Promusicae says paid subscriptions, vinyl and a consolidated digital market kept Spain’s recorded music business moving higher in the first half of 2026.
Spain’s recorded music market kept climbing in the first half of 2026, with wholesale revenues reaching €181.4 million ($212 million), up 11.6% year over year, according to new figures from trade body Promusicae.
The growth was led by paid subscription streaming, which generated €121 million ($141 million) in the six months to June 30, up 15.1% from the same period in 2025. Subscriptions now represent 66.7% of all recorded music revenue in Spain and 75.4% of the digital market.
Streaming still does the heavy lifting
Promusicae’s numbers are reported at wholesale, or trade value, meaning they reflect what reaches music companies rather than consumer retail spend. On that basis, Spain’s market was worth €181.4 million in H1 2026. At retail value, it came to €321.6 million ($375 million).
Digital revenue accounted for €160.5 million ($187 million), up 10.5% year over year and equal to 88.5% of total recorded music revenue. Streaming made up nearly all of that digital total at €159.6 million ($186 million), up 10.8%.
Within streaming, ad-supported audio rose 7.1% year over year, while ad-supported video fell 8.5%. That reverses the pattern from a year earlier, when ad-supported audio had dropped 15.4% and ad-supported video edged up 1.3%, according to MBW’s reporting on Promusicae’s H1 2025 data.
Permanent downloads were nearly flat, rising just 0.4%. Promusicae said that confirmed “the expansion of access models as opposed to digital ownership ones.”
Vinyl keeps its grip on physical sales
Spain’s physical market also moved higher, rising 20.3% year over year to €20.9 million ($24 million). Vinyl continued to dominate that segment, with revenues up 27.7% to €15.3 million ($18 million), or 73% of physical sales. CD revenue rose 4.3%.
Promusicae also pointed to the longer run of subscription growth in Spain. Paid subscription revenues were €45.1 million in H1 2020 and have climbed 168.2% over the past six years.
Antonio Guisasola, president of Promusicae, said the first-half results “confirm the Spanish recording industry strength” and the sector’s ability to keep creating value through “investment in talent, innovation and development of new business models.” He added that the mix of a more consolidated digital ecosystem and the strength of physical formats, especially vinyl, gives the sector “positive prospectives” for the second half.
Price increases and a still-underserved subscription base
Guisasola also said subscription take-up in Spain remains too low, and that part of the growth in the model is coming from what he called “adjustments on the offer value.”
That matters. Spotify raised its standard Premium plan in Spain from €10.99 to €11.99 per month in the second half of 2025, and the higher price was already visible in the market by early August. Those increases applied across all of H1 2026, while H1 2025 had none of that pricing uplift in the comparison base.
Spain’s overall growth rate has accelerated from the 10.4% year-over-year increase Promusicae reported for H1 2025, even as subscription growth slowed from 18.9% to 15.1%.
For full-year 2025, Promusicae said Spain’s recorded music market grew 13.7% to €409.5 million in wholesale revenue, including sync income and neighboring rights collected by Spanish society AGEDI. On the sales-only basis used for the half-year figures, 2025 generated €343.7 million. Paid subscription streaming rose 19.2% to €214 million, while physical revenues increased 31.6%.
Spain’s pace still outstripped several larger markets. Germany’s trade wholesale revenues rose 5.4% year over year to €670 million ($782 million) in H1 2026, according to BVMI. In the U.S., the RIAA reported 6.9% wholesale recorded music revenue growth for the same period.
The Spanish market has come a long way from its collapse after 2001, when it was the world’s seventh-largest recorded music market. Promusicae has long tied much of the decline that followed to digital piracy. By 2013, the market had fallen about 80% to roughly €124 million on a retail basis, ranking 13th globally, according to IFPI. In 2024, IFPI placed Spain 14th in its Global Music Report 2025.
Guisasola said in March, when Promusicae released its full-year 2025 figures, that record company investment in Spain was “generating returns that bring results back to 2003 levels, making the peaks of 2001 appear within reach.”
