On-Demand streaming of current music (releases 18 months old or newer) declined 1.6% in the U.S. in 2025 compared to 2024, according to Luminate’s 2025 Year-End Music Report. This drop occurred despite overall streaming gains in the year's second half, boosted by major releases like Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl.
The share of U.S. on-demand audio streams from 2020s songs fell to 47.9% in 2025, down from 49.6% in 2024. A key factor: half of the year's top 10 most-streamed songs and top radio hits (by audience impressions) peaked in 2024, including Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control,” Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” and Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather.”Transmedia convergence—blending music with gaming, film, and TV—emerged as a major growth driver in 2025.
Luminate highlighted Netflix’s animated film KPop Demon Hunters as the standout example: its soundtrack became the first to top the Billboard 200 since Disney’s Encanto in 2022, drove four songs into the Hot 100 top 10 (including the eight-week No. 1 “Golden,” which also led pop airplay), and created “seismic impact” on music consumption in the U.S. and internationally.
Luminate Senior Manager, Insights Lexi Chicles described such coordinated cross-media effects as “intentional, coordinated magic.”
Short-form video platforms like TikTok continued revitalizing older tracks, propelling Goo Goo Dolls’ 1998 song “Iris” into the top 50 most-streamed U.S. songs. “As the audience of short-form videos expands, it’s become really mainstream,” Chicles noted, enabling songs to “really take off.”
Attention to AI-generated artists increased, with tracks from Breaking Rush and Cain Walker topping Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and Xania Monet’s “How Was I Supposed to Know” gaining urban AC radio play.
Consumer comfort with AI in music varies: 36% of millennials and 37% of 13- to 17-year-olds express comfort with AI in song lyrics, but the majority (roughly 63-75% across elements) remain indifferent or uncomfortable.
These trends suggest radio programmers in 2026 may benefit from monitoring transmedia tie-ins, viral catalog revivals, and emerging AI content alongside new releases to capture shifting listener habits.