Mark Williamson: Trends driving the Music Business in 2025
We asked a select group of our favorite pros to help identify the music business trends that will drive the industry in 2025. Mark Williamson, the founder and CEO of live music industry hub Rostr, offers four trends that he sees from his unique vantage point.
Mark Williamson: Music Business Trends in 2025
by Mark Williamson, Co-Founder and CEO of Rostr Group
At the start of 2024 the buzz was all about superfandom. But, a trend I’m more interested in is superstardom. For the world’s biggest stars, the scale, reach and revenue opportunity now and over the next few years is going to be unlike anything the industry has ever seen – an emergence of a new class of megastars.
Trend 1: The Popular Get More Popular
It wasn’t too long ago that 100M Spotify Monthly Listeners seemed crazy. As we end 2024, there are 5 artists over 100M. Bruno Mars has almost 140 million, partly due to his hugely successful collaboration with ROSÉ. And that’s all just on Spotify.
Counter-intuitively, as the music industry and media get more fragmented, this plays into the hands of existing global “brands.” Collaborations, marketing dollars, multi-media appearances and world tours are putting a small group of artists at an entirely new, elite level of stardom.
This is going to intensify through 2025.
The 10 artists with the biggest audiences on Spotify at the end of 2024. Taken from ROSTR’s Discover tool.
Trend 2: Mega Tours, Mega Shows
Taylor raised the stakes with the Eras tour. While she’s probably in a league of her own, every other global superstar (and their team) were watching and learning. It’s not just mega tours, but mega shows too – Adele’s Munich “popup,” Madonna and The Weeknd’s one-offs in LATAM.
As these superstars become megastars, their popularity compounds and allows them to do these mega tours and shows that draw from huge catchment areas (and command massive prices).
An agent from a major agency told me “any given year we might have 2 to 3 stadium tours. This year we had 18.”
2025 and beyond is going to see more and more of this.
Trend 3: Challenges for the rest of the market
The downside is that these megastars will suck up much of the air (and ticket spend).
2024’s bad year for the festival market is partly blamed on superstars choosing stadium tours instead of festival headlines. Not many see that shifting much in 2025, and why would it if the stadium shows are so lucrative?
There’s also only so much spend out there; the knock-on effect of these massive, and massively expensive, tours will have an increasingly noticeable impact for smaller shows (and festivals) in tight economies.
There are signs of this happening to significant degree already, unfortunately, if the other trends above manifest, then this could be a big problem for the health of the industry.
Trend 4: Mega-Managers
Our bread and butter at ROSTR is tracking representation. While artist management remains fragmented compared to labels and agencies, a handful of companies are dominating the top-end of the market – perhaps creating management’s version of “the majors.”
The mega-superstar class needs massive expertise, connections, and funding that few management companies can deliver. As artists break out of the pack, we’re seeing more of them “upstream” themselves to these bigger, global management companies – a nicer way of saying artists are more regularly ditching the managers that broke them in favor of more established teams.
A selection of the management companies increasingly standing out from the pack. Taken from ROSTR’s Discover tool.
More Trends that will shape the Music Business in 2025
- Jorge Brea: Trends that will shape the Music Business in 2025
- Netflix will add Music Streaming in 2025 predicts Bobby Owsinski
- Jay Gilbert: Trends that will drive the Music Business in 2025
- How musicians can thrive in 2025: Bruce Houghton on the Music Biz Weekly Podcast
- Music Execs share Advice for the Next Generation
