IMS Business Report 2024 Suggests EDM has Steadily Grown Post Pandemic

This year’s IMS Business Report also identifies Africa as a rising contender in the global electronic music market.

Considering the pandemic, it was a no-brainer to most that last year’s IMS Business Report would point to an overall more robust dance music market in 2022 than in 2021. That upward trend appears to have carried on, however. This year’s report estimates that the global electronic music industry grew 17% — or from $10.1 billion to $11.8 billion — in 2023.

The IMS Business Report is delivered each year at the International Music Summit in Ibiza. This year’s edition of the conference runs from April 24-26, and for the second year in a row, the industry snapshot was presented by Mark Mulligan of MiDIA Research.

According to the report, leading labels, publishers, digital service providers (DSPs), and live event companies all grew in 2023, averaging an 18% increase in revenue across the board. Predictably, live events led this charge at 35%, followed by DSPs at 16%.

On platforms like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, and Facebook, electronic music as a whole experienced a far greater increase in engagement than rock, Latin music, or hip-hop in 2023. The report is careful to point out that these genres still each have a bigger fanbase, but none saw the surge in followers that electronic did. On TikTok alone, global views for videos with the #ElectronicMusic hashtag more than doubled in 2023.

A recurring theme in this year’s IMS Business Report is the rise of African markets and styles of music. South Africa reports having twice as many electronic music listeners as inhabitants, and Afro house has recently emerged as both search term and a top ten highest-selling Beatport genre in the past couple of years. Meanwhile, TikTok posts with the hashtag #Amapiano increased by nearly 10 billion views in 2023, up 166% from the 2022 figure.

At 34 pages, the full 2024 IMS Business Report includes a wealth of other data. Download a copy and read it for yourself via the International Music Summit website.

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