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What was the song of the summer for 2025?
If you look at different news outlets, social media sites and streaming platforms, you’ll get a lot of answers — but very little consensus. “Ordinary” by Alex Warren came in at No. 1 on Billboard’s Song of the Summer chart. “Love Me Not” by Ravyn Lenae was listed on Spotify’s editorial list as their No. 1. “Hold My Hand” by Jess Glynne, due to the song’s use in the background of a popular audio meme called “Jet2Holiday,” earned the title on TikTok. Nylon said the summer would “go down in infamy” for having no clear winner; Pitchfork noted it’s a “year without a consensus favorite”; and The New York Times summed it up best: There are just “too many niches.”
But it’s not a particularly infamous year, as Nylon put it — it’s part of the new norm. The idea of a musical monoculture is losing power, and there’s data to prove it. According to a Billboard analysis based on Luminate’s midyear reports, the market share of music’s biggest streaming hits has shrunk significantly over the last 10 years. A decade ago, in 2016, the top 10 on-demand audio streaming songs in the U.S. at midyear held 0.16% of the total number of on-demand audio streams overall. In 2025, the top 10 streaming songs in the U.S. hold less than one third of that mark, at 0.05% of the overall market share. As streaming matures, recommendation algorithms improve and listening habits are increasingly driven further away from the mainstream, it’s becoming harder and harder to release a song that hits true ubiquity.
When taking into account the rise of TikTok as a destination for music consumption and discovery, the portrait of what is considered “mainstream” becomes even more confused. At the time the platform took off, around 2019, songs that did well on TikTok largely translated over to streaming success, but based on the divergence between TikTok’s own midyear top songs and that seen on the charts, it increasingly feels like what music works on social media isn’t necessarily the same as what works on streaming.
Mark Mulligan of MIDiA Research predicted this in 2024 with the “bifurcation theory,” arguing that social media sites, like TikTok, “will emerge as a parallel alternative to streaming, rather than simply a feeder for it.” And the research firm’s new report, released Sept. 16, further underscores this, noting that “TikTok is driving more TikTok consumption rather than streaming consumption,” and that close to three-quarters of users who follow artists on TikTok do not explore the artist’s music off platform.
The trend away from the mainstream does not bode well for those in the business of building superstars, or for superstars themselves. In a recent TikTok, Lizzo addressed this problem, saying, “Every major artist — from Lady Gaga to Drake — has dropped albums this year, and yet everyone is saying there’s no song of the summer… No one can serve the masses anymore.”
At a time when practically every song in recorded music history is available for $11.99 a month, music fans no longer feel confined to listening to any particular song. Yesterday’s radio DJs, record store owners and late night show bookers have been replaced by an endless buffet of every song imaginable. But we still need some way to make sense of it all, and that’s where algorithms come in, pushing us further into the niches or back to older “catalog” songs (songs over 18 months old) of which we’re already fond.
There are also more songs released every day now than at any other time in history (around 100,000 songs per day, according to Luminate). With this in mind, it is unsurprising that, from time to time, a definitive Song of the Summer remains elusive, and whatever tops the charts might not be on everyone’s radar.
This idea of fragmentation is not specific to music, of course; it’s something that has seeped into nearly every facet of life online. There was once a handful of network TV shows everyone was watching; now Netflix and YouTube offer endless options. There were once a few trusted news sources to consume; now there are countless online publications, Substack writers, and influencers offering the same information, often with a spin. Consensus politics is breaking apart before our very eyes. In a time of great choice, it seems we all get decision fatigue, often clinging to the comfort of what we already know and believe.
Though the last decade has seen listeners driven further into their own algorithmic rabbit holes, the overall total of U.S. on-demand audio streams grew steadily year-over-year from 2016 to 2025. This benefitted large music companies — like Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and (of course) Spotify — which all went public during this period, in part, due to the good fortunes and growth brought by the medium. The predictability of streaming returns is also a reason why the appetite for the investment in music catalogs has soared. Even though investing in new artists is notoriously risky, the music catalog market for older songs is considered by many on Wall Street to be a stable asset with which to park one’s money.
But now the music industry faces a dilemma — most Americans who want a streaming subscription already have one. According to the RIAA, U.S. subscription revenue growth fell to 5.3% in 2024 from 10.6% in 2023, and growth in subscribers fell to 3.3% from 5.7%. A similar slowdown can also be seen in other mature markets, like the U.K. It’s why companies like Spotify or UMG will often point to their growth strategies in emerging markets, like India or Latin America, on earnings calls to soothe investors’ anxieties.
But it remains to be seen how much value can be extracted from music listeners in countries with less spending power. Music subscription prices in developing nations are listed as far lower than in the U.S., for example, and thus, the royalty rates paid to artists from these countries’ streams are also lower. For services, the costs to publicize their product in new markets is high, and the potential gains might be low.
Simultaneously, while the top 10 streaming songs are losing market share, the top songs on the Billboard Hot 100 (which weights popularity based on a mix of sales, streaming and radio) are experiencing increasingly slow turnover. “Lose Control” by Teddy Swims, for example, is still in the top 10 on the Hot 100 this week and has been on the chart for a record breaking 109 weeks and counting. “Lose Control” and other big songs are lasting Hot 100 hits — and yet they represent an increasingly small piece of the streaming pie than they would have a decade ago.
Where is this all heading? The mainstream will continue to become more diffuse, although there will always be a rare song that still reaches near-total ubiquity. Thankfully for hitmakers, most people aren’t crate diggers, and they want someone (or something) to tell them what to listen to, but the big hits will continue to get a smaller piece of overall market share and will be harder to come by as listeners become increasingly tribal. Radio, once the marker for a true hit song, will continue to become less relevant to younger listeners.
Those in the business of superstars, however, like major music companies, have not taken this lying down. Through savvy tactics like acquiring artist services and distribution companies, and forming joint ventures, the majors have managed to capture this diffusion while offloading work and risk from their balance sheets. Universal chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge has also used his power to encourage a number of streaming services to revamp their royalty models, starting in 2023, to pay what he called “professional artists” better and redirect money away from the longest part of the long tail.