US labels body the RIAA has published its mid-year report for the country’s recorded-music market. The figures are a mixed bag: some clear reasons for concern within the industry, but also some positives.
Overall ‘wholesale’ revenues – the value of recordings for the industry rather than consumer spending – reached a new high of $5.59bn in the first half of 2025. However, that was a rise of just 0.9% year-on-year. Not even single-digit growth.
Music-streaming revenues grew by 2.3% to $4.68bn in the first half of this year, compared to 3.8% growth in the first half of 2024. However, it’s important to understand how this streaming figure breaks down:
- Paid Subscriptions (Premium) – up 6.3% to $2.89bn
- Paid Subscriptions (Non-Premium) – down 0.4% to $262.7m
- Free Streaming – down 2.9% to $875.1m
- Other Streaming – down 5.3% to $652.9m
The RIAA told Music Ally that ‘free streaming’ includes “all ad-supported audio and music video services not operating under statutory licences” – a definition that includes social-media and fitness apps, as well as YouTube, Spotify’s free tier and similar services.
‘Other streaming’ is a combination of royalties collected by SoundExchange for digital and personal radio services that use statutory licences, as well as direct deals for similar listening. This all sheds light on where the decline is happening in free streaming in the US.
However, the slowdown in growth is not just about streaming. Physical sales were down 5.9% to $576.4m in the first half of this year.
That included a sharp drop of 22.3% for CD sales (to $108.1m) but even vinyl – the hero format of recent years – was down 1% to $456.9m. Meanwhile, sync revenues fell by 7.9% to $196m, which is another cause for concern for the industry.
We used the phrase ‘mixed bag’ earlier, and that brings us back to streaming. In the first half of this year, the average number of premium paid subscriptions in the US was 105.3m.
That’s 6.3m more than this time last year. And in that mid-year report, the net additions in the previous year had been just 2.5m, so there has been an encouraging acceleration in 2025.
Meanwhile, the 6.3% growth for revenue from premium paid subscriptions in the first half of this year compares favourably to the 5.1% growth in the first half of 2024. More acceleration, in one of the world’s mature streaming markets.
In their official statements, RIAA execs focused on the positives from this year’s numbers.
“The number of paid subscriptions hit a historic milestone, surpassing 100 million accounts, while revenues from all formats reached $5.6 billion in the first half of 2025,” said chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier. “Important markers that underscore music’s enduring value and demand for human artistry supported by record labels and collaborative partnerships.”
Meanwhile, the RIAA’s VP of research Matt Bass said that “these numbers show a stable and sustainable foundation as music continues to be one of America’s strongest exports with US artists accounting for one in three global streams – more than the next six countries combined”.
Still, there may be some finger-pointing within the music industry in the coming days as people parse the full figures.
For example, a Spotify rep has already contacted Music Ally to point out that its growth in the first half of 2025 outperformed the overall US streaming market, as did its royalty payouts. A statement that naturally sparks questions about which rivals’ growth underperformed.
Our hunch, though, is that subscriptions jostling may remain secondary to the ongoing industry debate about challenges in ad-supported streaming, and how they should best be tackled.
That’s about the free tiers of services like Spotify and YouTube, but also about how well (or rather, how not well) short video is paying off for the music business.
