Global Stock Music Market - Focus Report 2025–2030

STOCK MUSIC MARKET SIZE & MARKET SHARE

The global stock music market was valued at USD 1.45 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 2.40 billion by 2030, expanding at a CAGR of 8.77% during the forecast period. The market’s growth and expanding revenue share are driven by the rising demand for licensed music across digital content platforms, particularly in advertising, social media, gaming, and podcast production. Businesses, creative professionals, and agencies increasingly rely on stock music libraries to streamline content creation, simplify licensing, and maintain a consistent brand identity across multiple channels, strengthening the commercial licensing market share.

Stock music has become an essential component of modern creative workflows, contributing significantly to the overall platform market share. Organizations widely use stock music to support video marketing campaigns, corporate communications, mobile content, and e-learning materials, while individual creators drive growth in the independent creator segment market share through YouTube videos, social media content, and podcasts. The availability of extensive catalogues, advanced search and filtering tools, and transparent commercial-use licensing enhances user adoption and reinforces the subscription-based stock music market share.

The competitive landscape is shaped by leading stock music providers holding a substantial global market share, alongside emerging platforms catering to niche and regional demand. The market is further influenced by the growing adoption of AI-generated and customizable music solutions, which are expanding catalogue diversity and increasing the AI-powered stock music segment share. These innovations allow users to tailor music by mood, duration, and style, improving efficiency and strengthening customer retention rates across platforms.

From a regional perspective, North America dominates the stock music market share, supported by a strong digital media ecosystem and high content production volumes, while Europe holds a significant share due to widespread adoption in advertising and film production. Meanwhile, Asia-Pacific is expected to witness the fastest growth rate, increasing its regional market share as social media content creation, gaming, and digital marketing activities accelerate. Overall, the market’s evolution reflects intensifying competition, platform differentiation, and sustained expansion across both professional and creator-driven segments.

STOCK MUSIC MARKET NEWS

1. Getty Images, which also manages iStock and Unsplashed, operates one of the world’s largest commercial visual-media libraries. In January 2025, Getty Images and Shutterstock announced a merger valued at approximately $3.7 billion, creating one of the most extensive combined content platforms in the creative industry.
2. Shutterstock completed the acquisition of Envato in July 2024, integrating Envato Elements into its platform and expanding its subscriber base to approximately 1.15 million. Envato’s platform brought a large library of creative assets, including design templates, audio, video, and stock-media content.
3. Before acquisition, Envato operated a global marketplace spanning digital assets, templates, audio, and video, supported by its widely used learning platform Envato Tuts+, which serves a large international audience of creators and learners.
4. Pond5, acquired by Shutterstock, retained its strong identity as a specialist in video and audio stock, supported by over 115,000 contributors across 180 countries and generating about 2.5 million fresh uploads every month into the combined platform.
5. Musicbed remains an independent, premium music-licensing platform offering a curated catalogue of over 70,000 pre-cleared songs and global licensing reach across 167 countries. It targets filmmakers, advertisers, agencies, and production studios, positioning itself as a high-quality, brand-trusted alternative to generic stock-music libraries.

IMPACT OF US & CHINA TRADE WAR

1. In 2025, global trade policies affected technology infrastructure more than digital content, yet these changes still produced indirect impacts on the stock music market. The United States increased tariffs on several technology-related imports from China and India, including servers, networking equipment, and IT-support services. While these measures did not target digital licensing or online content platforms, they raised backend infrastructure costs for stock music providers that rely on large cloud libraries to host and deliver audio tracks.
2. Trade tensions between India and the United States in August 2025 further increased duties on selected IT services. As a result, some technology firms reconsidered outsourcing and support agreements. Stock music platforms that work with Indian partners for tasks such as metadata tagging, AI-assisted music classification, or customer support saw slight cost adjustments and slower vendor negotiations. However, licensing operations, catalogue availability, track delivery speeds, and creator onboarding continued normally.
3. Overall, 2025 trade policies introduced moderate cost pressure on cloud and technical operations, but the core functioning of the global stock music ecosystem remained stable.

