Fortnite’s Remix: The Finale pulled more than 14 million concurrent players into a 15-minute virtual concert in 2024, the largest in-game concert Epic Games has ever recorded, yet the paid side of the livestream business has gone the other way: Japan’s ticketed online live market fell 36.7% to 29.5 billion yen in 2023 (Pia Research Institute, Online Live Market Survey 2024). Free, platform-funded shows took the audience instead, with BTS’s comeback concert reaching 18.4 million Netflix viewers in March 2026 (Netflix, BTS The Comeback Live release 2026) and Tomorrowland’s TikTok livestream drawing more than 74 million unique viewers in 2025 (TikTok Newsroom, Tomorrowland 2025). Meanwhile the hybrid format of virtual performers in a physical venue keeps selling real tickets, with ABBA Voyage moving 1.06 million of them in 2024. We aggregated data from Pia Research Institute, Epic Games, Roblox, Netflix, TikTok, HYBE and Weverse, Luminate, Companies House filings, and peer-reviewed studies in Scientific Reports, Frontiers in Psychology and the Journal of Innovation & Knowledge. For what fans pay at the door of an in-person show, see our separate roundup of concert ticket pricing statistics; this page covers the screen side of the concert business.
TL;DR
- Japan’s paid online live ticket sales fell 36.7% to 29.5 billion yen in 2023 (Pia Research Institute, Online Live Market Survey 2024).
- Fortnite’s Remix: The Finale drew more than 14 million concurrent players in 2024 (Epic Games, Fortnite post via The Ticketing Business 2024).
- Bruno Mars hit 12,862,161 peak concurrent users at a Roblox concert in January 2026 (Roblox, via Pollstar 2026).
- BTS The Comeback Live: Arirang reached 18.4 million viewers on a Live+1 basis (Netflix, March 2026).
- Tomorrowland’s 2025 TikTok livestream reached more than 74 million unique viewers, up from 16 million in 2023 (TikTok Newsroom, August 2025).
- Artists ran 6,558 Weverse LIVE sessions in 2025, totalling more than 1 billion views (Weverse 2025 Fandom Trend Report, via Music Business Worldwide).
- ABBA Voyage sold 1.06 million tickets in 2024 (Aniara Ltd, Companies House filing via Music Business Worldwide 2025).
- 59% of super fans would attend a virtual performance, against 24% of the general population (Luminate, Music Forecast 2025).
- Live concertgoers showed a higher mean heart rate than livestream viewers, beta = 4.11 (95% CI 0.09 to 8.12), p = 0.045 (Becker et al., Scientific Reports 2026).
- Real-time livestreams scored 2.97 on social connection versus 2.50 for pre-recorded concerts, p < 0.001 (Swarbrick et al., Frontiers in Psychology 2021).
1. Paid Livestream Tickets After the Boom: Japan’s Benchmark
Japan is one of the very few markets where a research body (the research arm of ticketing company Pia) publishes a yearly estimate of ticketed online concert sales, which makes it the cleanest test of what happened to paid livestreams once venues reopened. The answer: the market shrank by 36.7% in a single year, to 29.5 billion yen in 2023, while Japan’s in-person live market went on to a record high in 2024. Paid streaming did not collapse to zero. It contracted into a smaller, more committed audience.
