Music licensing spans collective royalty collections, recorded-music trade revenue, performance rights, synchronisation and payments to songwriters and performers. The latest global figures show strong digital growth, while older UK evidence illustrates how revenue can expand without being distributed evenly among creators.
Contents
- Global royalty collections
- Digital and streaming licensing
- Live, background and broadcast licensing
- Performance rights and synchronisation
- Regional recorded-music markets
- UK streaming and publishing economics
- Creator earnings and royalty concentration
Global royalty collections
The CISAC Global Collections Report 2025 measured royalties collected by member societies across creative repertoires. All repertoires produced €13.97 billion in 2024, a 6.6% increase from 2023. Music alone accounted for €12.59 billion, up 7.2% year over year. In the CISAC music series, 2024 collections were 71.2% higher than in 2015. These are gross collections reported by collective-management organisations and represent creator royalties, rather than the recorded-music trade-revenue measure used by IFPI. (CISAC Global Collections Report 2025; Music collections and top collecting countries)
The largest country totals in the 2024 CISAC music figures were concentrated in established markets. The United States generated €3.147 billion, with annual growth of 10.8%. France generated €1.910 billion, up 7.5%, while the United Kingdom generated €1.261 billion, up 7.4%. Germany produced €1.075 billion, up 3.4%. Japan generated €886 million, the only one of these five markets to record a decline, at 1.1% below the previous year. (Global Collections Report 2025)
| Market | 2024 music collections | Change from previous year |
|---|---|---|
| United States | €3.147 billion | +10.8% |
| France | €1.910 billion | +7.5% |
| United Kingdom | €1.261 billion | +7.4% |
| Germany | €1.075 billion | +3.4% |
| Japan | €886 million | −1.1% |
The country figures should be read as music royalty collections within the CISAC reporting framework. They are not directly interchangeable with IFPI’s recorded-music revenue totals, which cover a different part of the market and use different definitions.
Digital and streaming licensing
Digital music royalties collected by CISAC societies reached €5.139 billion in 2024, increasing 10.8% in one year. Digital represented 37% of CISAC music collections. Across 2020 to 2024, CISAC digital music income increased 110.6%. The report also says that digital revenue from audio streaming and video-on-demand subscriptions exceeded €5 billion in 2024 after increasing seven-fold since 2015. (CISAC Global Collections Report 2025; Music income streams)
Digital dependence was particularly high in several smaller or developing markets. Mali, Nepal, the Philippines, Indonesia, India and Vietnam each had digital shares above 75% of creator collections in 2024. Vietnam’s digital share was 89.6%, with digital collections 1,732.5% higher than in 2015. India’s digital share was 82.7%, and its digital collections were 67,630.9% higher than in 2015. These long-period growth comparisons describe the CISAC series and should not be treated as forecasts. (CISAC Global Collections Report 2025)
The digital share was lower in several major collection markets: 27.1% in the United States, 13.9% in France and 11.4% in the United Kingdom in 2024. A lower share does not mean digital collections were smaller in absolute terms; it indicates that digital represented a smaller portion of each market’s total creator collections under the CISAC classification.
Live, background and broadcast licensing
Live and background music collections reached €3.596 billion in 2024, up 10.4% year over year. The same category was more than one-third above its 2015 level. Canada and the United States recorded 15.7% growth in live and background collections in 2024, while Africa recorded 13.8% growth. (CISAC Global Collections Report 2025; Music income streams)
Broadcast collections moved more slowly. CISAC TV and radio collections were €3.935 billion in 2024, up 0.8% after declining 3.0% in 2023. TV and radio’s share of CISAC creator income fell by 1.6 percentage points in 2024, while live and background’s share rose by 0.7 percentage points. Physical-format music collections remained 37.7% below their 2015 level. (TV/radio and regional collections; CISAC Global Collections Report 2025)
Together, these figures show different licensing trajectories. Digital and live/background collections grew rapidly in 2024, broadcast was nearly flat, and physical-format collections remained below their earlier benchmark. The categories measure creator-royalty collections, so they should not be used as a direct ranking of every commercial music business.
