Music Business Trends, Topics & Stories to Watch in 2025

To put it mildly, 2025 has not gotten off to a great start given the awful wildfires that have devastated the Los Angeles area, leaving at least two dozen dead and thousands more misplaced and without homes. For those affected, the repercussions are likely to last for months, if not years, to come.

Though none of the issues facing the music business come close to that level of seriousness, there is nonetheless much uncertainty to come in the next 12 months. In the coming days, the Supreme Court is set to weigh in on a law that could see TikTok banned from the United States or sold, a situation with the potential to cause a big uproar in the way music is marketed and promoted. In the legal realm, the criminal trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs could put the entertainment mogul behind bars for the rest of his life, while multiple lawsuits and federal legislation seeking to regulate the use of AI in music could have legal and copyright repercussions for years. Concert ticket prices are continuing to rise; record labels and streaming companies are increasing crackdowns on fraud in the streaming ecosystem; the distribution marketplace has been a frenzy of activity in a way that is unlikely to slow down; and the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown has kept the focus on music-led films in a way that seems to grow each year.

As the year gets underway, Billboard has pulled together 11 music business trends, topics and stories to keep an eye on in 2025 from across the various sectors of the industry, from genre growth in country music to the future of radio to the much-vaunted “Streaming 2.0” paradigm.