The spend figures tell the second half of the story. Participation slipped to 12.6% of people aged 15 to 69, but the Pia Research Institute release says average annual ticket spend per participant has risen year after year. Fewer people buy, and those who stay buy more: the classic shape of a niche that has found its core customers. The survey behind these numbers covered 10,001 respondents nationwide.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Japan paid online live market (domestic ticket sales for ticketed online concerts and stage shows), 2023 | 29.5 billion yen (295 oku yen) | Pia Research Institute, Online Live Market Survey 2024 |
| Change in that market, 2023 vs 2022 | -36.7% | Pia Research Institute, Online Live Market Survey 2024 |
| Share of people aged 15 to 69 who joined a paid online live event, 2023 | 12.6% (0.7 points lower than 2022) | Pia Research Institute, Online Live Market Survey 2024 |
| Average annual spend per participant on paid online music events, 2023 | 9,453 yen | Pia Research Institute, Online Live Market Survey 2024 |
| Average annual spend per participant on paid online stage events, 2023 | 10,620 yen | Pia Research Institute, Online Live Market Survey 2024 |
| Japan in-person live entertainment market (music and stage, online excluded), 2024 | 760.5 billion yen (7,605 oku yen), +10.9% year on year | Pia Research Institute, Live Entertainment Market 2024 Final Figures (2025) |
Context note: the in-person figure comes from a separate release of June 24, 2025, which states explicitly that online live events are excluded, so the two rows cannot be added together. Most recent available data for the online market: 2023 figures, published April 25, 2024.
2. In-Game Concerts: Fortnite and Roblox Audiences
In-game concerts are not a ticket business: they are free, short, and paid for by the platform and its partners. What they deliver is concurrency, meaning the number of people inside the same virtual show at the same moment. The Fortnite record moved from 12.3 million concurrent players in 2020 to more than 14 million in 2024, a modest gain over four years. The ceiling looks less like a growth curve and more like a plateau set by the size of the game’s own player base, and the record show itself lasted just 15 minutes.
Roblox shows the newer playbook. The Bruno Mars show on January 17, 2026 ran inside Steal a Brainrot, a user-made game that already had huge traffic, rather than inside a purpose-built venue. Roblox also claims more than 53 million views of related content on social video, according to Pollstar’s report on the concert. Concerts now ride on existing audiences instead of building new ones.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Peak concurrent players, first show of Travis Scott’s Astronomical in Fortnite (April 2020) | 12.3 million | Epic Games, via PocketGamer.biz 2020 |
| Unique players who attended at least one of the five Astronomical showings | 27.7 million | Epic Games, via PocketGamer.biz 2020 |
| Total attendances across the five Astronomical showings, repeat visits included | 45.8 million | Epic Games, via PocketGamer.biz 2020 |
| Peak concurrent players, Remix: The Finale in Fortnite (2024) | more than 14 million | Epic Games, Fortnite post via The Ticketing Business 2024 |
| Estimated extra viewers of Remix: The Finale on outside livestreams | more than 3 million | Epic Games, Fortnite post via The Ticketing Business 2024 |
| Peak concurrent users, Bruno Mars concert in Roblox (January 17, 2026) | 12,862,161 | Roblox company claim, via Pollstar 2026 |
| Limited-edition virtual collectibles claimed by Bruno Mars concert attendees | more than 5.4 million | Roblox company claim, via PocketGamer.biz 2026 |
Outlier note: all concurrency figures are self-reported by the platforms. The 2020 totals were reported by PocketGamer.biz from Fortnite’s official account, and the 2024 record came from a Fortnite social post quoted by The Ticketing Business. Third-party trackers quoted a more precise 14.3 million for the 2024 show, while the official post said only “more than 14 million”.
3. Free Platform Mega-Streams: Netflix, TikTok and Broadcasters
The largest livestream concert audiences of 2025 and 2026 share one feature: the viewer paid nothing extra. In each case a platform or broadcaster carried the show and used it to win attention for its own service. Tomorrowland’s TikTok livestream reached more than 74 million unique viewers in 2025, up from 16 million in 2023, which is more than four times the earlier audience (74 divided by 16 is about 4.6). That is the opposite direction from Japan’s ticketed streams (see section 1).
Netflix used the same logic for BTS. Its release on the comeback show counts viewers on a Live+1 basis, which means people who watched live plus those who watched during the following day. The rights side is not free for anyone else, though: platforms that do not hold a licence still mute music in live streams at scale, as our roundup of automated muting in live streams shows. YouTube, whose Coachella partnership reaches 15 years in April 2027, renewed its exclusive livestream deal through 2030 but published no viewer total, saying only that 2026 set a record for simultaneous viewers (YouTube Official Blog, 2026).