Performance rights and synchronisation
IFPI’s Global Music Report 2026 reported US$31.7 billion in global recorded-music revenue in 2025, up 6.4% from 2024. Recorded-music revenue had grown for 11 consecutive years through 2025. Within that industry measure, performance-rights revenue reached US$2.9 billion, up 0.3% year over year, and represented 9.3% of global recorded-music revenue. Performance-rights revenue had grown for five consecutive years through 2025. (Global Music Report 2026; IFPI State of the Industry)
Synchronisation represented 2.0% of global recorded-music revenue in 2025. Streaming represented 69.6%, while physical formats represented 16.6%, according to IFPI’s reporting definitions. Performance rights and synchronisation in these figures concern recording-industry revenues, not the CISAC creator-royalty categories above. (IFPI State of the Industry; IFPI Global Music Report 2026 Methodology)
| 2025 IFPI recorded-music measure | Share or value |
|---|---|
| Total recorded-music revenue | US$31.7 billion |
| Performance-rights revenue | US$2.9 billion |
| Performance rights’ share | 9.3% |
| Synchronisation share | 2.0% |
| Streaming share | 69.6% |
| Physical-format share | 16.6% |
The comparison is useful because it separates two commonly confused ideas: money collected for creators through collective-management systems and revenue recorded by the recording industry. A single song can be associated with both kinds of reporting, but the totals answer different questions.
Regional recorded-music markets
Latin America was the fastest-growing recorded-music region in 2025, with revenue growth of 17.1%. The United States and Canada represented 38.7% of global recorded-music revenue after growing 3.5%. Europe’s recorded-music revenue grew 5.6%. (Global Music Report 2026)
The Middle East and North Africa had the highest stated streaming dependence: streaming represented 97.5% of recorded-music revenue in 2025. Sub-Saharan Africa’s recorded-music revenue grew 15.2% to US$120 million. South Africa accounted for 78.1% of that regional revenue after 12.9% growth. (Global Music Report 2026)
Asia’s recorded-music revenue grew 10.9% in 2025, and the region accounted for 45.1% of global physical revenue. China’s recorded-music revenue grew 20.1%, the fastest growth among the global top 20 markets. These are 2025 reported outcomes, not forecasts for later years. (Global Music Report 2026; IFPI State of the Industry)
UK streaming and publishing economics
The UK evidence is historical and should not be read as a current 2026 rate card. A UK government study estimated combined 2019 revenue from streaming, downloads, physical sales, synchronisation licensing, public-performance rights and broadcast rights at approximately £1.69 billion. It found that recording-rights holders received 58% of recorded-music streaming revenue in 2020. In the study’s analysis, about 52% of total streaming revenue after VAT went to recording-rights holders. (Music creators’ earnings in the digital era: Executive summary)
For UK music publishing in 2019, the study estimated a revenue mix of approximately 30% streaming, 30% broadcasting and 28% public-performance rights. Its estimated average UK streaming revenue was about £0.011 per stream across the 2012–2019 analysis period. Approximately £0.006 went to recording-rights holders, £0.002 to publishing-rights holders and £0.004 was retained by digital service providers. The study estimated approximately £6,000 going to recording-rights holders per million UK streams. These are study estimates, not guaranteed payments for an individual track. (Music creators’ earnings in the digital era: Executive summary)
The same study estimated that featured performers, non-featured performers and studio producers received £296 million from UK recording-rights revenues in 2019, compared with approximately £220 million in 2008 before inflation adjustment. Composers and lyricists’ UK music-publishing-rights earnings rose from £265 million in 2008 to £395 million in 2019 in the study’s estimates. (Music creators’ earnings in the digital era: Executive summary)
Creator earnings and royalty concentration
The UK musician survey reported uneven individual earnings in 2019. Thirty-seven percent of surveyed musicians earned £5,000 or less from music, 47% earned less than £10,000, and 62% earned £20,000 or less. Median reported music income was £13,057 for women and £20,160 for men. These statistics describe UK survey respondents, not all musicians worldwide. (Music creators’ earnings in the digital era: Executive summary)
The study also reported strong concentration in streaming consumption. The top 0.1% of tracks generated more than 40% of streams in every October sample from 2014 through 2020. The top 0.4% accounted for more than 65% of streams in every October sample from 2016 through 2020. The top 1% accounted for 75%–80% of streams in every October sample from 2016 through 2020, and the top 10% accounted for 95%–97%. (Music creators’ earnings in the digital era: Executive summary)
The concentration figures use October samples and cover 2014–2020; they are not claims about every month or a forecast of future listening. Read alongside the income survey, they show why growth in aggregate licensing and recorded-music revenue does not automatically imply equal earnings for every creator.