The numbers are large, but the most interesting part of the 2025 IMS Electronic Music Business Report is not the headline figure. Electronic music global south streaming is quietly rewriting which scenes get heard, which producers find audiences, and which corners of the planet are now shaping the genre’s direction. The report, produced by MIDiA Research and authored by Mark Mulligan, was presented at IMS Ibiza and puts the industry’s total revenue at $15.1 billion for 2025, a 7% year-on-year rise. Recorded music revenues climbed 9% and publishing grew 11%, while streaming subscriber numbers reached 919 million worldwide. Much of that subscriber growth is coming from markets in the Global South, where streaming adoption is accelerating and reshaping the geography of the whole business.
What the MIDiA electronic music report makes clear is that this is not simply a story about more listeners. It is about which listeners, and from where. Electronic music ranks first or second on Spotify in ten of the platform’s thirteen top markets, sitting ahead of hip hop, Latin, and rock. Germany holds the largest audience, with 604 million monthly Spotify listeners, a figure that exceeds seven times the country’s actual population and reflects the cumulative nature of the metric as much as anything else. The US, Australia, the UK, and the Netherlands complete the top five, with Australia and the Netherlands also recording listener figures more than five times their national populations. Mexico stands as the one major exception, where Latin music holds the top spot.
For producers working in underground electronic scenes, the SoundCloud data is where things get genuinely worth paying attention to. SoundCloud electronic uploads now account for one in every three tracks on the platform, up from one in four back in 2020. The genre is number one in the UK and second in the US. DJ set uploads grew 39% year-on-year in 2025. The platform’s scenes rankings offer a more granular picture than any chart: vinahouse, hard and industrial techno, and minimal and tech house sit at the top globally, while Indonesian breakbeat, South Korean EDM, and Colombian guaracha are among the fastest growing scenes anywhere. That last list alone tells you something about where the next wave of producers is coming from.
On TikTok, the broader trend holds. The #ElectronicMusic hashtag generated 3 million creations in 2025, up 50% year-on-year and 106% since 2022. Niche tags are moving faster still. #SpeedGarage was up 147%, #Garage up 75%, and #Techno up 66%. In the UK, house, rave, techno, and electronic music all sit within the platform’s top ten music hashtags. Schranz uploads jumped 83% on SoundCloud in 2025, and the share of hardstyle, hardcore, and hardtekk tracks running above 180 BPM has increased every year for the past three years. The report draws a deliberate connection between a turbulent wider world and music accelerating upward in tempo and intensity.
The audience engagement figures deserve a moment too. Electronic music fans average 10.4 hours of listening per week, spend $24 a month on live music and $17 on recorded music, and 74% say real-life connection to a scene matters to them, compared to 64% of the general population. At a genre level, tech house held its position as Beatport’s best-selling category, while Afro house is growing fast on production platforms like Splice. Ibiza club ticketing revenues reached €160 million in 2025, up despite a lower total number of events, pointing toward a shift to fewer but higher-value experiences. Electronic artists represented 18% of catalogue acquisition deals in 2025, reflecting investor appetite for newer catalogues with long-term streaming potential. On the production technology side, generative AI and stem separation tools saw revenues rise 651% between 2023 and 2025, reaching $333 million, with 63 million monthly active users, while revenues from traditional music software outside DAWs fell over the same period. The full IMS Business Report is available to download free at the International Music Summit website.