Prediction markets – where people bet on what they think will happen in the future – have been making some negative headlines recently: see the Guardian’s investigation into people “betting millions on war” on one of the biggest platforms, Polymarket.
However, it seems some other people are preferring to bet on something far closer to our hearts: music-streaming data. See this tweet from another prediction market, Kalshi:
“Drake. Taylor Swift. Justin Bieber. Bad Bunny. Trade weekly streams on your favorite artists. Available now,” it announced this week.
The news was accompanied by an appearance by COO Luana Lopes Lara on Billboard’s ‘On The Record’ podcast to talk about the growth in music betting on Kalshi even before this launch.
“Just the music markets last year, we did over $70m traded, and this year just to date I think it’s over $400m,” said Lara. “Just on the Super Bowl half-time show opener it was $110m… the first song that Bad Bunny was going to perform.”
Browsing Kalshi’s music category reveals more than $278k trading on who will be featured artists on Drake’s ‘Iceman’ project and $936k on when the album will be released; $309k on who will be the top artist on Spotify this year; and nearly $2.3m on who will have a number one song on Spotify USA this month (April).
What’s new is the ability to also trade on weekly streams for individual artists, as Kalshi leans in to an industry that clearly has strong demand among its community.
