Cruel summer

It has been a cruel summer this year in Northern Europe with more clouds than sun. More surprisingly, according to research firm Luminate’s mid-year music industry review, Taylor Swift’s song ‘Cruel Summer’ has not led charts. While Ms. Swift’s song was streamed over 1 billion times, Teddy Swims’s ‘Lose Control’ garnered 1.1 billion streams and Benson Boone’s ‘Beautiful Things’ hit more than 1.4 billion streams. The silver lining however is that the music industry overall continues to expand. In the US market, on-demand audio streams in the first half of 2024 increased 8% year on year to 665.8 billion; outside of the US, music streams grew 18% to 1.6 trillion, bringing the global total up 15% to 2.3 trillion.

Source: Luminate, July 2024.