across all genres, just under 50% of US On-Demand Audio streaming comes from deep catalog tracks, defined as older than 60 months.

Superfans:

• 18% of US music listeners are considered superfans, meaning they engage with artists and music in five or more ways (which could include going to shows, watching livestreams, buying physical product, posting about artists on socials, signing up for artist newsletters, subscribing to fan clubs and more).

Festival trends:

• Frustration over ticket price is the primary barrier to buying festival tickets in the US, UK, Italy, Germany and France.

• Concern over ticket prices in the US dipped slightly in Q1 2025.

• Compared with festival goers in the US, concern over ticket prices is declining at a steeper rate in Italy, Germany and France.

• More festival attendees in the UK are citing the cost of a ticket as a concern compared with 2023.

The impact of AI:

• One in three US listeners claimed they were “somewhat” or “very” comfortable with the use of generative AI to create song instrumentals. Younger listeners showed even higher comfort levels.

• 44% report being “somewhat” or “very” uncomfortable with generative AI creating new original songs performed by an AI voice, although listeners of genres such as EDM and K-pop are more open to the practice.