19. March 2026
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What’s Up, Country Music in Europe?

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

Is country music a niche genre in Germany? And how is the situation like in Europe? I recently heard a podcast, which briefly touched that topic. While the podcast as such did not really dig deep into this question (and into some other somes…), this point stayed in my mind. Thus, I felt that I should dig a bit deeper. With the help of ChatGPT, I compared a few European countries, looking at their market share for country music. As I guess that this one is the most frequent way to consume music nowadays, I went for an analysis of streaming volumes. Hope you like this small analysis.

Of course, this post solely gives an indication. I also cannot state whether music is categorized into different genres consistently. In Germany, for example, some country music is classified as rock music at promotion agencies. 

 

Streaming by Genre – 2020 and 2024

I felt that comparing country music figures of 2020 and 2024 is a good period to have a look into. 2025 figures are likely not available yet or not in a precise quality. First of all, let’s look into some 2020 and 2024 figures. In this analysis, I did not look at the change in population between 2020 and 2024 and kept it constant instead. I only use it to determine the number of country music streams per inhabitant, so that should have a minor effect. The stream figures in this post are all in billions. Only the number of streams per person are absolute numbers.

 

2020 in Billion Streams
Genre / Country UK Germany France Spain Italy Sweden Netherlands Switzerland
Population / m 69,2 83,5 68,5 48,6 59 10,6 18 8,9
Pop 33 25 32 19 17 9 8 5
Hip-Hop / Rap 22 32 22 12 11 5 10 6
Electronic / EDM 19 53 8 10 7 7 9 5
Rock / Alternative 51 13 6 5 5 3 6 4
Latin / Reggaeton 3 2 6 11 6 1 2 1
Country 2 0,5 0,3 0,2 0,2 0,2 0,2 0,1
Folk / Traditional 1,5 2,5 1,2 1 1,5 1 0,8 1,2
Other 7,5 11 4,5 1,8 7,3 3,8 3 2,7
Total 139 139 80 60 55 30 39 25
Country pct 1,44% 0,36% 0,38% 0,33% 0,36% 0,67% 0,51% 0,40%
Country streams citizen 28,90 5,99 4,38 4,12 3,39 18,87 11,11 11,24

You do see that the U.K. is the biggest country music market in Europe. They lead by total streams, streams per capita and by market share. Sweden has a quite significant country music scene, relatively per capita. They triple Germany. Switzerland and the Netherlands also double Germany in regards of number of streams per person, However, if you look at the figures, for none of the countries in here, country music has a significant market proportion. I also highlighted the most popular genre in each country in red.

 

2024 in Billion Streams

If you look into 2024 figures, things look similarly. The number of country music streams by person did increase significantly in any of the countries I had a look into. However, the market shares did move, but not that significantly. You also have to see that the total number of streams by country increased significantly – something I will have a deeper look into in the next section.

Genre / Country UK Germany France Spain Italy Sweden Netherlands Switzerland
Population / m 69,2 83,5 68,5 48,6 59 10,6 18 8,9
Pop 44 40 53 33 29 12 13 8
Hip-Hop / Rap 36 52 42 24 21 9 16 10
Electronic / EDM 28 99 17 20 13 12 14 7
Rock / Alternative 66 21 11 8 7 5 8 5
Latin / Reggaeton 6 5 10 22 10 2 4 2
Country 3,6 1,2 0,6 0,5 0,4 0,3 0,4 0,2
Folk / Traditional 2,5 4 2 1,5 2,5 1,3 1,4 1,8
Other 13,5 13,8 4,4 1 12,1 3,4 3,2 3
SUM: 199,6 236 140 110 95 45 60 37
Country pct 1,80% 0,51% 0,43% 0,45% 0,42% 0,67% 0,67% 0,54%
Country streams / citizen 52,02 14,37 8,76 10,29 6,78 28,30 22,22 22,47

 

2020 to 2024 Change Analysis

Below is a table of the comparisons of country music streams by the countries I observed, from 2020 to 2024. The changes look massive. Apart from the U.K. and Sweden, all countries have at least doubled this figure. However, there is something I named stream inflation. It is finally the total growth of music streams in the same period. For example, in Germany, this number grew from 139 to 236 billion streams, which is an increase of 69.8%. This also means that if country music would have grown by “just”65% in that period, it would have in fact declined in regards of the market. Thus, I felt you should not compare 2020 to 2024 figures. Instead I applied the effect of stream inflation on the 2020 figure. This is the expected number of country music streams. For all markets but Sweden, there is still a growth – but this one is significantly smaller than you might have felt at first sight.

