Over 50 million songs got zero streams in 2025 – and other eye-popping data on music streaming

0:02Steve:Hello and welcome to The Price of Music brought to you by Music Ally, the show that both looks at the finances of the music industry, while also bringing you stories and comment about the past week in the pop business. I'm Steve Lamaque, he's Stuart Dredge. If you want an easy guide to what's going on in the music industry and how it all works, then here we are this week. Because we usually start with a list of stories that we're going to cover and then we'll unveil Stuart's big number of the week. But actually, the big stat this week is also, in many ways, is the big story, at least big enough that we are going to dedicate quite a bit of time to pulling this apart this week.

0:41Steve:So that when you walk away from all this, you'll be able to blow your music friends' minds with some of the statistics and the implications which they suggest. Yes. So we will touch on the latest report into grassroots venues later on and Bandcamp banning AI generated songs from its platform, both of which could have been lead stories in other weeks. But I think in terms of the modern music landscape and just how much it's changed in the past 15 odd years, this is the statistic which we should probably focus our minds on. And not just for how big it is, but also what it actually means on several levels, really.

1:19Steve:It's the total number of songs currently available on streaming services, which was announced last week. The number of tracks available on streaming sites has now risen to 253 million. That's 253 million songs available right now. For starters, who's sat down and counted them all? Where does this figure come from and can we trust it?

1:52Stu:I mean, I did. It's been my personal project this year so far, and I finished it slightly early. No, this is from Luminate, which is a company, a research company who they do a lot of number crunching for the music industry. They get chart data in the US and around the world. So they are probably the most well-known analytics research company in the music world. So they come with, you know, they have the chops to make their figures worth listening to.

2:17Steve:Okay, so where should we start? I was interested in the breakdown of how many songs are at the top level, the popular songs, but also just how many songs are on the streaming services but barely ever get played, if at all. Can you split them almost into categories of how many plays some of these 253 million songs have had? Is that possible?

2:44Stu:I can. There's a very neat pyramid graphic in the report. this came from. So yeah, but just a bit of context, 253 million, that's up from 202 million last year. So 51 million new tracks in the last year, which means that a fifth of all the music you can stream was released in the last year alone. So a fifth of the world's music catalog came out in 2025,

3:08Steve:which is kind of crazy.

3:10Stu:But yeah, so what's getting played? So 253 million tracks is what we start with 55.3 million got zero streams last year right no streams at all on any service just

3:23Steve:say that one more time so out of the 253 million songs how many 50 55.3 million 50 55 million songs

3:33Stu:are up there and have never been played okay not in the last year at least yeah okay um then there's another 65.2 million that got one to 10 streams um 62.6 million got 11 to 100 streams so to add that up 146 million tracks which is nearly 58 percent of everything that's available yeah got 100 streams or fewer last year and as we discussed before that is negligible money well we'll come to

4:04Steve:that in a second uh whether they get paid or not um but the so upwards from then so what are we left with about 100 million?

4:14Stu:Yeah, and then there's another 40 million or so that got between 101 and 1 ,000 streams. So basically 223.8 million tracks got 1 ,000 streams or fewer last year, and just over 29 million tracks got more than 1 ,000 streams. So if we're talking about what's really getting played at that level, it's 29 million tracks. Okay.

4:37Steve:Okay. So, see, I've got so many thoughts on this, which I just need to get out of my head, really. Let's deal with the money then. Because wasn't there a point where certainly Spotify, I think, of the streaming services, didn't they come up with a suggestion that we're not going to pay people who have earned less than a thousand plays on the service?

5:09Stu:That's true. This happened a couple of years ago. So yeah, on Spotify, you don't earn the royalties on your songs until you get more than a thousand streams in the last year.

5:18Steve:I'm sorry to stop here. That's not fair, is it? I mean, you've still been played. So, I mean, even though it's a tiny amount, the idea that we're just not going to pay any of these small artists, even if they're artists just starting out, I'm afraid you don't count. And I'm not sure that's fair.

5:41Stu:Well, yeah, this is something that's been an ongoing debate because this originally came, I mean, there's certain parts of the music industry which support this idea. So this came from the major labels.

5:51Steve:Well, what a shock, what a shock there.

5:53Stu:And the argument that's been put forward in favour of it is that those things aren't earning much money, but if you reroute that money towards artists who are getting more streams, who are the ones that they think of as more professional, who are actually getting momentum, you're putting money in the pockets of artists who are trying to make a living. That was the argument in favour of it. But yeah, you're right. I mean, independent labels have been protesting about this recently saying, we think this penalises smaller artists, newer artists, independent artists. So it's an ongoing argument. The one thing that's come out in the last week, and there have been a few people making this point online, is if you cross-reference these stats, so this Luminate report said there's like 223 million tracks got 1 ,000 streams or fewer last year.

