“If you had suggested this in 2015, you would have been laughed out of the room”: Music is now reportedly bigger than cinema globally

The value of global music copyright soared to a record high last year, and has overtaken the value of the cinema box office for the first time, according to a new report published by former Spotify Chief Economist Will Page.

In the report, Page attempts to calculate an overall picture of the value of music copyright revenues, including the multitude of varied revenue streams such as mechanical rights – ie when music is reproduced or distributed – and performing rights.

The topline figure is that the value of global music copyright in 2023 reached $45.5bn, which represents 11% year-on-year growth. Page has been making similar studies over the past nine years, which highlight how rapidly that overall figure has grown. When the first report was published for 2014, the total was just $25bn.

“Next year (when we calculate 2024) we may see copyright having doubled within a decade,” the report predicts. “Make no mistake: it’s boom time.”

These figures not only represents a record high for the music industry, but also put it ahead of global cinema, with box office revenue at $33.2bn, down from a global peak of $41.9bn in 2019.

“If you had suggested when I first did this exercise in 2015 that music might overtake cinema, you would have been laughed out of the room,” Page writes. “Back then, the silver screen towered over the likes of Spotify and Netflix.”

The growth of the music industry is only part of the story in this comparison, however. Cinema revenues are still slowly recovering from the major hit they took during the Covid era, and although revenue is up year-on-year, it’s still well below its pre-pandemic peak.

Beyond the comparisons with cinema, the report is packed with other fascinating facts about the state of the global music economy.

For one thing, it highlights the continued growth of vinyl music sales. According to the report, in the US alone vinyl will gross $1bn for record labels in 2024, and will soon overtake CDs globally. This is even taking into account the fact that the demand for vinyl has been constrained by supply bottle necks.

The report also highlights some interesting facts about the revenue streams flowing into CMOs – collective management organisations that collect royalties on behalf of copyright owners – and publishers. In 2023, for example, live performance revenues exceeded that of general licensing for public performance. Or as the report puts it, “songs sung on stage are now generating more royalties than those wallpapering the background of high streets and hotels.”

The value of digital streaming collections for CMOs also now exceeds that of broadcast and radio, which were the traditional core of their revenue streams. For context, the report points out, a decade ago digital made up around 5% of collections, while broadcast made up half.

Arguably, the most interesting conclusions of the study are in the section focused on musical exports between countries and territories. Here Page discusses what he calls 'glocalisation', or the rising importance of artists dominating their local markets while singing in their native languages.

“Almost a third of all streams inside America are non-American artists, suggesting glocalisation is happening within the country’s multicultural borders,” Page writes. “Unsurprisingly, the ‘British Invasion’ of yesteryear continues to make it the biggest exporter into the US. More surprisingly, is who’s second: Mexico — recently overtaking Canada. Looking further down the list of music‑exporting countries getting heard inside the US you’ll see another surprise: Colombia is ranked sixth.”

What’s most interesting about this is that the value of streams for Colombian artists from within the US ($78m) exceeds the entire value of the Colombian domestic music industry ($74m).

The whole report is packed with interesting information for music nerds (hi!), and we’d highly recommend giving it a read.

This isn’t the first time recently that Will Page has supplied us with eye-catching facts about the state of the industry. Earlier this month, he revealed to us that more music is being released today (in a single day) than was released in the calendar year of 1989.