Electronic Music Industry Tops $6 Billion In 2021, Makes Key Strides In Web3: IMS Business Report

According to the newly published annual IMS Business Report 2022, electronic music continues to have an optimistic growth trajectory in a variety of key areas.

As a sector, electronic music was valued at $6 billion in 2021, which is up 71% from 2020, but down 20% from 2019. Throughout the report, encouraging signs of the industry bouncing back in the aftermath of the pandemic continue to be apparent. Metrics including the number of festivals that book electronic artists and the quantity of search results for flights to Ibiza are up significantly year-over-year, but there’s still ground to cover when it comes to achieving the pre-pandemic levels of 2019.

While the world was in a variable state of lockdown over the last two years, dance music made key strides in the digital arena. In 16 of 28 Spotify streaming territories studied, electronic music’s share grew in the Spotify Top 200 charts. Even more impressively, as the downloads market declined 15% as a sector, Beatport countered the trend by posting 13% growth last year. Stylistically, tech house and techno continue to reign supreme on the music marketplace, where they’ve remained dominant over the last three years.

Streaming services were not the only means by which artists connected with fans in the pandemic era. NFTs are playing a revolutionary role in the creator economy, and dance music artists are at the forefront of adoption.

“During the pandemic, the technology skyrocketed… We’ve seen developers push the tech and the use-cases so much—it blows my mind how much it evolved in such a short period of time,” said Chloe Janicki, Head of Web3 for deadmau5‘s 720mau5fund. 

Electronic artists were first on the scene and have become early winners of the trend. According to the report, seven of the top 10 most in-demand artist NFTs are by dance artists the likes of 3LAU, Steve Aoki and more.

Discover the rest of what unfolded in electronic music and where the industry is headed with the full IMS Business Report. Simply sign up here to receive the full download.