“Music superfans are on Instagram,” is one of the lead takeaways in a new report commissioned by Instagram from Luminate, which aims to set out the platform’s stall as a fandom giant. Based on analysis and surveys conducted in mid-2025, it offers plenty of stats to bolster its case.
“58% of music super fans use Instagram to engage with music artists and/or music content, making it one of the largest social and video destinations for music engagement,” claims the study, adding that “nearly 1 in 3 (32%) of Instagram’s daily music engagers are qualified as superfans”.
The report also claims that artists who are most active on Instagram see strong “off-platform streaming growth” that “sticks rather than dissipates/decays rapidly”.
Instagram launched a “quasi-experimental” activation program to prove this, and says that participating artists averaged 10% increases in their streams elsewhere while it was running.
There’s a rival in mind for some parts of the report: TikTok. Instagram accepts that both platforms offer “comparably high-value audiences for the recorded music sector” but claims the engaged fans on its app over-index TikTokers for engagement with live music events; for following artists and exploring their link hubs; and for buying vinyl.
In a world of reports that only present stats favouring their commissioner, there’s some applaudable honesty in Instagram’s. For example, its slide on music engagement rates by superfans positions Instagram above TikTok, but well below YouTube.
Of course, later slides show where TikTok beats that platform too – for spending by its daily music engagers on physical music and concerts for example. You can read the full report here.
“We’re home to the densest population of superfans in any social environment,” said Tamara Hrivnak, Meta’s VP of music and product partnerships, in a statement.
“We not only enable evergreen bonds with artists’ best fans but also see artists leaning into our platform realise a 7x music streaming growth rate over the average artist.”
The report is intended as a show of strength, but it could also be seen as having a defensive role. In recent times, we’ve seen more artists and managers talking negatively about the big social-media platforms as places where they are at the mercy of recommendation algorithms, and can’t take ownership of their fan data.
Luminate’s report doesn’t address those criticisms head on, focusing more on the benefits of engagement within Instagram, and the knock-on streaming boosts elsewhere.