STOCK MUSIC TRENDS & DRIVERS

1. AI-driven platforms are rapidly expanding stock music libraries by enabling large-scale, automated music creation. Tools such as Suno had generated more than 10 million user-created songs by mid-2024, demonstrating how AI systems can accelerate catalogue growth far beyond traditional production timelines.
2. AI is increasingly being adopted as a creative co-pilot for professional musicians, assisting with rapid composition and ideation that artists later refine into finished tracks. This hybrid creation model improves productivity while preserving artistic control, effectively combining the efficiency of automation with human creativity.
3. Music culture is playing a growing role in audio-led marketing, with brands increasingly adopting sound-based identities across advertising, mobile applications, and gaming platforms. Stock music libraries provide pre-cleared, ready-to-use tracks that help businesses establish consistent sonic branding without the high costs and time commitments associated with custom music composition.
4. The expanding adoption of IoT and wearable technologies, including voice assistants such as Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri, is further accelerating demand for sound-driven interactions. With global smart speaker shipments surpassing 700 million units in 2024, new opportunities are emerging for stock audio cues, sound effects, and branded tones across connected and voice-enabled environments.

INDUSTRY RESTRAINTS

The stock music market is becoming increasingly complex due to the rapid expansion of available tracks and sound assets. As libraries grow at scale, creators often struggle to discover high-quality and distinctive audio that precisely aligns with their project requirements. This oversupply lengthens discovery time and elevates the need for advanced curation, accurate metadata, and intelligent search capabilities.

Silent autoplay on social media has reshaped video consumption, reducing reliance on sound. Publishers rely on captions, visuals, and animation to ensure engagement without audio. While convenient for mobile-first users, this shift sidelines sound’s role in storytelling, challenging brands to deliver compelling, dual-mode content experiences that engage with or without audio.​

STOCK MUSIC MARKET SEGMENTATION INSIGHTS

INSIGHT BY PRODUCT

Sound effects represent the fastest-growing category within the global stock audio and digital media assets market, driven by expanding demand across gaming, film and television, corporate media, mobile applications, UX/UI design, and educational content. As immersive audio becomes central to digital storytelling, sound effects play a critical role in enhancing realism, emotional impact, and user engagement.

Modern sound effects libraries span a wide range of assets, including ambient soundscapes, environmental recordings, cinematic hits, transitions, UI pings, and interface feedback sounds. These elements enable creators to build immersive experiences across diverse digital environments, from AAA video games and feature films to branded corporate videos and interactive applications.

INSIGHT BY END-USER

The end-user segment of the stock music market includes large enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and individual creators, each utilizing stock music in distinct ways.

Small and medium-sized enterprises represent the largest segment of businesses globally. Within the stock music market, SMEs are key demand drivers, as they typically seek cost-efficient and flexible licensing models to support ongoing marketing and content creation needs.

Market dynamics indicate that SME marketing budgets remain relatively modest, generally ranging between USD 5,000 and USD 30,000 annually. Insights from Artlist and Epidemic Sound (2024) highlight a strong preference among SMEs for subscription-based licensing models, such as monthly or annual bundles. These plans enable predictable pricing, streamlined campaign planning, and reduced exposure to fluctuating per-track licensing costs.

INSIGHT BY LICENSE

The licensing landscape is bifurcated between rights-managed licensed models and royalty-free subscription models, representing two distinct monetization approaches. Rights-managed licensing primarily caters to enterprises that require scalability, territorial control, and exclusivity, whereas royalty-free subscriptions prioritize affordability, speed, and ease of use for individual creators and SMEs.

Licensed models are built around synchronization, performance, and mechanical rights, forming the foundation of professional media and commercial content production. According to IFPI, performance royalties accounted for a significant share of global recorded music revenues in 2023, underscoring their central role in the music licensing ecosystem.

