Once the titanic figure of hip-hop known for his Midas touch in the realm of chart-toppers, Sean “Diddy” Combs now seems to be watching his music career fall apart in real-time. As his high-profile sex trafficking trial plays out in New York City, support from fans and the music industry is drying up fast.
Meanwhile, the mogul’s radio ratings game has fallen off a cliff, according to fresh Luminate data. Diddy’s music received just 1,671 radio spins for the first 16 weeks of 2025, an 86 percent decrease from the 11,870 spins he received over the same period last year. That kind of fall-off is rare and nearly unheard of for an artist of his magnitude.
The streaming numbers tell a similar story. Streams of Diddy’s catalog are down nearly 45% in on-demand streams, falling from 52.7 million earlier this year to only 29 million year-to-date. In an age when streaming plays are an artist’s denomination of relevance, that drop in impact sends a message in no uncertain terms: listeners are tuning out.
There’s also some severe backlash to the show, whose timing couldn’t be worse when it comes to what Diddy is currently dealing with in a criminal trial that is horrendous in terms of the details. Prosecutors claim that the music mogul was making beats and allegedly running a criminal enterprise under the cover of his music empire. The charges include sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, forced labor, and other offenses. The words “Freak Offs” have become part of the public vocabulary, chilling episodes in which the women reported they were drugged and duped into performing sex acts, including some with paid male sex workers.
If the details in the indictment were not horrifying enough, a superseding indictment released in April piled on, lengthening the timeline of alleged abuse and adding two charges to the case. Diddy now faces a total of five criminal charges, including racketeering and several counts of sex trafficking. He has pleaded not guilty to the mounting charges and has said he consensually dated his accusers, whom he has called “former long-term girlfriends.”
Yet the court of public opinion is already in session, and the opinion there isn’t pretty. Diddy’s longtime friend, the late Notorious B.I.G., also remains a power in airplay, with over 63,000 spins during the same stretch that Diddy’s discography shrank to a whisper. Legacy stands, and scandal shatters, in a contrast as conspicuous as it is symbolic.
The dip in radio airplay alone might cost Combs $34,000 to $40,000 in lost royalties from radio alone. In the past, his music has brought in an estimated $3 million a year from issuing master recordings and publishing. Now, that revenue stream appears to be increasingly in doubt.
Locked up without bail since his September 2024 bust, Diddy allegedly rejected a plea deal and chose to go to trial. Four women, identified as Victim-1 through Victim-4, are anticipated to testify.
For a man who once built empires out of dreams, this chapter is fast becoming a cautionary tale, and the soundtrack to his legacy falls silent far quicker than anyone dared imagine.
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