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Global viewers of BTS The Comeback Live: Arirang, live plus the next day (March 21, 2026 show) | 18.4 million | Netflix, BTS The Comeback Live release 2026 |
| Countries where the BTS livestream entered Netflix’s weekly Top 10 | 80 | Netflix, BTS The Comeback Live release 2026 |
| Countries where the BTS livestream ranked number one | 24 | Netflix, BTS The Comeback Live release 2026 |
| Unique viewers of Tomorrowland’s TikTok livestreams across both 2025 weekends | more than 74 million | TikTok Newsroom, Tomorrowland 2025 |
| Tomorrowland TikTok livestream viewers in 2023 (previous record) | 16 million | TikTok Newsroom, Tomorrowland 2025 |
| Views of Tomorrowland content on TikTok during the two festival weeks of 2025 | more than 2.4 billion | TikTok Newsroom, Tomorrowland 2025 |
| Glastonbury 2023 streams across BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds | 50.3 million | BBC figures, via CSI Magazine 2023 |
| Change in those Glastonbury streams, 2023 vs 2022 | +47% | BBC figures, via CSI Magazine 2023 |
Context note: TikTok’s Tomorrowland 2025 release also reports that partner artists gained 3 million followers and more than 580 million video views on festival content. The Glastonbury figures are the most recent BBC totals we could verify (Most recent available data: BBC, 2023).
4. K-pop and Fandom Platforms: Where the Concert Stream Became a Habit
K-pop is where the concert stream held on longest, because the fan platform can own most of the chain: the ticket, the payment, the player and the audience data. The benchmark is still pandemic-era: BTS’s Bang Bang Con: The Live drew 756,000 viewers from 107 countries on June 14, 2020, the Guinness World Records title for a concert livestream on a bespoke (purpose-built) platform. Luminate later cited 49 million viewers for BTS’s 2022 concert via the Weverse livestream, a reminder of how differently “viewers” can be counted from one release to the next.
The 2025 numbers show what the livestream became: a fan-engagement habit that feeds the touring business rather than replacing it. Artists hosted 6,558 Weverse LIVE sessions (artist broadcasts to fans inside the Weverse app) in 2025, and HYBE’s in-person concert revenue rose 69.4% the same year, according to Music Business Worldwide’s report on HYBE’s 2025 results.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Viewers of BTS’s Bang Bang Con: The Live stream (June 14, 2020) | 756,000 | Guinness World Records 2020 |
| Countries those viewers came from | 107 | Guinness World Records 2020 |
| Weverse LIVE artist broadcast sessions in 2025 | 6,558 | Weverse 2025 Fandom Trend Report, via Music Business Worldwide 2026 |
| Total views of those Weverse LIVE sessions in 2025 | more than 1 billion | Weverse 2025 Fandom Trend Report, via Music Business Worldwide 2026 |
| Average monthly time a fan spent on Weverse in 2025 | 263 minutes | Weverse 2025 Fandom Trend Report, via Music Business Worldwide 2026 |
| Peak Weverse monthly active users in 2025 | 12 million | Weverse 2025 Fandom Trend Report, via Music Business Worldwide 2026 |
| HYBE in-person concert revenue, fiscal 2025 | 763.9 billion won, +69.4% year on year | HYBE FY2025 investor filing, via Music Business Worldwide 2026 |
Context note: HYBE’s investor presentation put Weverse at 11.2 million monthly active users in the fourth quarter of 2025, below the 12 million peak, so the two figures describe different time windows rather than a conflict.
5. Avatar Residencies and VR Concerts: The Hybrid Ticket
The most commercially successful “virtual concert” is not streamed at all. ABBA Voyage puts digital avatars of the band on stage inside a purpose-built London arena, so fans buy a physical ticket to watch virtual performers. It sold 1.06 million tickets in 2024, only slightly below 1.1 million in 2023, according to operator Aniara Ltd’s Companies House filing reported by Music Business Worldwide. The format holds demand in its third year, but profit is thinning as ticket revenue edges down.
