How the music industry could evolve in 2025

 

Predicting the future? Difficult.

Still fun though!

And something musicians should do at the start of every new year.

Because as a creator, it’s worth keeping an eye on the possible evolutions of the music business, music production, and music marketing. You’ll be better prepared to capitalize on the new opportunities that actually do emerge.

So…

What do we predict for musicians in 2025?

It’s an interesting list of forecasts.

And we discussed it all on the first Music Career Study Group of 2025!

What could the year ahead mean for artists, creators, labels, and musician services?

2025 Music Predictions

Predictions for social

We’ll see the equivalent of the great resignation in social usage. Artists will still use social, of course, but we’ll stop prioritizing context-free discovery and algorithmic reach to the same obsessive degree we have for the past few years.

“I quit” videos will appear all over YouTube. By which creators will mean: “I quit using these tools for the benefit of the platforms. I will use them for me, even if that means my content isn’t optimized.”

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There will be a lot of additional scrutiny placed on social media for its damaging impact on children. Governments, parents, and even kids may turn away from TikTok, Snapchat, BeReal, etc. – in favor of the perceived “safer” incumbent: Instagram.

It’s a bit of the devil you know. And because of that, Meta will dominate in 2025.

And Instagram will thus become an even more indispensable app for musicians who want to build an audience.

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Targeting will become almost obsolete when it comes to music advertising. Meta tools will be further improved to find the right people within a wide audience.

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TikTok lives? We predict TikTok survives in the USA, at least in some capacity. The Supreme Court is about to rule on whether the TikTok ban is constitutional. If it’s lawful, there’s still the chance a new buyer can acquire TikTok in the USA.

So it’ll probably still be around. But yes, the app is likely to feel different by the end of 2025 no matter what happens. And this whole scenario with TikTok has been a good reminder that you don’t own your relationship with fans on these platforms. Always be working to move your audience closer and closer to methods of communication you control (email, SMS, etc.)

Predictions for AI in Music

The REAL impact of AI will start to be felt. Distributors and DSPs will be problematically flooded with AI content until they reach some kind of breaking point. 

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We’ll also realize how good AI music can be; and have to wrestle with what that means for human creators. But then of course the industry will have to grapple with the fact that people make music for other reasons than just having a hit. Imagine that! Personal growth, expression, the pride of mastering or at least improving at something difficult.

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2025 might see the first true AI hit song. A label will probably be behind it. Could be a posthumous release by a deceased megastar, or possibly a totally new AI artist/avatar.

We’ll also see the first “we don’t care that it’s AI” viral hit. A song will break on social, and the fact that it was made by AI will play almost no part in the context for listeners. They will enjoy the song on its own merits.

That also means we’ll hear endless takes about the “Death of Music.”

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We’ll hear more about blockchain again, as a counterforce to AI deepfakes and generative music. In a world of uncredited digital abundance (AI) you need provable digital scarcity (blockchain). 

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A Century of IP precedent is being established this year. Can companies train their models on copyright-protected content? How can artists protect their brand and likeness from imitation or unlicensed usage? We’ll probably know by the end of 2025.

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AI tools in music creation and music marketing will make our lives “easier,” but then… we’ll just be even busier. Like is often the case, the solution can become the problem. AI Agents may even help you add to the noise — tweeting for you, for instance — and now the world is even noisier!

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Hyper-personalized blah blah blah — Tech giants will keep shoving all manner of hyper-personalization at us, and human tastes will revolt. Maybe not in 2025, but in the next few years.

Because while “mood” music works for many hours of the day, when our ears and hearts want to finally put their focus entirely on a musical experience, our souls long for authentic human brilliance and the kinds of communal connections and experiences that grow out of SHARED appreciation, not hyper-personalized lonely isolated listening. 

Predictions for the Music Industry

An individual artist’s music catalog will sell for $2billion. 

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One of the big indie distributors will go through a dramatic transformation as the industry grapples with issues of streaming fraud, fake artists, AI-generated content, the impact of lesser-known artists on the streaming revenue pool, catalog acquisitions, and the general question: How much music can the market hold?

I don’t know exactly how the landscape will transform, but in the indie aggregator market, things have been mostly business as usual for years. 2025 will mark a transition.

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Taylor Swift will stay home. We won’t hear much from her — besides a couple “Taylor’s Versions” of course. And she will emerge in 2026 to reconquer the world.

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Spotify’s grip on the industry will loosen further, as it becomes cooler and cooler for artists to blossom in some strange corner of the internet first, and then turn to Spotify as mere delivery system for tastes that were established elsewhere. 

This direct-to-fan trend will be supercharged by subscription fatigue among listeners.

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Streaming services will raise more paywalls and in-app style purchases. Want that exclusive live album by your favorite artist? That’ll be an extra few dollars please.

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Gracie Abrams will become a household name. This is according to my daughter. She might already be well on the way towards megastardom, so it’s a safe prediction for 2025. But essentially, she’ll have a year like Chappell Roan did in 2024 and build her future as the next T Swift-style artist in terms of command over an audience.

Predictions for Indie Music and Artists

Will a genre emerge that sounds truly… like the future? I hope so.

Maybe that’s less a prediction than a wish for the year ahead. But it seems that despite endless options and hyper-niches, music tastes and music creation has converged towards a mean. It’s a wide enough mean, sure, but still… it feels like the days of musical revolution are over. When’s the last time you heard something that offended your sense of what music even IS?

It can’t be true that shocking stylistic innovation is over though. Especially with so much technological and geopolitical unrest, and a global exchange of influence. A new sound is bound to emerge that is truly divisive, the way rap was in the 80s, or punk in the 70s, or even dubstep around the change of centuries.

An arresting style that feels unmoored to the average listener. A sound that is surprising, but eventually reshapes music in the 21st century.

I’m ready! Or maybe I’ll be the guy shouting “turn it down; that’s not music.”

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Running a music career like a real business online will get more expensive. Things like email, SMS, Shopify, Squarespace, merch production, your ad budget — it adds up, and prices are going up.  

So perhaps in 2025, artists will do more with less, as a response to price-gouging. Indies will figure out how to get scrappy again. 

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A “new” regional sound will go global.

It won’t be new at all, of course. Not to the practitioners and fans of that genre. But in the same way that K-pop and Latin Music gained global influence over the last 20 years, we’ll start to hear Western Pop music that contains the stylistic elements of some regional music from an unexpected country. 

Any guesses where?