Americans’ fave music in ’25? Rock, Gospel songs
The global music industry hit 5.1 trillion streams in 2025. It’s a new single-year record, up 9.6 percent from 2024, which held the previous record.
That’s according to a 2025 Year-End Report from Luminate, an industry data and analytics company that provides insight into changing behaviors across music listenership.
In the United States, on-demand audio streams hit 1.4 trillion, a 4.6 percent increase from last year.
But attention is on older music. Less than half all US on-demand audio streams—43 percent—were from tracks released in the last five years (2021 – 2025).
One exception? Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” and Morgan Wallen’s “I’m the Problem,” both of which surpassed 5 million album equivalent units in a single year. That’s a combination of sales and streaming combined.
Defying the trend
Luminate’s 2025 Mid-Year Report revealed that though streams of new music—music released in the last 18 months—were slightly down from the same time last year in the United States, new Christian/gospel music defied the trend, said Jaime Marconette, Luminate’s vice president of music insights and industry relations, led by acts like Forrest Frank, Brandon Lake and Elevation Worship.
In the year-end report, it is clear that Christian/gospel music has continued to grow stateside: up 18.5 percent in on-demand audio volume change compared to 2024.
Other genres that saw an uptick? Rock grew 6.4 percent and Latin grew 5.2 percent.
“Rock is the largest growth genre this year, meaning it grew its share of the streaming pie the most,” said Marconette in a statement. “Though rock streaming in general leans catalog (tracks older than 18 months), the genre posted the second highest total of new current streams this year.”
For Latin music’s growth, Bad Bunny is responsible. His on-demand audio streams totaled 5.3 billion—4.38 percent of all Latin on-demand audio streams.
“The Latin genre continues to be one of the highest growth-genres in the US,” adds Marconette. “Bad Bunny was a key driver of the growth this year with his new album “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” generating 2.97 billion US on-demand audio streams in 2025.”
AI artists
The introduction of high-profile artificial intelligence artists became a leading music story in 2025. Those include Xania Monet and the rock band The Velvet Sundown.
Monet went on to become the first AI act to debut on a Billboard radio chart, reaching No. 3 on the organization’s Hot Gospel Songs and No. 20 on the Hot R&B Songs.
There have been quite a few AI country artists as well, including Aventhis, Cain Walker, and Breaking Rust. The latter had a song called “Walk My Walk” hit No. 1 on Billboard’s country digital song sales chart in November.
