MiDIA tracked worldwide recorded music business financial releases of 2016

MiDIA’s Mark Mulligan has tracked both record label and publisher financial releases for 2016, but also conducted deep research into the global independent label sector for WIN (the Worldwide Independent Network). This, merged with reports from country trade bodies and PROs (plus additional market sizing work on the publishing sector) brought a unique presentation of where revenue flows in today’s global business.

As reported by MUsic Business worldwide, Mulligan shared his conclusions:

2016 was a big year for the global recorded music business, with record labels and publishers reporting growth almost across the board.
Unsurprisingly, streaming was the driver of growth, increasing its share of label revenue from 23% in 2015 to 34% in 2016.
However, the experience was far from uniform across the various corporate groups…

Universal is the world’s leading music group: its global record label revenue share was 28.9%, far ahead of the nearest rival Sony Music which had a 22.4% share. UMG’s global share fell slightly from 30.2% in 2015; also, as all other labels, UMG had a big streaming year in 2016, seeing revenue increase by 56% – though this stood just below the total market growth of 57%.

Warner Music had the best major label performance in local currency terms – growing its revenue by 11% and its global recorded music market share from 16.8% to 17.4%.On the streaming side Warner actually lost a little ground, seeing its market share fall from 19.3% (in 2015) to 18.4% – despite registering an impressive 51% annual growth in streaming revenue.

Sony Music registered a US dollar growth of 13% in 2016, the highest of all the majors – increasing its recorded music market share from 21.3% in 2015 to 22.4% in 2016. However, Sony was helped markedly by the growing strength of the Yen against the dollar. In Yen terms (its ‘home’ currency) SME’s revenue grew by just 0.9% in 2016. Streaming revenue was up 41.8% in Yen terms and 57% in dollar terms in 2016, while SME’s streaming market share was flat year-on-year.

Independent labels saw their total recorded music revenue increase by 6% in 2016 – but that was not enough to prevent their market share fall slightly from 31.6% in 2015 to 31.3% in 2016. However, these numbers reflect share according to distribution rather than ownership of copyright.