International Dance Music Trade Grows 34% In 2022, Eclipsing Pre-Pandemic Highs: IMS Enterprise Report

Dance music’s illustration on the pageant circuit is larger than ever, however the business’s heavy reliance on reside efficiency revenues are a double-edge sword.

David Guetta’s late 2021 assertion—that dance music’s finest years would arrive within the aftermath of the pandemic—is beginning to show constructive.

It was a daring declare on the time, however the newest annual IMS Enterprise Report backs up Guetta’s sentiment with exhausting information. The 2023 version of the report, a compilation of dance music information from the prior calendar yr, claims the business grew 34% in 2022.

“This isn’t nearly bouncing again; that is bouncing again and virtually bouncing off the trampoline,” said Mark Mulligan, Managing Director of MIDiA Analysis.

The meteoric spike brings the worldwide valuation of the business to $11.3 billion, a 16% web enhance versus its pre-pandemic ranges. Whereas final yr’s report was characterised by the beginnings of a “return to regular” following variable states of lockdown throughout the globe, the business finally remained double-digit share factors beneath its pre-pandemic highs.

The report, authored by Mulligan and MIDiA Analysis, finds that the booming reside efficiency sector is the business’s greatest driver. Revenues elevated 65% versus prior yr to $4.1 billion. By way of bookings, the EDM style’s illustration on the pageant circuit bookings rose 6% year-over-year to 39% of the full share of pageant bookings.

Dance music’s conventional recording and publishing wing, in addition to its manufacturing know-how vertical, grew extra modestly and in-line with the trajectory of the broader music business at-large. Provided that reside efficiency income handily outpaced these verticals, one unintended consequence stays: for higher or worse, digital music’s reliance on the reside efficiency sector is extra crucial than ever earlier than in its historical past.

“The pandemic shone a harsh mild on the business’s heavy-reliance on reside,” the report reads. “Now, that reliance is even larger due to reside’s enormous development.”

Nevertheless, the report does establish a number of rising tendencies outdoors of the reside sector that shall be worthwhile to observe intently. Consumer-generated content material and productiveness augmentation because of AI applied sciences, the rise of artist-led digital communities and the continued proliferation of recent age avenues for music discovery corresponding to TikTok are simply a few of the budding development levers that might drive the dance music business of the longer term.

Learn the total report here.