6:35Stu:Across all services, not just Spotify. If you apply to Spotify, that's like 88 % of songs on its service it's not paying for. And that sounds, in isolation, that sounds like, what bastards, evil, they're not paying 88 % of the money But then you do then have to think, okay, but remember, 22 % of those tracks didn't get any streams, so they don't need to be paid anyway. You wouldn't pay. But yeah, and I was thinking about how to kind of explain this because I think you're right. In the history of music, if you sold a record, there were royalties, weren't there? Yeah. Every time you sold. And you may have a terrible contract, but you didn't get those royalties, and that's a whole other biscuit of cats.

7:16Stu:but generally every sale would create royalties whereas if you think about a different world if you think about youtube so on youtube i can upload me or you can upload a video whenever we want it might get hundreds thousands of views but we don't get any money from that we have to get to a point and i think you need to have like a thousand subscribers in your channel and you have a certain amount of watch time where you can join youtube's partner program and start earning money from the ads. So in that world, YouTube and social media, you have to get to a certain level before you earn anything.

7:48Stu:And before that, you're just posting your stuff and not earning money from it. So this change in Spotify moved music from this old model where every sale is a royalty towards that world where you have to reach a certain level, be a certain level of popularity before we start paying you. And that's the change that's happening. And that's, again, like you say, some people would look at that and go that's that doesn't feel fair you should get paid

8:11Steve:however little you've been streamed um it's hard though is it i think uh comparing youtube and spotify spotify being is you know is a primary prime is a music service isn't it well primarily obviously it does other things but primarily the music service trying to get essentially sell what is these days people's records and i just i just it just feels slightly wrong and of course as you say the major labels they want the money for the artists who got somewhere uh so so that you know their share of the money i mean the major labels aren't interested in the bands who are earning less than um you know getting less than a thousand plays because they're not on the major labels and they want the money for.

9:00Steve:And this is the other thing. You know, I understand the point that more of the money will go to some of the artists who have got more than 1 ,000 plays and are trying to get somewhere. But also more of that money is going to Britney Spears. Yeah. That's a bad example. Taylor Swift. Let's try and get up to date, kids. Do you know what I mean? So, but, you know, it's going to the top. bad bunnies getting some of some of the money that would have gone you know would have been hypnese but i think it's almost it's the principle of the thing as much as anything because i realize you know if you if you've got 900 plays you are not going to make a fortune you're not going to make a living out out of that but isn't it isn't it partly the the principle of this i think so i

9:48Stu:mean some of the argument coming from independent labels as well is that they may have a lots of a a bunch of artists in their catalogue getting fewer than that. But when you add that up for a label, that can be quite meaningful. So yeah, that's where... So yeah, it was announced at the time and it kind of came with these positive ideas of, yes, this will put more money in the pockets of professional musicians, but it has its future. I've got some more stats again, which shed a bit of context on all this, on what these companies are trying to do and why they're doing that kind of move. According to Illuminate, 106 ,000 new tracks were delivered to streaming stores every day last year.

10:22Stu:So 106 ,000 new songs every day. So here's your pub stat. To listen to all of that, to listen to all the music that's gone up this morning, it would take us more than 7 ,000 hours, as committed as we both are. And I found a Billboard stat. So in 2000, Billboard said just over 35 ,000 albums came out that year in 2000. And right now it's the equivalent of more than 10 ,000 albums released every single day. So that gives you a sense.

10:49Steve:Oh, are we absolutely certain? Because when you said at the start, there's around, what, 50 million new tracks have gone up in the past year. But is that all new music, new artists releasing new music? Or does that 50 million also include people who've put their catalogue on Spotify or Apple? because there are still bands now who have managed to get their rights back so finally they can put their music up. So there will be old music as well amongst that, won't there? It won't all just be brand new releases.

11:24Stu:Yeah, old music, remastered music, remixes of old music, everything. So what we might mention is it's called ISRCs, which if any listeners are interested in this, it's International Standard Recording Codes, I think. It's like the code that every track gets assigned when it's uploaded. so that the students can tell what's different. So this includes multiple versions of a track. So if you, for example, if you're a label and you upload a new single of a band and also then the TikTok sped up version, which is quite popular, that's two tracks, not one. So yeah, in terms of the actual number of new releases, yeah, you can do some sums there.

12:02Stu:But it is a big load. The other thing is this report breaks down. So around 102 ,000 of those daily tracks are independent and DIY releases. So they're not from major labels. And then the other thing, and we're going to get into AI a bit later, aren't we? But AI is a big part of this. So why has this been growing so fast? Why have there been 50 million net new tracks this last year? We know from Deezer last year, we talked about this, around 50 ,000 AI-generated tracks a day are being uploaded to its service. and that isn't half that was about 34 % of its daily uploads which suggests that it's getting about 147 ,000 new tracks a day but yeah so when we talk about 104 ,000 new tracks a day nearly half of them could be AI generated now which is it's the other thing here and that ties into the fact that lots of them aren't being played

12:56Steve:because we talked before about how it comes

12:57Stu:so that's the this is what's all swimming around and this is why this is what's swimming around like I think we're going to talk about what is a problem what can be done And I think people have been realizing that the number of tracks has been increasing and increasing and there's a lot, a lot of noise for years. And we're now in the period of people saying, well, what do we actually do about this? How big a problem is it? And what can be done?

