IMS Business Report 2024: the rise of Afro House

As every year, IMS Business Report was one of the highlights of International Music Summit, held at the Mondrian and Hyde hotels in Ibiza from Wednesday, April 24th to Friday, April 26th, 2024. Produced by Mark Mulligan of MIDiA Research, the IMS Business Report 2024 highlighted several elements. The new report builds on the success of previous editions to present the definitive vision of the global dance music industry of today.

IMS Business Report Highlights?

The global electronic music industry grew by 17% in 2023 to reach a value of $11.8 billion

Afro House has come from nowhere to become the 23rd most searched for electronic genres. Across three different sets of data we saw the rise of afro-house, amapiano and other Sub-Saharan African electronic genres – and amapiano is now part of Beatport’s top ten genres.
Techno and House genres still dominate Beatportsales, but Afro House shot up from 18th in Q1 2022 to a high of 9th in Q3 2023. This, coupled with the rise of South Africa as a leading Spotify market for Electronic music, further points to the rising importance of sub-Saharan Africa in electronic music culture.
Mexico, India, and Brazil represent the newer wave of global electronic music markets, but listener numbers are smaller than total population, indicating electronic music culture is still securing a foothold. South Africa, however, has nearly twice as many Electronic listeners as people.
Combined, the 15 leading music companies have already increased revenues to almost double pre-pandemic levels, the fastest growth is still in live, but 2023 was also a boom year for recorded music.
Fandom in 2023 belonged to electronic music, which grew fastest across all key platforms in 2023. This strong growth has seen electronic pass rock on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
DJs are finding the post-COVID world to be one in which gigs are harder to find and they are getting paid less for them (but they would rather be in the studio making music anyway if they could afford to!)
Women and gender-expansive creators are still being treated differently to their male peers in the music business, which often holds them back from fulfilling their potential.
This year saw the first survey of Association For Electronic Music members, with ¾ of respondents saying that they are confident about the coming year.
Independent labels have increased their market share for the fourth consecutive quarter, reaching 31%.