IMS Business Report Suggests EDM Industry Hit $12.9 Billion in 2024

Debuted at the International Music Summit in Ibiza, the 2024 IMS Business Report includes countless actionable insights.

Every year, Mark Mulligan of MiDIA Research delivers the previous year’s IMS Business Report at the International Music Summit in Ibiza. The 2024 snapshot is now here. Among other insights, it estimates that the electronic music industry grew 6% to $12.9 billion, highlights the rise of genres like Afro house and drum and bass, and even suggests that more women are becoming DJs.

Against all odds, the report suggests that global live music revenue grew modestly between 2023 and 2024, increasing from $25.8 billion to $27 billion — more than double their pre-COVID numbers. But that comes with two caveats. Firstly, the bump comes courtesy of rising tickets costs, not volume sold. It is also buoyed by major tours and large-scale gatherings, with smaller operators notably sidelined by well-documented market shifts.

In what ought to be news to nobody with a finger on the pulse of dance music, Afro house saw a meteoric rise in popularity from 2023-2024. Tech house may still be the #1 downloaded genre on Beatport, but Afro house broke into the chart at #10 in 2023 Q4 and reached #6 by the end of the following year. Drum and bass sat at #3 for most of 2024, thanks in no small part to the five separate tracks under the category that hit #1 on the Beatport Top 100 Tracks chart in 2024.

TikTok continues to be a valuable cultural barometer, and the report notes that global views of videos with the #ElectronicMusic hashtag increased by 45% to 13.4 billion in 2024. The number of videos pertaining to house, trance, and techno respectively grew by 82%, 63%, and 49% as well.

Meanwhile, scrappy music streaming underdog SoundCloud reported 14% growth in electronic music genres on its own platform in 2024. Notably, UK garage uploads alone grew by a whopping 100%, with minimal / deep tech plays growing by 42%.

The IMS Business Report estimates that 18% of global festival lineups consisted of electronic music acts in 2024. This represents a 2% increase over the figure estimated in last year’s report.

If the demographics data of AlphaTheta is to be trusted, more and more women are also gradually becoming DJs. According to the DJ gear and software manufacturer, 16% of its user base is now female. This is 2% more than the 2023 proportion.

This year’s IMS Business Report touches on a wide variety of other topics, including artists’ catalog acquisitions, Ibiza club revenue, and the role of AI in music creation. Sign up to receive your own copy of the report on the International Music Summit website.