IBIZA, Spain — The annual dance industry conference IMS Ibiza began today (April 23) on its namesake island, with hundreds of people from around the sector gathering for three days of discussions, presentations, panels, music and more looking at the global electronic music scene and industry from all angles.
As is tradition, the Summit began with the presentation of the annual IMS Business Report, which tracks the key trends from the global business over the last 12 months. Marking its 11th edition this year, the report was authored by MIDiA Research’s Mark Mulligan and is available here.
Mulligan also presented the report to a packed room on Wednesday afternoon, giving context to the data and illustrating that while revenues may be lagging in clubs and festivals, electronic music culture is booming both on and offline. These are 11 key findings from the 2025 report.
1) Streaming Is Way Up in the Global South
The report finds that while streaming revenue growth slowed to 6% in 2024, subscriber growth saw huge gains, with the overall streaming sector seeing a 12% growth in its subscriber base.
Incredibly, nearly four fifths of this growth came from Global South markets, an area the UN Trade and Development organization defines as comprised of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Oceania. Mulligan noted that Global South statistic is especially crucial given that user growth will eventually give way to global cultural growth “as these users drive the rise of large local music scenes that will increasingly export their sounds to the West.”
The reports also found that Spotify stayed in the lead in terms of DSPs, maintaining its 32% market share and registering more than a quarter of a billion subscribers globally. The report notes that “YouTube Music was the only other global DSP to also enjoy strong growth in 2024, gaining to a 10% market share.
2) Electronic Music Is a Market Leader
The report notes that electronic music has the top or second highest count of Spotify followers in nine of the genre’s top 13 markets, compared to hip-hop, Latin and rock. And while Latin and hip-hop growth may be statistically stronger, the reach of these audiences, especially Latin, varies strongly by region, versus electronic music’s more global growth.
Additionally, the world’s top four electronic music markets — Germany, Australia, the U.S. and U.K. — all gained significant listener counts in 2024, although Mexico, the U.K. and Germany saw the highest growth, respectively. (Incredibly, electronic music was up 60% in Mexico.)
Meanwhile, electronic music consumption is considered endemic in The Netherlands and Australia, where the report found that the number of monthly electronic music listeners on Spotify is higher than the total population. (This is possible because individuals can consume more than one style of electronic music on the platform.)
3) Electronic Music Fans Over-Index For Time & Money Spent
Mulligan repeatedly emphasized the crucial nature and influence of IRL scenes, which dance music excels in cultivating and which many younger people are prioritizing over online existence.
“This idea of scenes is going to become more and more important,” he said, “because superstars are getting smaller and everything is fragmenting. It’s time to look simply beyond the stream counts, beyond the social numbers to measure the cultural impact, even though that’s nearly impossible to do. But that’s probably a good thing. If it’s not measurable, it’s harder for people to go and overtly commercialize it.”
He referred to culture as “the fuel in the engine,” saying that things like revenue, stream counts and social and followings “will come as a result of the culture. So the fact that the cultural indicators are beginning to really light up in 2024 points to a really strong few years coming up.”
4) Revenues in Ibiza Were Up, But Ticket Sales Were Slightly Down
The report notes that the average number of events per venue on the island “is on a steady, albeit modest decline and ticket volumes were down in 2024, with higher average ticket prices the
reason that revenues were up once again. “You keep charging people more until they can’t afford it anymore” said Mulligan, “and there will come a point when people say ‘I literally can’t afford any more for this at the moment.’” This is especially true now, he noted, in a period of global economic uncertainty.
5) Afro House Continues to Rise
Mulligan reported that Afro-house “has absolutely rocketed” in the last year, while drum & bass is also in a “real era of resurgence.” A survey of the digital sample library Loopcloud indicates a large rise in samples of African music genres, suggesting the genre will continue growing.
6) Hard World = Hard Music
The Loopcloud survey also found a rise in harder electronic genres like hardcore and hard dance, while “softer” genres like ambient and chill out are going down and losing share. This is, Mulligan posted, is “because culture reflects the world around us. It’s a crappy world out there at the moment. There’s wars and famine and inequality, and I think that’s beginning to really come through in the music that people are making and the music that people are listening to.”
Amapiano and trance saw especially big growth on the platform. “Again,” Mulligan said, “there are all of these cultural indicators that are growing more strongly than the revenue indicators are.”
8) SoundCloud Also Remains a Strong Cultural Indicator
The platform saw 100% growth in uploads of UKG (UK garage) with jungle uploads also up 45%.”These tend to the genres that tend to be owned by Gen Z and even Gen Alpha,” said Mulligan. “SoundCloud has so many of these bootleg remakes … of course [the people who make them] can never get the rights cleared and put them onto Spotify, but a lot of this culture is happening online on places like SoundCloud.”
9) Music Catalog Investors Have a Growing Interest in Dance
“Mainly what happens is old white males invest in old white males, so you still see the Bob Dylans [of the world getting invested in], but we are beginning to see more and more of other genres,” Mulligan said of investor acquisitions of artist catalogs. The report states that the share of catalog deals for electronic artists doubled between 2020 and 2024, with recent notable examples including Kevin Saunderson, Tiga and deadmau5.
10) Dance Music’s Gender Divide Persists
In terms of the number of people producing music and playing events, Mulligan reported that “this is still a heavily male world,” although there’s also been a slight increase in the representation of female artists. This determination is based on a survey of data from AlphaTheta, where the registered userbase, the report says “points to the steady rise of female DJs, many of whom will be inspired by the growing share of top DJs that are now female.”
“We are beginning to see change,” Mulligan added in his presentation. “It’s not dramatic, but it’s good and steady progress.”
11) The Global Electronic Music Industry Was Valued at $12.9 Billion in 2024
This number includes live, merchandising, sponsorships, recorded music, publishing, music hardware and software, clubs, festivals and more. The number represents a 6% growth over 2024, which Mulligan noted “might not sound huge, but remember live music revenues — festivals and clubs — which is a really big part of the revenue mix, is beginning to slow, so that sort of drags down the overall numbers. But most importantly, the culture is absolutely booming. With 0.6 billion new social followers of electronic music followers in 2024 they’re the foundation for what’s set to be a really vibrant few years.”