Contract structures are predominantly short-term, typically spanning one to two years or structured on a per-campaign basis. This approach provides flexibility for clients with evolving project requirements. Perpetual licenses remain uncommon, as they entail higher upfront costs and offer limited long-term revenue visibility for producers, despite providing extended usage rights to licensees.

INSIGHT BY APPLICATION

The stock music market by application type is divided into digital content, traditional media, corporate communications, and others, with the others category covering gaming, live events, and education. Each subsegment shows unique usage patterns, licensing practices, and growth drivers.​

The digital content segment dominates and holds the largest share in 2024. Digital content is driven by creators on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, who require stock tracks to support daily or weekly video publishing. Their preference for cleared, subscription-based libraries make this the fastest growing subsegment of the market.​

Live events and education under others use stock music to build atmosphere and improve clarity in conferences, lectures, and online courses. Schools and training providers typically adopt royalty-free tracks due to tight budgets, while event organizers select thematic cues for ceremonies and corporate gatherings.

STOCK MUSIC MARKET GEOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS

North America accounted for more than 50% of global stock music market revenues in 2024, supported by the strong presence of leading licensing platforms such as Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, Getty Images, and Music bed. The region benefits from high digital advertising spend, robust enterprise-level video production, and a well-established creator economy, all of which drive steady demand for licensed music. Seamless integration of stock music libraries with professional editing software and cloud-based creative tools further streamlines adoption across agencies, production studios, and corporate teams, reinforcing North America’s position as the largest commercial hub for stock music.

Asia-Pacific is the fastest-growing region in the global stock music market and is projected to register a CAGR of 9.43% during the forecast period, driven by rapid expansion in video production, streaming services, gaming, and online marketing across key countries. High volumes of content creation in India, China, and Southeast Asia are increasing demand for affordable, rights-cleared music tracks.

While average pricing in the region remains lower than in North America, Asia-Pacific benefits from a vast and expanding audience base, rising professional content output, and growing awareness of copyright compliance. These factors position APAC as a strong long-term growth engine for the global stock music market.

STOCK MUSIC MARKET VENDOR LANDSCAPE

The global stock music market is shaped by major platforms such as Shutterstock, Getty Images, Envato, Pond5, and Music bed. Alongside these, subscription-focused providers including Epidemic Sound and Artlist contribute to a competitive landscape that is increasingly consolidated yet remains diverse in business models and offerings.

Market agencies continue to operate under single-artist, community-driven, or mass-contributor frameworks. More recently, a hybrid model has gained traction—exemplified by Artlist and Epidemic Sound—where AI-powered metadata tagging is combined with human curation to accelerate catalogue expansion and enhance content discoverability.

Competitive differentiation centres on catalogue depth, pricing strategies, curated versus open libraries, and contributor engagement. Platforms strive to balance royalty-free accessibility with exclusivity and premium custom licensing, as customer demand shifts toward bundled creative assets spanning music, video, and design.

Independent and community-based platforms strengthen their market positions through tightly curated libraries and transparent contributor compensation structures. Many also target niche segments such as cinematic scoring, trailer music, and game-ready soundtracks, appealing to professional creators who prioritize quality and originality over sheer volume.

Multi-brand groups extend market reach by integrating stock marketplaces with learning platforms and creator communities. Strategic combinations—such as Shutterstock and Envato—bring together content libraries, educational resources, and global creator networks to drive subscription retention and long-term engagement.

Licensing transparency, copyright protection, and equitable revenue-sharing models remain central to platform innovation. Companies continue to enhance search functionality, deploy AI-driven discovery tools, and invest in personalization features that simplify track selection and improve creative workflow efficiency.

Epidemic Sound and Artlist retain strong competitive positions through subscription-only models, differentiated by extensive original catalogues, predictable pricing structures, and simplified royalty management. These platforms increasingly position themselves as streamlined alternatives to larger, multi-asset global content marketplaces.