Fully simulated VR concerts, where the whole show is watched through a headset rather than in a room, have a far vaguer price point. A 2025 survey in the Journal of Innovation & Knowledge found answers scattered across the price scale, and monthly income was the strongest driver of willingness to pay (beta = 0.663, p < 0.001), ahead of purchase intention.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| ABBA Voyage tickets sold, 2024 | 1.06 million | Aniara Ltd, Companies House filing via Music Business Worldwide 2025 |
| ABBA Voyage tickets sold, 2023 | 1.1 million | Aniara Ltd, Companies House filing via Music Business Worldwide 2025 |
| ABBA Voyage total turnover, 2024 | 104.34 million pounds, +0.6% year on year | Aniara Ltd, Companies House filing via Music Business Worldwide 2025 |
| ABBA Voyage turnover from ticket sales, 2024 | 99.65 million pounds, -1.9% year on year | Aniara Ltd, Companies House filing via Music Business Worldwide 2025 |
| ABBA Voyage pre-tax profit, 2024 | 4.22 million pounds, -30.5% year on year | Aniara Ltd, Companies House filing via Music Business Worldwide 2025 |
| Respondents in a willingness-to-pay survey on fully simulated VR concerts (57.2% in Turkey, 42.8% in Germany) | 152 | Bär, Boyacıoğlu and Kurscheidt, Journal of Innovation & Knowledge 2025 |
| Most frequently chosen price band for a fully simulated VR concert | 35 to 39.99 euros, chosen by 10.53% of respondents | Bär, Boyacıoğlu and Kurscheidt, Journal of Innovation & Knowledge 2025 |
| Share of respondents in the cluster that rejects VR concerts | 14.47%, and 59.09% of that group would pay 0 to 4.99 euros | Bär, Boyacıoğlu and Kurscheidt, Journal of Innovation & Knowledge 2025 |
6. Fan Demand: Who Still Wants Virtual Shows
Survey data from 2025 makes the market segmentation plain: virtual concerts are a super-fan product. 59% of super fans said they would attend a virtual performance, against 24% of the general population, according to Luminate’s 2025 Music Forecast. That gap explains why the paid streams that survive are tied to fandom platforms (section 4) rather than to general ticketing.
There is also a gender split inside Gen Z. Young men are more enthusiastic about livestreamed and VR formats than young women, which lines up with the gaming audiences behind Fortnite and Roblox shows (section 2). The question for promoters is no longer whether fans will watch a stream, but which fans will pay for one.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| General population willing to attend a virtual performance | 24% | Luminate, Music Forecast 2025 (Q1 2025 data) |
| Super fans willing to attend a virtual performance | 59% | Luminate, Music Forecast 2025 (Q1 2025 data) |
| Super fans who would tune in to a virtual concert to see favourite artists play their hits | 72% | Luminate, Music Forecast 2025 (Q1 2025 data) |
| U.S. general population agreeing livestreamed performances are a good way to connect with an artist they like | 39% | Luminate, U.S. Music 360 Q1 2025 |
| U.S. Gen Z agreeing livestreamed performances make them feel more connected to favourite artists, men vs women | 47% vs 35% | Luminate, U.S. Music 360 Q1 2025 |
| Calling hologram or VR concerts an exciting way to engage with artists, U.S. Gen Z men vs general population | 38% vs 25% | Luminate, U.S. Music 360 Q1 2025 |
Context note: Luminate’s article does not state the survey’s sample size, and super fan is Luminate’s own segment definition.
7. What Research Says About the Livestream Experience
Controlled studies now measure what fans have long said: being in the room is different. In a randomized pilot at De Doelen in Rotterdam on January 17, 2024, students who attended classical and pop sets in person reported higher appreciation and arousal than peers watching a simultaneous cinematic livestream, and their mean heart rate was higher, beta = 4.11 (95% CI 0.09 to 8.12), p = 0.045 (Becker et al., Scientific Reports 2026). Heart rate variability measures showed no significant differences.
