Goldman Sachs still expects AI's royalty-pool dent to be tiny

The system

Music-catalogue buyers and streaming investors have leaned on one bank's annual forecast for years to size the industry's future. Goldman Sachs Research analysts Eric Sheridan and Stephen Laszczyk, with colleagues including Lisa Yang, publish 'Music in the Air' most years; the 2025 edition was released 3 June 2025, and Goldman Sachs summarized its findings in its own Insights article, published 28 August 2025, headlined 'Global Music Revenues Are Forecast to Double to $200 Billion in 2035.' The underlying 91-page report and its figures are Goldman Sachs's own modelled projections, not observed outcomes or an independent audit of the industry.

What the documents establish

Goldman's own article states that global music-industry revenue grew only 6.2% in 2024, down from 15.6% in 2023, the first year revenues fell short of the bank's prior expectations since it began forecasting the market. The revised forecast projects revenue nearly doubling from $105 billion in 2024 to close to $200 billion by 2035, driven by different factors than the last decade: new streaming markets, video-and-audio bundling, and 'superfan' monetization. On AI, coverage of the underlying report by Music Business Worldwide quotes the bank's analysis that 'AI music accounts for 0.1% of the royalty pool,' while noting daily track uploads fell year-on-year in 2024 despite growing AI-app availability. The coverage cites the report's call for 'ongoing concerted efforts among the large music players' to evolve royalty structures, alongside Deezer and Sony Music figures on AI uploads and takedowns the analysts folded into their read of the risk.

Craft and rights

For an independent artist or a label finance team, the practical takeaway is that Goldman's own analysts do not currently model AI-generated music as a material drag on royalty pools, a claim about market share, not about whether any specific AI-generated track infringes anyone's rights. That distinction matters: a 0.1% royalty-pool share, as this report's own analysts frame it, describes an economic estimate at one point in time, not a rights determination, and it says nothing about individual disputes like the label lawsuits against Suno and Udio running in parallel. This is an editorial caution against treating a bank's revenue model as evidence about copyright law.

Outcomes and open questions

Goldman's own report revised its ad-supported streaming growth forecast down, from 11.3% to 5.7% CAGR for 2025 to 2030, citing macroeconomic pressure, a reminder that even this bank's confident-sounding topline numbers move between editions. Whether AI's royalty-pool share stays near the estimate this report cites, as more platforms report their own AI-upload figures, is exactly what future editions will need to update.

• Is a forecast you are citing this bank's modelled projection, or an observed, already-reported outcome?
• Would a rising AI-upload share at platforms like Deezer change this report's 0.1% estimate in the next edition?
• What license terms would you want in place before an AI royalty pool becomes large enough to matter to your income?

A forecast that AI's revenue impact is currently small is not a forecast that it will stay small, and Goldman's own report frames its numbers as a snapshot analysts expect to keep revising.