Canada is the World’s Fourth Biggest Music Exporter in 2026
According to Luminate’s mid-year data report for 2026, Canada is also one of the most diverse music consumers in the world, with 90% of its streams coming from 10 different countries of origin. Canada is also the top consumer of music from the U.S.
Drake
Canadian music is making noise worldwide, while Canadian listeners consume music from around the world.
Luminate has released its 2026 mid-year report, tracking changes and trends in music consumption in the U.S. and around the world throughout the first half of the year.
According this year's report, Canada remains one of the biggest forces in the industry, ranking at No. 4 as the top global exporter of music worldwide.
That said, it slips down from its No. 3 spot last year, landing just behind South Korea and ranking behind the U.S. (No. 1) and the U.K. (No. 2). Per the report, South Korea's rise is largely driven by the massive comeback of global K-pop stars BTS and their new album Arirang, which topped the Billboard Canadian Albums chart earlier this year.
Canada currently ranks as one of the countries with the most diverse makeup of its music consumption worldwide, with 90% of its streaming activity pertaining to music from 10 different countries of origin.
That statistic reflects the diversity of the country. Latin music's popularity around the world continues with waves in Canada. Bad Bunny earned his first Canadian No. 1 song and album this year following his Super Bowl halftime show performance. K-pop is huge, with the viral hit "Golden" from the K-Pop Demon Hunters soundtrack also spending five weeks at No. 1 in Canada. BTS has also a had chart-topping comeback. The Punjabi wave has been reaching new heights, with artists like Karan Aujla, Diljit Dosanjh, Cheema Y and Gur Sidhu continuing to rack up more and more chart records and impressive streaming statistics in Canada.
That's not to mention music from south of the border. Canada is the top importer of American music this year, a trend made evident by the domination of U.S. hits on streaming and the Canadian charts. Last year, several chart mainstays by Shaboozey, Bruno Mars and Benson Boone carried over from 2024 onto the 2025 Year-End Canadian Hot 100 Songs chart, powering through a second straight year, along with juggernauts by artists like Taylor Swift.
Canadians are also consuming more music across the board this year, with all formats seeing a significant rise. Compared to 2025, total album consumption is up by 3.2% with an increase of 2.3 million album equivalent units, on-demand audio song streams are up 3.6% with an increase of 2.7 billion streams and physical album sales jump 4.2%, with an additional 100,000 copies sold across albums, CDs and cassettes. In the U.S., BTS and K-pop are driving a key uptick in CD sales, with a 16% overall surge and a 6.7% increase even upon excluding the broader K-pop catalogue.
Last year in Canada, Taylor Swift dominated in physical sales, with her recent album The Life of a Showgirl (2025) landing atop the Billboard 2025 Year-End Top Canadian Album Sales after being out for just two months. Showgirl earned a record sales week in the U.S. which included a whopping 3.5 million physical copies, and her previous album The Tortured Poets Department (2024) stood firm in Canada, landing at No. 2 for 2025 after earning the top spot the previous year. Swift has proven herself as a leader when it comes to blockbuster physical sales in Canada, and BTS is now adding to that plate in 2026.
Just two months post-release, Drake's Iceman is already a clear frontrunner for the best-selling Canadian album of the year, earning its spot as the second best-selling album in Canada so far this year with 178,00 album-equivalent units. It lands right behind Morgan Wallen's I'm the Problem, the top performer in Canada in 2025, which only leads by 3,000 units. Drake earns a fifth non-consecutive week at No. 1 on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart this week, dated July 25.
