Christopher BarrettThe global dance music business enjoyed a 17% year-on-year rise in revenue in 2023, with festivals and clubs playing a major role in boosting income, according to the IMS Business Report 2024.
The annual study of the electronic music industry by Mark Mulligan and MIDiA Research, for the IMS Ibiza 2024 conference, valued the dance music industry at $11.8 billion last year. It found that festivals and clubs continue to play a dominant role in the sector, representing nearly half of the industry’s total revenue last year, while companies in the live sector enjoyed a collective 35% rise in revenue.
Among the other findings of the research was that dance music fans spend 31% more on live music, compared to the average consumer, while South Africa is an emergent hotspot for electronic music. As an example of the burgeoning interest in the genre, the report states that Belgian festival Tomorrowland’s TikTok LIVE reached 16m unique viewers across both of the event’s weekends, resulting in Tomorrowland becoming the biggest festival account on TikTok with 5.7m followers.
Of the survey respondents working in the live sector, 63% reported an increase in attendance at events last year, while 66% saw the number of events increase.
Mulligan said, “2022 was an unusual year, in that it reflected the post-pandemic bounce back effect for live. There was a risk that 2023 would struggle to live up to those inflated expectations, but instead the electronic music industry grew strongly once again, with impressive growth across virtually all of its constituent parts. What is more, electronic music culture grew its fan bases faster than other leading genres, in part due to the rapid rise of African music and fans, illustrating the growing cultural footprint of electronic music culture and its vibrant global scenes.”