Indie artists are taking over, especially in albums
Image credit: Clay Banks
The latest stats show indies on the rise and making a significant mark in album sales, suggesting great revenue wins for independent artists.
Independent artists are taking over. At least, that’s what all the data suggests in the last decade. In fact, streaming leaders Spotify revealed that independent artists accounted for roughly 50% of their royalty payouts in 2024.
As we move towards the halfway point of 2025, how is the picture looking globally? Thanks to new data from Luminate, we can see that it is actually going really well in a number of different avenues. Independent music accounted for 35% of total music consumption in the U.S. so far this year.
What’s more, indie album sales represent an even larger percentage, making up 40% of overall album sales this year to date. This is fantastic news for independent artists, not only showing a vast percentage in the face of major labels, but also taking a huge share of the profitable album sales portion.
Luminate reveal that, overall, indie labels hold around 35% of the on-demand audio streaming market. However, indies are thriving in genre niches with Country, Latin, Jazz, Dance/EDM, and rock all surpassing 35% for indie market share.
In fact, independent artists are doing incredibly well in Dance and Electronic music where they have a 48% market share for the genre. Closely behind, indies make up 44% of on-demand audio streams for Jazz and 45% of Latin. Country and Rock follow, at 39% and 36% respectively.
However, next to all these successes are two genres where it seems indies are finding it hard to find as much success. Audio streams in the U.S. for R&B and Hip-Hop music have been only 26% indie this year so far. Pop is an even harder genre for indies to crack, with just 16% of pop streams made on independent music – however, indie sensibilities often steer independent artists away from a solid pop genre definition.
Haley Jones, Head of Independents at Luminate Data, writes: “While hip-hop and pop still dominateoverall share, the fact that independent artists in these four other genres command nearly two-fifths of all streaming traffic highlights their continued growth.”