Luminate monitors all music consumption in Canada and the United States and has just released its year-end report for Canada after sorting through its 500 verified sources and analyzing over 20,000 billion (yes, billions) of points of interest. data.
On average, 99,000 new songs are downloaded every day on streaming music platforms (compared to an average of 103,500 in 2023), which represents around one million per month. The current universe of digital songs available (and all streamers share the same catalog) stands at 202 million, an increase of 18 million (around 10%) from last year. Of that number, only 8.2 percent came from major labels, meaning 92 percent came from independent musicians.
Think about that for a second. Over 200 million songs available for free to anyone with an Internet connection – or at least something close to it. In the past, in mega-disc stores, you were lucky to find 100,000 titles in stock. For anyone complaining that a streaming subscription costs too much and isn’t good value, shake your head.
As we dig deeper, however, we start to see some glaring problems. Nearly half of these 202 million songs (93.2 million) were listened to a maximum of 10 times. About 175.5 million (87 percent of the library’s total songs) have been played 1,000 times or fewer. It’s interesting because Spotifythe largest streamer, refuses to pay royalties for any song with fewer than a thousand streams. Granted, a thousand listens aren’t worth much – the global average suggests it would bring in $2.38 – but those crumbs add up when spread across 175.5 million. How much does Spotify save by ignoring artists at the bottom?
How many songs have been listened to? We don’t know, but credible estimates put the number at 50 million, or a quarter of the total. (For fun, log on to a site called Forget and you’ll get a stream of songs never heard by anyone.)
Another thing to consider: how many of those 202 million songs are AI creations? Spotify is currently under fire for offering “ghost artists” cheap music that crowds out real musicians. If you’ve ever used Spotify for relaxing background music, there’s a good chance you’ve unintentionally been exposed to this genre of music. How much does Spotify pay the people who create this material? It’s piecework. Someone is hired to create X songs in a certain style and receives compensation. After that, Spotify no longer pays anything for this ghost music, all in the name of saving money.
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Let’s get back to the numbers. In 2024, the streaming figures evolved like this:
- 100,000 to 1 million streams: 2.1 million songs
- one million to 10 million: 427,700
- 10 million to 100 million: 60,000
- 100 million to a billion: 4,800
- more than a billion: 33
Canadians streamed 145.1 billion songs in 2024, an increase of 9.5 percent from the previous year. We bought more vinylCDs and cassettes than in 2023 (4.8 percent more), but when combining physical and digital album sales, all were down about 1 percent, indicating that we don’t We don’t buy digital music, we just stream it. We’re also more interested in streaming catalog songs (i.e. tracks more than two years old) than anything current, with a ratio of 74 percent old to 26 percent. hundred news.
The report only broke down streaming viewing by genre for the United States, which I think is different from how we consume things in Canada. Nonetheless, here’s how listening by genre plays out in America:
- R&B/Hip-hop: 320 billion streams. However, the overall share of this type is down 2.3 points compared to 2023.
- Rock: 230 billion streams. Most of the listening was to “deep catalog” songs (i.e., more than five years old). Only about 12 percent of listening was to current rock songs.
- Pop: 175 billion streams.
- Latin: 110 billion streams.
- Dance/Electronic: 50 billion streams.
Pop had a big year in terms of growth, overtaking rock (No. 2) and Latin (No. 3), largely thanks to the success of Taylor Swift (12.8 billion streams alone), Billie Eilish and Sabrina Carpenter. No rock bands appear in the top 10 most popular streaming artists. The biggest rock bands were Noah Kahan, Hozier, Linkin Park, The Beatles and Fleetwood Mac.
When it came to listening to foreign music, Canadians turned first to the United States, followed by the United Kingdom and Australia. The US has been importing its music from Canada, Australia and New Zealand, a statistic that must worry music fans in the UK. As an aside, Canadian music was the third most popular import to Australia.
The world’s most prolific songwriters in 2024 were Taylor Swift (30 songs in the top 1,000 global streaming songs), Max Martin (22) and The Weeknd (18). Canada finished third, behind the United States and the United Kingdom, among the world’s best songwriters.
There’s been a lot of talk about serving superfans over the past 12 months. They are the most fanatical supporters of an artist. In 2024, the average superfan spent $113 per month on live music events, 66% more than a typical fan. They also spent $39 per month on physical purchases, compared to the average $19 for music fans.
Let’s finish with a few things.
- One percent of all CDs and one percent of all LPs are purchased at the sales table in a venue.
- 39 percent of all vinyl records are purchased from independent record stores.
- 29 percent of all physical sales are made through independent record stores.
- Hip-hop fans are most likely to purchase something through an artist’s online storefront.
- The best music documentary was The biggest pop nightthe history of recording We are the worldbroadcast on Netflix. People spent a total of 1.27 billion minutes watching this thing. Secondly, it was the I am: Celine Dion on Amazon with 507.1 million.
- Generation Z spent the most on festivals, while millennials spent the most on concerts.
- The most listened to songs in 2024 were Beautiful things by Benson Boone (2.577 billion), Espresso Sabrina Carpenter ($2.459 billion) and Billie Eilish Birds of a feather (2.301 billion).
- The top album in Canada in terms of combined sales and streams was Tay-Tay’s. The Department of Tortured Poets followed by Stick season by Noah Kahan and Morgan Wallen One thing at a time.
- The number one song in all of Canada was A bar song (Tipsy) by Shaboozey (143.8 million streams).
It’s still early and there’s still a lot of math to be done. When more data comes in, I promise to share it with you.
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.