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For more than a decade, SourceAudio has operated at the center of the sync ecosystem, supporting music discovery and licensing across television, streaming networks, and broadcast media. Today, the platform hosts more than 2,700 music catalogs representing over 34 million songs, with full metadata, rights context, and performance tracking.
Serving as a primary music pipeline for broadcast and streaming networks across the United States, SourceAudio sits at the intersection of discovery, licensing, and real-world usage. That position provides a clear view into how music moves into media, and how those decisions play out once content reaches audiences.
2025 marked a turning point
for the sync industry.
Music decisions at scale were no longer driven purely by creative instinct or anecdotal trends. Instead, they were increasingly shaped by observable performance signals, platform behavior, and downstream outcomes across television, streaming, radio, and digital media.
Macro Trends in 2025
Sync activity on the SourceAudio platform continued to scale in 2025, reflecting both increased usage and a broader expansion of available music. Total downloads rose significantly year over year, increasing from roughly 60 million in 2024 to more than 95 million in 2025, while overall plays also climbed.
At the same time, the size and diversity of the catalog expanded meaningfully. Total tracks on the platform grew from approximately 28 million to more than 34 million, with unique tracks increasing by over 4 million year over year. This growth reflects not just volume, but a wider range of music being made available and actively used across television and broadcast workflows.
Together, these shifts supported a more blended, pragmatic approach to sourcing music, shaped less by category labels and more by how quickly and effectively a track could serve a specific creative need.
How Buyers Search and Select Music
One of the clearest shifts in 2025 was how buyers approached discovery.
Search behavior increasingly prioritized mood, energy, pacing, and emotional intent over traditional genre labels. Creative teams searched for how music should feel and function, not what genre it belonged to. This change reflected how storytelling itself is evolving across fragmented attention environments and multi-format distribution.
From sustained platform search behavior, several consistent patterns emerged.
Moods That Over-Indexed by Month in 2025
