Program Drove 24B New Streams

TuneCore, the Believe-owned independent development partner for self-releasing artists, released the fourth edition of its TuneCore Accelerator report on Wednesday (March 25). The annual report offers highlights from the company’s TuneCore Accelerator program, which helps drive discovery and build fan bases for artists who have enrolled.

According to the report, an enhancement to Believe Group’s “proprietary catalog optimizer,” which powers the Accelerator platform, resulted in 24 billion new streams for selected artists over the past year, marking a 17% increase in generated new streams over the previous 12-month period. It adds that Accelerator contributed to more than 2.8 billion “artist discoveries” — meaning the “total number of times TuneCore Accelerator program was the source for a listener to discover an artist” — and 6.8 billion “track discoveries,” i.e., the “total number of times TuneCore Accelerator program was the source for a listener to discover a track.”

Breaking it down by genre, R&B/hip-hop artists enrolled in Accelerator generated 5.4 billion new streams over the past year, while Latin artists generated 3.4 billion, pop artists generated 2.1 billion, electronic/dance artists generated 1.5 billion, Christian/Gospel artists generated 1.3 billion and country generated 1.1 billion. The markets that experienced the most significant growth include Mexico (63% growth), Brazil (35%), the U.S. (33% growth), France (31%), the U.K. (31%) and Germany (26%).

The report adds that more than 14,000 artists earned streaming royalties for the first time via TuneCore Accelerator, while an additional 14,000 surpassed 1 million or more streams for the first time and 500 reached 100 million streams or more. Overall, the report shows that nearly 42,000 artists reached streaming milestones that placed them in the top 25% of all artists streamed across DSPS, while nearly 25% of artists hitting these milestones used TuneCore Accelerator for at least half of their total streams.

Back catalogs also saw growth this year, with tracks released more than 18 months ago generating 24% more revenue than they would have without the program, according to the report.

Brian Miller, chief revenue officer of TuneCore, said in a statement, “In the 20 years since TuneCore was founded, the industry has changed repeatedly — listeners have moved from downloads to streaming, music discovery has shifted primarily from blogs and magazines to playlists and social media trends — but our mission has stayed the same; to help independent artists get their music heard. While simply releasing music no longer guarantees that it will be heard, the fourth installment of the TuneCore Accelerator report shows that TuneCore Accelerator report shows that TuneCore continues to provide the resources necessary for artists who are ready to grow their audience to stand out in a sea of releases, find listeners, increase their streams, and build sustainable, long-term careers.”

According to TuneCore, since launching Accelerator in 2023, the platform has grown to include 515,000 artists and is responsible for more than 50 billion new streams and 15 billion track discoveries.