As event contracts in sports and politics continue to propel prediction markets into the national spotlight, Kalshi users can now trade on markets in the world of music.
Prediction leader Kalshi on Tuesday released a promotional tweet for its music markets, where users can buy and sell predictions related to a slew of outcomes.
Key Takeaways
- Kalshi’s co-founder and COO spoke about the popularity of music markets on a recent podcast appearance.
- More than $100 million was traded on the first song of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show.
- Kalshi would rank as the fourth-largest sportsbook in the country.
Just as sports contracts are growing to rival betting odds from traditional sportsbooks, Kalshi, Polymarket, and other prediction outlets are offering “Yes” and “No” deals for a variety of markets in the world of music.
Music hits new notes on Kalshi
— Kalshi (@Kalshi) April 28, 2026
Drake. Taylor Swift. Justin Bieber. Bad Bunny.
Trade weekly streams on your favorite artists.
Available now. pic.twitter.com/SmF2ebIi2h
Kalshi’s recent tweet came on the back of its COO and co-founder, Luana Lopes Lara’s appearance on Billboard’s On the Record podcast, where she revealed shocking numbers.
“Just on music markets last year we did $70 million traded, and this year just to date I think it’s over $400 million,” Lopes Lara said. “Just on the Super Bowl halftime show opener it was $110 million.”
Contracts don’t have to be tied to marquee events, such as the first song at halftime of the Super Bowl. They can deal with award winners at the Grammys, where a song will place on the chart, and if an artist’s streams will spike during the upcoming week.
In the case of Michael Jackson, Kalshi users believe there’s a 99% chance that the King of Pop will beat his previous week’s 240.5 million as the new movie Michael makes its way to theaters across America.
Drake, whose upcoming album Iceman is scheduled for release on May 15, had a 99% chance to reach more than 476 million streams this week, but only a 75% chance to eclipse 482 million streams.
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Music prediction markets catching on
While sports, politics, and music are distinctly different industries, there are crossover opportunities between the three.
The Philadelphia Eagles, for example, are known to play Meek Mill’s Dreams and Nightmares during postseason runs. In the event that the Birds find themselves back in the Super Bowl, just like they were in 2022 and 2024, there would likely be an expected increase in streams of the song.
Similarly, U.S. President Donald Trump is fond of the Village People’s Y.M.C.A. Although Trump isn’t eligible for re-election, there will be upcoming presidential rallies with the current vice president and candidate for the Republican nomination, J.D. Vance.
One advantage of prediction platforms such as Kalshi is that they reflect real-time sentiment and expectations. According to Lopes Lara, they can “absolutely” make them more accurate predictors of future events than other outlets, such as polls.
“If you actually ask someone to put money on it they're going to take a step back and think about it," she said. "They're like, 'Well this album maybe is this new genre. I'm not so sure if that's going to do very well;' it's fewer songs; it's all those things; and they can take a more calibrated view of it and they're going to research."
“They're going to go online, they're going to look at Twitter, they're going to look at Billboard, they're going to try to figure out how to have a better forecast. And what the markets actually do is that they get all these people that are incentivized and summarize it in one number.”
Enormous growth
Kalshi and other prediction platforms burst into the spotlight during the last NFL season. A recent study found that Kalshi’s sports event contracts are enough for the platform to rank fourth among active sportsbooks in America, ahead of brands such as BetMGM, Caesars, bet365, and others.
This has not come without frustration. Federally-regulated sportsbooks have found themselves engulfed by legal challenges stemming from state gaming regulators and officials, who argue that they should also be subject to local regulation and tax requirements.
