The global recorded-music business is still growing—but generative AI is changing what that growth must protect.
According to IFPI’s Global Music Report 2026, worldwide recorded-music revenue grew 6.4% in 2025 to reach $31.7 billion. Streaming remained the dominant format, generating more than $22 billion and accounting for 69.6% of total recorded-music income.
Paid subscriptions grew 8.8%, while every major world region recorded revenue growth. The figures describe a healthy global market, but IFPI also identified generative AI and streaming fraud as two forces that will shape the industry’s next era.
AI is entering an already valuable market
Generative music is not creating a new economy in isolation. It is entering a rights system that already distributes billions of dollars among artists, labels, songwriters, publishers, platforms, and collecting societies.
That is why AI policy is closely connected to licensing and royalty dilution. If synthetic catalogs capture streams through fraud or mass production, they can redirect money away from genuine listening. If AI services train on protected music without licenses, creators may not participate in the value built from their work.
IFPI’s position is that partnerships with AI developers can support creativity when those developers respect rights, while copyright law and anti-fraud enforcement remain essential.
Creator groups see both growth and risk
CISAC-commissioned research projects rapid growth in the value of generative AI music. Its study estimated that AI-generated music outputs could reach an annual market value of €16 billion by 2028 and that AI music services could generate €4 billion in annual revenue.
The same research estimated that, under current conditions, 24% of music creators’ revenue could be at risk in 2028. These figures are projections rather than guaranteed outcomes, but they show why licensing and compensation are now economic issues, not only ethical debates.
Streaming fraud is becoming an AI policy issue
Generative systems can produce enormous numbers of tracks at extremely low cost. When that capability is combined with automated uploads and artificial streams, it can exploit payment systems designed for human-scale music production.
The industry response is becoming more technical and coordinated: AI detection, track labeling, neural fingerprinting, identity verification, removal from recommendations, and demonetization of fraudulent streams.
Growth will depend on trust
The 2026 market is not choosing between music and technology. It is deciding which uses of technology can strengthen the music economy without making human creators invisible.
Licensed models, transparent AI credits, meaningful opt-in rights, and reliable fraud controls could allow AI-assisted creation to grow alongside human music. Weak provenance and unlimited catalog flooding could produce the opposite result: less trust, diluted discovery, and unstable royalty systems.
The market numbers show that music remains economically and culturally powerful. The AI era will be judged by whether that value continues to reach the people whose creativity makes the ecosystem possible.
Sources: IFPI Global Music Report 2026 (https://www.ifpi.org/global-music-report-2026-global-recorded-music-revenues-grow-6-4-as-record-companies-drive-innovation/) | CISAC/PMP Strategy AI study (https://www.cisac.org/services/reports-and-research/cisacpmp-strategy-ai-study)