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

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

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

It was a daring declare on the time, however the newest annual IMS Enterprise Report backs up Guetta’s sentiment with laborious knowledge. The 2023 version of the report, a compilation of dance music knowledge from the prior calendar yr, claims the trade 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 trade to $11.3 billion, a 16% web improve 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 trade in the end remained double-digit proportion factors under its pre-pandemic highs.

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

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

“The pandemic shone a harsh mild on the trade’s heavy-reliance on dwell,” the report reads. “Now, that reliance is even larger due to dwell’s large progress.”

Nevertheless, the report does establish a number of rising developments outdoors of the dwell sector that will probably be worthwhile to observe carefully. 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 among the budding progress levers that would drive the dance music trade of the long run.

Learn the total report here.