The pandemic-era research adds the nuance that keeps livestreams alive. Real-time streams created more social connection than pre-recorded ones (Swarbrick et al., Frontiers in Psychology 2021), and in experiments with three livestreamed concerts, VR headset viewers felt more physical presence and more connected to the artist than YouTube viewers (Onderdijk et al., Frontiers in Psychology 2021). Presence, not resolution, is the variable that matters, a pattern that also shows up in our roundup of VR game audio presence and immersion. Fans also rebuild the crowd themselves: a study of four BTS livestreams in 2021 coded 1,200 tweets and found fans mostly used Twitter to talk with each other during the show (Upham, Lee and Park, Frontiers in Psychology 2024).
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Participants in the live vs livestream concert trial (live group vs livestream group) | 130 (66 vs 64) | Becker et al., Scientific Reports 2026 |
| Difference in mean heart rate, live audience vs livestream audience | beta = 4.11 (95% CI 0.09 to 8.12), p = 0.045 | Becker et al., Scientific Reports 2026 |
| Difference in music appreciation, live vs livestream | beta = 0.7 (95% CI 0.3 to 1.1), p = 0.001 | Becker et al., Scientific Reports 2026 |
| Difference in emotional arousal, live vs livestream | beta = 0.6 (95% CI 0.3 to 0.9), p < 0.001 | Becker et al., Scientific Reports 2026 |
| Virtual concert viewers surveyed during the pandemic | 307 from 13 countries | Swarbrick et al., Frontiers in Psychology 2021 |
| Respondents who had watched a livestream while it aired | 158 of 307 | Swarbrick et al., Frontiers in Psychology 2021 |
| Social connection score, real-time livestream vs pre-recorded concert | 2.97 vs 2.50, p < 0.001 | Swarbrick et al., Frontiers in Psychology 2021 |
| Complete responses across three experimental livestreamed concerts | 83 | Onderdijk et al., Frontiers in Psychology 2021 |
Context note: the Becker trial used first-year arts and culture students, and 25.8% of heart rate variability data was missing. Most recent available data for the Swarbrick and Onderdijk studies: 2020 to 2021 fieldwork, published 2021.
Summary: Music Livestream Concert & Ticketing Statistics by the Numbers
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Japan paid online live market, 2023 (change vs 2022) | 29.5 billion yen (-36.7%) | Pia Research Institute, Online Live Market Survey 2024 |
| Peak concurrent players, Remix: The Finale in Fortnite (2024) | more than 14 million | Epic Games, via The Ticketing Business 2024 |
| Peak concurrent players, Travis Scott’s Astronomical (2020) | 12.3 million | Epic Games, via PocketGamer.biz 2020 |
| Peak concurrent users, Bruno Mars concert in Roblox (2026) | 12,862,161 | Roblox company claim, via Pollstar 2026 |
| BTS The Comeback Live: Arirang viewers, live plus next day | 18.4 million | Netflix 2026 |
| Countries with the BTS livestream in Netflix’s weekly Top 10 | 80 | Netflix 2026 |
| Tomorrowland TikTok livestream unique viewers, 2025 | more than 74 million | TikTok Newsroom 2025 |
| Tomorrowland TikTok livestream viewers, 2023 | 16 million | TikTok Newsroom 2025 |
| Glastonbury streams on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds, 2023 | 50.3 million | BBC figures, via CSI Magazine 2023 |
| Viewers of BTS’s Bang Bang Con: The Live stream (2020) | 756,000 | Guinness World Records 2020 |
| Weverse LIVE sessions in 2025 | 6,558, more than 1 billion views | Weverse 2025 Fandom Trend Report |
| HYBE in-person concert revenue, 2025 | 763.9 billion won, +69.4% | HYBE FY2025 investor filing |
| ABBA Voyage tickets sold, 2024 | 1.06 million | Aniara Ltd, Companies House filing 2025 |
| ABBA Voyage pre-tax profit change, 2024 | -30.5% | Aniara Ltd, Companies House filing 2025 |
| Super fans vs general population willing to attend a virtual performance | 59% vs 24% | Luminate, Music Forecast 2025 |
