By the end of this year, it’s quite possible that there will be more than one billion music subscribers globally – a milestone that seemed fanciful at best in the early days of streaming, but which is now just a staging post towards grander ambitions.
The prediction is based on the latest report from Midia Research, which claims that global music subscribers grew by 10.1% in 2025, adding 84.3 million to reach 921.6 million subscribers overall. If DSPs can equal that performance in 2026, they’ll hit the magic billion total.
As ever, Midia broke down its total into the main streaming services. Spotify had a 31.4% share of subscribers at the end of 2025 by its calculations: 289.4 million – matching Spotify’s official (rounded) total.
The report estimates a 13.8% market share for Tencent Music (so roughly 127.2 million subscribers), followed by Apple Music’s 12.6% (116.1 million), YouTube Music’s 12.4% (114.3 million) and Amazon Music’s 8.5% (78.3 million).
YouTube Music is the DSP with most momentum in terms of growth, adding 1.5 percentage points to its market share last year. If that continues, it could overtake Apple Music to take third place behind Spotify and Tencent Music this year.
There is also a big ‘Global South’ story in the new figures. “For the fifth straight year, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Rest of World constituted more than 70% of subscriber growth,” wrote Midia’s Tatiana Cirisano in a blog post on the report.
Within that there is nuance however: a slowdown for China and a big uptick in Brazil. “As Asia Pacific slows, mainly due to China’s growth slowdown, and Latin America begins picking up the slack, the latter may just become the next Global South engine room,” suggested Cirisano.
“As growth continues, the streaming market is becoming more dynamic and multipolar,” she added. “Not only is growth coming from more directions, but it is more strategically diverse, as players like YouTube Music and Tencent show.”
