You’d think it would be a straightforward question, but the trouble lies in how you define “released”. Most data sources and quoted figures include multiple identical versions of songs and albums, often released in multiple formats (vinyl, CD, digitial) and regions. They may also include special editions, re-releases or live versions. Unfortunately, the fraction of songs that are duplicated in this way isn’t constant through time – in some years, the vast majority of music was released on vinyl only, but in other years it was a mixture of vinyl, CD and digitial downloads. There’s also no guarantee that any particular data source is complete for all countries and regions beyond the US and Europe. If you want to know how many individual, unique songs were released each year, you’ll find it hard to get a satisfactory answer.

I wanted to look up a quick answer for a completely different blog post, but it quickly became apparent that this was a question that would be much easier to ask than answer. This post by G.C. Stein was the most comprehensive discussion that I found on the subject. The author did an advanced search on Discogs, a vast database of audio recordings and releases, limiting the search to Master releases in the US on the CD format. This was to avoid counting duplicates and re-releases, etc., and 2000 was chosen as an ideal year because CD was the dominant format at the time.

However, I wasn’t satisfied to stop with data from only one year. I realised that while no approach was going to be perfect, I hoped that the number of US albums would work as a decent proxy for the amount of music released, at least prior to widespread music streaming.

The short answer

I searched Discogs for the number of “Master” “Album” “US” releases for each year from 1965 to 2024. While this was the most consistent search term I could come up with, there is no guarantee of there being no duplicates, especially in years where multiple formats (e.g. vinyl, cassette and CDs) were dominant, and I would advise against using the numbers without understanding the context. The results are shown in the graph above and the raw data can be downloaded here.

The long answer

In the graph it is clear that my choice in search term of “Album” was not perfect. If it was perfect, you would not see strong features that can be linked to changes in the main release format (e.g. the transition from vinyl to CD). Since a more careful approach would have required extra information I don’t have easy access to, for example, the market share of each format over time, I decided to leave it there.

While it’s not completely accurate in answering the question, it still makes for an interesting graph. You can clearly see the emergence of CDs in the late 1980s, and a small downturn in number of releases at the turn of the milennium marks the effective death of vinyl releases, with albums no longer being released in both formats. From 2010, numbers rise again, much of which is likely duplicate entries attributable to the growth of digital releases (iTunes etc.) and resurgence of vinyl.

The number of albums released per year peaked in 2016 with 5,783. Assuming 10 songs per album would therefore suggest 57,830 individual tracks were released that year, or 158 songs per day. After this point, the influence of streaming and TikTok on the music industry seems to have changed everything. As of 2022, Spotify uploads in the region of 50 to 100 thousand tracks every day – though this contains a vast number of re-releases and should be taken with a pinch of salt. Nevertheless, the barrier to releasing music has never been lower, the album is/isn’t dead, and AI slop music is on the rise.

To summarise, I’m honestly not sure how to get a satisfactory answer to “how much music is released each year?” without putting in a lot of extra research and care. And considering the current trends in the music industry, I think it’s only going to get harder.