| Mean heart rate, live vs livestream audience | beta = 4.11, p = 0.045 | Becker et al., Scientific Reports 2026 |
| Social connection, real-time livestream vs pre-recorded | 2.97 vs 2.50 | Swarbrick et al., Frontiers in Psychology 2021 |
Methodology and Sources
- Pia Research Institute, online live market survey 2023 data, published April 25, 2024: corporate.pia.jp
- Pia Research Institute, live entertainment market 2024 final figures, published June 24, 2025: corporate.pia.jp
- Epic Games figures for Travis Scott’s Astronomical, reported by PocketGamer.biz on April 28, 2020: pocketgamer.biz
- Epic Games figures for Remix: The Finale, reported by The Ticketing Business on December 5, 2024: theticketingbusiness.com
- Roblox figures for the Bruno Mars concert, reported by Pollstar (January 26, 2026) and PocketGamer.biz (January 27, 2026): news.pollstar.com, pocketgamer.biz
- Netflix, BTS The Comeback Live: Arirang viewership release, March 24, 2026: about.netflix.com
- TikTok Newsroom, Tomorrowland 2025 release, August 1, 2025: newsroom.tiktok.com
- BBC Glastonbury 2023 audience figures, reported by CSI Magazine on June 27, 2023: csimagazine.com
- YouTube Official Blog, Coachella exclusive livestream renewal through 2030: blog.youtube
- Guinness World Records, most viewers for a music concert live stream on a bespoke platform: guinnessworldrecords.com
- HYBE FY2025 results and Weverse 2025 Fandom Trend Report, reported by Music Business Worldwide: musicbusinessworldwide.com
- Aniara Ltd (ABBA Voyage) Companies House filing of September 30, 2025, reported by Music Business Worldwide: musicbusinessworldwide.com
- Bär, Boyacıoğlu and Kurscheidt, On the edge of a digital event era: Which innovative factors influence the willingness to pay for virtual concerts?, Journal of Innovation & Knowledge 10 (2025) 100776: epub.uni-bayreuth.de
- Luminate, New Luminate Music Forecast Spots Budding Fan Trends (U.S. Music 360 Q1 2025 data), August 12, 2025: luminatedata.com
- Becker et al., Musician presence and its effects on physiological and psychological well-being in live versus livestreamed concerts, Scientific Reports 2026: nature.com
- Swarbrick, Seibt, Grinspun and Vuoskoski, Corona Concerts, Frontiers in Psychology 2021: frontiersin.org
- Onderdijk et al., Livestream Experiments, Frontiers in Psychology 2021 (DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.647929), and Upham, Lee and Park, Audience reconstructed, Frontiers in Psychology 2024 (DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1214930).
- Data watch: (1) Platform audience figures from Epic Games, Roblox, Netflix and TikTok are company claims that no auditor verifies, and each uses its own unit (concurrent players, Live+1 viewers, unique viewers, views); never compare them as if they measured the same thing. (2) Epic said “more than 14 million” for Remix: The Finale while fan trackers reported 14.3 million; we use Epic’s wording. (3) Reports on the Bruno Mars show use both 12.8 million and 12,862,161; the exact figure is Roblox’s. (4) The 2025 VR concert paper describes a willingness to pay of 35 to 39.99 euros as the majority view, but its own table shows that band chosen by only 10.53% of respondents; we report the table. (5) In the Becker trial, the published confidence interval for the being-moved measure does not contain its point estimate, so we left that result out. (6) No primary source publishes a global paid livestream concert market size; commercial vendor reports on virtual concert platforms use definitions that differ too widely to reconcile, so we excluded them. (7) Pia Research Institute’s online figures stop at 2023, and BBC Glastonbury totals at 2023; newer editions would replace them.
- Last updated: November 6, 2026. We update this roundup quarterly, and the next refresh is expected when HYBE reports its fiscal 2026 results and Weverse publishes its next Fandom Trend Report.