A new report from music sales data company Luminate has found that roughly 120,000 new digital recordings are uploaded to streaming platforms each day—and that estimate only covers the first quarter of 2023.
Since 1991, the company formerly known as Nielsen SoundScan has collected weekly music sales data to share with its subscribers in the industry like record labels, publishing firms, and retailers.
Publishing music on digital streaming platforms has become more accessible than ever. Gone are the days of exclusivity rights that reserve streaming services for artists with major record deals. Now anyone can share their music on services like Spotify for a small distribution fee.
And so begins the exponential growth of ISRCs (International Standard Recording Code)—or audio files—released by artists on music streaming services.
The average number of ISRCs added per day in 2022 was 93,400, meaning that the new first-quarter averages for 2023 are sitting steadily above last year’s mark.
In further comparison to the rate of uploads in years past, the total number of ISRCs from Luminate’s 2023 quarter one report sits at 10.8 million—just 5.6 million shy of all the ISRCs created throughout the entirety of 2018.
If the current rate of uploads per day remains consistent, Luminate suggests that 43 million new recordings could be published to Spotify by the end of 2023.
An important caveat to note is that not all of these audio files are standard songs. Some ISRCs take the form of podcasts or sleep aides like white noise.
Luminate’s report also indicates that this rise in music production has coincided with a rise in music consumption: On-demand audio streams have grown 23% worldwide and 14.2% in the U.S. when compared to this time last year.
Luminate also noted that the United States’ fastest-growing music genres are latin, country, and world music.
Of course, we are hopeful electronic music will once again top that list in the coming years.
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