Indies Own Nearly Half the Global Recorded Music Market. The Major Labels Aren’t Taking It Lying Down

Peering over U.S. borders at the rest of the world, the recorded music business looks like the land of opportunity. The U.S. is certainly lucrative, but it’s also hyper-competitive. While the three major labels have locked up most of the States’ recorded music revenues — they distribute many indies, too — they command a far lower share internationally.  

A new estimate of independent labels’ market share shows why major labels’ investments and acquisitions in foreign territories are so common. On an ownership basis, independent artists and labels had a 46.7% share of the global recorded music business in 2023, according to a new MIDiA Research report, with independent labels taking a 40.8% share while artist-direct distributors such as Ditto Music and TuneCore having a 5.9% share. (The data, collected through an online survey of independent labels, accounts for 93% of all global revenues.) That leaves 53.3% for the major labels.  

The U.S. is considerably more concentrated. Independent labels and distributors had a 35.7% share of the U.S. market in 2023, according to Billboard’s analysis of Luminate data — 11 percentage points less than their global share — with the major labels owning the remaining 64.3%. That means that while independent artists and labels were behind the majority of the well over 100,000 new tracks that were being uploaded to digital service providers daily as of early 2023, they only accounted for a bit more than a third of revenue.   

The U.S. market gets even more concentrated when distribution, not just ownership, is measured. In the U.S., the major labels have an 84.3% distribution share through their ownership of music distributors Ingrooves (Universal Music Group), The Orchard (Sony Music), AWAL (Sony Music) and ADA (Warner Music Group), leaving independent labels and distributors with a 15.7% share. But MIDiA puts the independents’ global distribution share at 34.2% — 18.5 percentage points higher than their U.S. share.  

Besides the availability of market share, companies are also investing outside of more familiar, Western countries because they’re chasing high growth rates. The U.S. is slowing and has settled into solid, high-single-digit annual improvements: 7.2% in 2023 and 5% in 2022 after a pandemic-related 41% surge in 2021, according to the IFPI’s data on global trade revenue.  

Emerging music markets, on the other hand, are growing like weeds. Strong gains in some heavily populated countries led the U.S.’s share of global revenues to dip from 41.2% in 2021 to 38.6% in 2023. Over that time span, China’s share grew from 3.8% to 5.1% and Brazil’s share rose from 1.8% from 2.0%. In 2023 alone, Mexico grew 18% to $490 million, and India grew 15% to $357 million to overtake Spain as the world’s No. 14 market. 

For majors and indies alike, the never-ending pursuit of market share is taking them across the globe. This year, Universal Music Group bought a majority stake in Nigerian record label Mavin Global and Outdustry, a record label and artist services provider that focuses on China, India and other emerging markets. Warner Music Group took a majority stake in Indian digital media and music company Divo. Believe acquired Turkish record label DMC and purchased Indian record label White Hill Music’s catalog and YouTube channel. In 2022, Sony Music acquired Brazilian independent music company Som Livre. A year earlier, Warner Music Group invested in Saudi Arabian independent label Rotana, building a presence in the Middle East-North Africa region where Reservoir Media has a partnership with Abu Dhabi-based PopArabia. 

Streaming and social media have allowed independents to blossom around the world, creating a market “more diverse, fragmented, international, and regional than it has ever been,” wrote MIDiA’s Mark Mulligan. “It has resulted in a market that is characterized by both fragmentation and consolidation,” wrote Mulligan. “These opposing forces are shaping today’s market and will do so in the coming years.”