UK Germany France Spain Italy Sweden Netherlands Switzerland
Country streams abs. + 1,6 + 0,7 + 0,3 + 0,3 + 0,2 + 0,1 + 0,2 + 0,1
Country streams rel. + 80,0% + 140,0% + 100,0% + 150,0% + 100,0% + 50,0% + 100,0% + 100,0%
“Stream Inflation” pct. + 43,6% + 69,8% + 75,0% + 83,3% + 72,7% + 50,0% + 53,8% + 48,0%
Country streams expect.
2024 after “inflation”		 2,9 0,8 0,5 0,4 0,3 0,3 0,3 0,1
abs. after “Stream Inflation” + 0,7 + 0,4 + 0,1 + 0,1 + 0,1 0 + 0,1 + 0,1
rel. after “Stream Inflation” + 25,4% + 41,4% + 14,3% + 36,4% + 15,8% 0% + 30,0% + 35,1%

Is this stream inflation thing a fair way to observe the market? I feel so. On the one hand, you could say that people invest more time and thus money into music. Apart from financial inflation, this might somehow run into the music industry. However, the capacity of radio stations who determine their airplay (hopefully) on the listeners’ demand is limited. And the financial budget of the customer, who is, for example, buying concert tickets, is limited as well.

 

What About Overseas?

I felt it might be interesting to compare these figures to markets overseas. I feel that the biggest country music markets outside Europe are the United States, Canada, and Australia. Thus, I did a brief analysis of them as well. In the regional sub-sections, I put the totals as well as the analysis, into one table. Again, I worked with constant population between 2020 and 2024.

 

Australia

27.5 million Australians likely form a rather small market for country music. However, major acts are going there, despite the presumably large travel costs from North America.

Genre 2020 2024
Pop 12 17
Hip-Hop / Rap 14 21
Electronic / EDM 9 13
Rock / Alternative 16 20
Latin / Reggaeton 3 6
Country 7 10
Folk / Traditional 4 6
Other 5 9
Total 70 102
Country Market share 10,00% 9,80%
Country str/cap in 1000 0,15 0,22
Change in Country streams abs. + 3,0
Country Change in streams rel. + 42,9%
“Stream Inflation” pct. + 45,7%
Country streams expect. 2024 after “inflation” 10,2
abs. after “Stream Inflation” – 0,2
rel. after “Stream Inflation” – 2,0%
With roughly 10 per cent, country music does have a significant market share in Australia. The numbers are larger than the ones in Europe.

 

Canada

I expected that Canada and their 41 million people are the second largest country music market in the world.

Genre 2020 2024
Pop 18 24
Hip-Hop / Rap 22 33
Electronic / EDM 9 12
Rock / Alternative 20 25
Latin / Reggaeton 5 9
Country 14 20
Folk / Traditional 6 8
Other 6 14
Total 100 145
Country Market share 14,00% 13,79%
Country str/cap in 1000 341,46 487,80
Change in Country streams abs. + 6,0
Country Change in streams rel. + 42,9%
“Stream Inflation” pct. + 45,0%
Country streams expect. 2024 after “inflation” 20,3
abs. after “Stream Inflation” – 0,3
rel. after “Stream Inflation” – 1,5%

In Canada, country music is even bigger. However, it was still just the fifth largest genre in 2024. After stream inflation, figures do slightly decrease in here as well.

 

United States

You can expect that the USA is the largest market for country music. However, I did not have a precise feeling how “stream inflation” would hit the market share of the genre and whether there is still growth in it. With 342.2 million inhabitants, the USA is also the largest state by population featured in here.

Genre 2020 2024
Pop 180 220
Hip-Hop / Rap 260 350
Electronic / EDM 70 85
Rock / Alternative 200 240
Latin / Reggaeton 60 120
Country 95 125
Folk / Traditional 25 35
Other 60 225
Total 950 1,400
Country Market share 10,00% 8,93%
Country str/cap in 1000 277,62 365,28
Change in Country streams abs. + 30,0
Country Change in streams rel. + 31,6%
“Stream Inflation” pct. + 47,4%
Country streams expect. 2024 after “inflation” 140,0
abs. after “Stream Inflation” – 15,0
rel. after “Stream Inflation” – 10,7%

Even in the US, country music is “just” the fourth largest genre. However, the 125 billion streams in 2024 are significantly more than the streams of all other countries I dealt in here – summed up! Nonethtless, the share is decreasing, it might soon drop behind Latin music. The market share, however, is smaller than in Canada or Australia, for example.

 

My Conclusion

Country music is a niche in all Europe (which, for me, always includes the Brexitarians and Ireland). Of course, if you are interested in this post, you are likely part of the country music bubble. Even in the US, it might be a traditional, but not an absolutely popular genre, the market share in streaming is less than ten per cent. It might be interesting how country music performs when you go for other metrics, like concert ticket sales or revenue.

Looking at these numbers, I also wonder why the U,K. is (still?) so dominant in their country music concert lineups. The biggest festivals like C2C, The Long Road or Buckle & Boots are there. Some of the big stars tour the U.K., but don’t touch Central European soil. Maybe the genre needs some more grassroots work. But at one point, it needs to pay back.

 

Sources

Here are some of the sources given by ChatGPT during my research:

Cover Picture taken from my C2C 2026 in Berlin coverage.

 

All “classic” blog posts

No reviews – just debating and certain topics. These are my “traditional” blog posts in the categories Just blogging, Just blogging on music and Sports Blogging:

 

Country Music 2026

Here are all my postings related to country music published in 2026:

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