13:19Steve:Just before we come up with some possible answers for that and what the music industry thinks. There's also obviously there are implications elsewhere, aren't there, for companies like Spotify? Because if you are now, if we're up to 253 million songs, how much tech do you need to store all those songs? And how much is it costing a company like Spotify annually to host all these songs? How many supercomputers do you need? And how much of our monthly£12 is going on the equipment, which is just to keep the thing running?

14:01Stu:Well, so I spent a bit of time digging around this morning. I don't really have any good answers because basically Spotify declares its costs in a bunch of big buckets, and one of them is R &D, and these costs come under R &D, which also includes everything else Spotify does in terms of developing its service and things. I did find, I mean, a slight tangent, I did find a stat actually for the climate impact of all this. So Spotify's emissions in 2024, so it's carbon dioxide equivalent, It was 195 ,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. That's the kind of figure that's kind of meaningless if you don't understand what it means, which I don't.

14:40Stu:But 35.8 % of that came from cloud. That's how I described it, which is servers, the cost of storing and transmitting music. Again, this isn't just music. It's also podcasts. It's also videos now. And this is also a mixture of people playing stuff and then the storing of it. So in terms of Spotify's climate impact, more than a third of it comes from hosting and storing and transmitting other music. And this has an impact on that, obviously.

15:10Steve:So it would be then, wouldn't it follow that you'd be in the interest of the streaming services to push back on the AI tracks that no one is listening to because they're spending money on hosting these tracks, which no one is interested in and no one's making any money out of. and that doesn't make any economic sense apart from anything else, apart from before we get into the creativity argument about AI. It's just financially, it's not doing anything for them.

15:46Stu:Well, that's it. And this is the dilemma these companies face, I think. And this comes back to the bigger question, those 253 million tracks. So 104 ,000 new tracks a day. If you're a Spotify or an Apple Music or an Amazon Music, whoever you are, I don't think any of them want to say we're not taking that if it's human music like they don't want to say to any human person uploading music no you can't put it on here like I think that would people would be cross at them that wouldn't be a good look so they have to let everything on for humans and I'm not sure they really want to be taking stuff off I'm not sure they want to be in the position of saying well that song for my human wasn't streamed last year so we're going to kick it off Again, I think they'd be storing up trouble and protest for themselves.

16:33Stu:People would be happy. So you're right. Where they can take action is AI music. And they could choose to not have it on at all. Again, that's a little bit dicey because maybe some people want to listen to it. Some of these songs have been popular. So how do they decide which AI music might get listeners and which might not? I don't know how they would decide that before it goes on. they have to let it on and see they could chuck off the air music that's not being streamed and they already do chuck off anything that's being streamed by bots if they detect fraud and activity with an AI song they kick it off but yeah that's the dilemma I have I think they have to figure out how do they if they're going to be not letting something on or taking it off is there a danger it's a real human behind it he'll be cross and if not is it something that might be listened to but that does seem to be the only place they have wiggle room if they want to reduce this number of tracks and this noise.

17:28Stu:I mean, the other approach would be to leave it all on there, but say, actually, we're going to not give pay royalties to the songs that don't have many streams. We're also not going to pay any royalties at all to AI generating music. They could say that. Again, no one's quite taken that step yet, but that may be what's coming next. So yeah, there's a few things I can do, but it's very, very sensitive because I think when we all think this is too many songs, Spotify should do something about it, but many of the things it could do the easiest things would would get people equally gross if that makes sense

17:59Steve:so what does the music industry think and are there any suggestions then apart from the ones you've just come up with of what can be done because if ai the you know the ai steamroller is going to carry on bulldozing its way through the music scene then this uh increase of 50 million this year might be outstripped next year. So where do we see this going further down the line?

18:30Stu:Yeah, well, as I said, so this idea of having thresholds above which you have to have a certain amount of streams to get royalties, that came from the major label side of things. It's still controversial for independent labels, but that's one approach. Okay, we need to have some kind of bar, some kind of quality bar based on listeners, and then that's... The other thing, I think everyone in the industry is unhappy at the idea of this deluge of AI slop music. even if no one's listening to it. So I think there's that stat from Deezer saying it's only half a percent of streams, even though it's 34 % of all the uploads.

19:04Stu:So I think people are looking at this and saying, well, it's not taking lots of money away from human artists at the moment, but it could do. We don't like that. Another stat, actually, interestingly. So Deezer said that AM Music was half a percent of all its streams. Now in this Luminate report, there's a big stat that says there were 5.1 trillion streams last year of music, audio on demand. Wow, okay. So 5.1 trillion streams, 0.5 % of that is 25.5 billion. So there could be 25.5 billion streams of AI music, which sounds enormous, but at the same time is small in terms of all the streams, in terms of the money being paid out.