Millions of musicians used MuseScore in 2025 to learn and perform everything from Beethoven sonatas to K-pop hits from an animated film about demon hunters. The platform’s year-end data tells a familiar story (classical repertoire still dominates), but this year’s growth numbers point to something worth watching: film and social media are accelerating how fast new music enters the practice room.

The Fastest-Growing Artists on MuseScore in 2025

Jorge Rivera-Herrans tops the list. His “EPIC: The Musical” (a multi-part retelling of “The Odyssey”) wrapped in late 2024, and musicians spent 2025 working through the complete score. Theater-adjacent projects like this tend to have long tails on MuseScore; unlike pop singles, they reward sustained engagement.

ROSÉ and Bruno Mars landed at #2 and #3, almost entirely on the strength of “APT.” The song dropped in 2024 but kept climbing through 2025. That’s evidence that cross-platform visibility (TikTok, YouTube, Spotify) translates directly into sheet music demand when a song is actually playable.

Stephen Schwartz owes his appearance to the “Wicked” film. Kensuke Ushio and Gracie Abrams round out the top five, representing anime soundtracks and contemporary pop respectively.

Artists with the Largest Gains on MuseScore This Year

Toby Fox leads here. New “Deltarune” chapters released in 2025 brought players back to both that soundtrack and the original “Undertale” scores. Video game music has a built-in advantage on MuseScore: the audience already has muscle memory for the melodies, which lowers the barrier to learning them on an instrument.

Ludovico Einaudi and John Williams each added over a million views. Neither is surprising, given that intermediate piano players and film score enthusiasts represent two of MuseScore’s largest demographics. Beethoven remains the overall leader, as he has for years. Radiohead‘s growth is harder to pin to a single cause; ongoing catalog interest and some live activity probably both contributed.

Breakout Artists: New Names in the Rankings

HUNTR/X is the standout. The band is fictional, created for the animated film “K-Pop Demon Hunters,” but the music is real, performed by established artists. Within five months of the film’s release, HUNTR/X cracked the upper tier of the platform’s rankings. Another fictional group from the same film, Saja Boys, also appears on the breakout list.

This is new territory. Fictional bands have existed before, but I can’t recall one that has climbed this fast on a sheet music platform. It suggests the K-pop fandom’s engagement patterns (learn the choreography, learn the lyrics, now learn to play it) are spreading to adjacent communities.

yung kai and chezile broke through via social platforms. Jung Jae-il continues to benefit from “Squid Game” (new season this year) and “Parasite.”

Breakout Songs of 2025

No surprises here. Breakout songs track breakout artists. “Golden” by HUNTR/X, “blue” by yung kai, and “Beanie” by chezile all entered the annual rankings after sustained (not spikey) social visibility.

Alex Warren‘s “Ordinary” and “Soda Pop” by Saja Boys round out the list.

Fastest-Growing Songs on MuseScore in 2025

Growth rate captures songs gaining momentum for different reasons. “APT.” kept climbing. “Defying Gravity” rode the “Wicked” film. Mitski‘s “Washing Machine Heart” and Einaudi’s “Experience” both benefit from ongoing use in content creation. When a song becomes a meme template or video soundtrack, score views follow.

“Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan spiked after her Grammy win. Award shows still move the needle.

The Most Played Artists and Scores Overall

The top of the leaderboard barely moved.

Beethoven, Chopin, Bach, Mozart: the classical core that’s dominated MuseScore since the platform launched. Joe Hisaishi, Hans Zimmer, and Koji Kondo represent the film and game composers who’ve joined that tier. Coldplay is the only band in the top ten, holding their spot for a second year.

The most played individual scores are similarly stable: “Merry-Go-Round of Life,” “Canon in D,” Beethoven’s piano sonatas. The one notable change: “Golden” by HUNTR/X broke into the top ten, displacing “Viva La Vida.” A fictional K-pop band knocking Coldplay out of the top ten. That’s 2025 in a sentence.

How This Compares to Our Top Scores Countdown

This data reflects lifetime activity. For a different lens (scores published in the last 12 months only), see the daily Top 10 scores countdown we ran alongside this report.

What This Means

Classical repertoire isn’t going anywhere. It’s the foundation of music education, and MuseScore’s data confirms that every year.

What’s changing is the speed at which new music enters the ecosystem. A fictional band from a February release cracked the all-time top ten by July. A Grammy win still translates into score views within days. Social platforms have compressed the discovery-to-practice pipeline in ways that would have seemed implausible five years ago.

That’s the story of 2025: the canon holds, but the path to joining it looks different than it used to.