When Music Business Worldwide launched in 2015, streaming was still fighting to prove itself. Spotify had yet to turn a profit, Apple Music didn’t exist, and the recorded music industry was still nursing wounds from a decade of decline.
A lot has changed.
Today, MBW celebrates a milestone: ten years covering one of the most dynamic sectors of global entertainment.
We do so via MBW10: 2015-2025: a specially curated retrospective magazine that chronicles the seismic shifts, landmark deals, and defining moments that have shaped the music business across the past decade.
From the explosion of catalog acquisitions to Universal Music Group‘s historic IPO; from the global growth of the independent sector to fierce industry debates over streaming economics; from executive shake-ups to the emergence of AI as the music biz’s next great disruptor – the magazine revisits the stories that mattered most.
But MBW10 – supported by Chorus TM – is much more than a collection of headlines.
Featuring exclusive year-by-year insight and analysis, the retrospective offers context that only comes from having covered these developments as they unfolded.
It also includes comprehensive annual global data from IFPI, charting the remarkable financial recovery of the recorded music industry.
The past decade has seen worldwide recorded music revenues more than double, driven by streaming’s dominance.
It’s also witnessed the birth of new power players, the return of music as an attractive asset class, and fundamental questions about how artists, labels, and platforms should share the spoils.
MBW has been there for all of it – breaking news, interrogating the numbers, and providing analysis that industry professionals rely on daily.
Whether you’ve followed MBW from the beginning or discovered us more recently, this retrospective offers a chance to revisit the stories that brought us here – and consider where the next decade might take us.
Commemorative physical copies of the magazine are now on their way to global industry leaders as well as MBW+ physical magazine subscribers (just in time for the Holidays).
For everyone else, the book is available to read and download digitally HERE or below.
The final page of MBW10 explains something that the entire MBW team thoroughly believes in:
The music industry makes for great copy – thanks to all of you. Cheers for giving us something interesting to write about every day.
Here’s to the next decade.Music Business Worldwide
