Global recorded music revenues grew by 9.8% in 2023

Growth is back! After a slower 2022, global recorded music revenues grew by 9.8% in 2023 to reach $35.1 billion, compared to 7.1% in 2022, which means that the market is now more than double (124.5%) the size it was in 2015. 2023 was the year in which the industry settled back into a positive growth trajectory after the volatility of the pandemic and post-pandemic years. But the numbers also point to a market that is embarking on a major period of change.

The recorded music market is becoming more diversified, and although streaming is still the centre piece, its role is lessening. Streaming revenues hit $21.9 billion in 2023, up a relatively modest 9.6% on 2022. For the first time ever, streaming grew slower than the total market, to the extent that its share of total revenues actually fell (to 62.5%). Interestingly, over the same period, the five publicly traded DSPs grew revenue by 15.9%, and Warner and Sony collectively grew music publishing streaming revenue by 18.4%. Value is beginning to shift across the streaming value chain.

In other years, the recorded music streaming slowdown would have been cause for concern, but not in 2023. This is because other formats picked up the slack. Physical, after a decline in 2022, was up again (4.6%) in 2023, as was ‘other’. Interestingly, physical is emerging as the industry kingmaker: so far in this decade, over each of the two years that physical revenues grew, industry revenue growth was strong, and in the two years physical fell, industry growth was slow. Physical is the difference between good and great.

The growth in physical revenues, however, is more than just a revenue story, it reflects an industry strategic shift. Anticipating the streaming slowdown, labels and artists alike have been looking for diversification and new growth drivers, with superfans emerging as the central target. The strong growth of physical and ‘other’ revenues in 2023 are the first fruits of the new superfan focus.

The most compelling evidence for the superfan shift, is expanded rights. A subcategory of ‘other’, expanded rights reflect labels’ revenue from sources such as merchandise and branding. In short: superfan formats. Traditionally, expanded rights are not tracked as part of recorded music industry revenues, but last year, because of the industry’s growing fandom focus, we decided we had to include them, even if other entities still do not. 2023 underscored the importance of that decision. Expanded rights revenue grew by 15.5% to hit $3.5 billion – 10% of all global revenues. Expanded rights are one of the main building blocks of tomorrow’s music business.

Change was not constrained to formats. Market shares took some interesting turns, too. Non-major labels had a great year (and we’re calling them that, rather than independents, because a lot of the bigger ‘independents’, such as HYBE, have little in common with what people think of as traditional indies). Non-majors grew revenues by 13.0% in 2023, compared to 9% for the major labels. This meant that non-major label market share was up for the fourth consecutive year, reaching 31.5%. (Though, note this is measured on a distribution basis, not an ownership basis. Therefore, independent revenue that is distributed via a major record label or a wholly owned major label distributor will appear in the revenue of the respective major record label. So ‘actual’ non-major share is higher).

Non-major labels had a great year in expanded rights, outgrowing the market, in large part thanks to Korean labels, which accounted for nearly 70% of non-major label expanded rights revenue.

In stark contrast, 2023 was a tough year for artists direct (i.e., self-releasing artists), with various streaming market developments seeing them grow streaming revenue and their number of streams much more slowly than in previous years. 2023 was the first year artists direct lost market share. Streaming revenue grew just 3.9% in 2023, compared to 17.9% in 2022 and 35.5% in 2021. The result was a 0.4 point decline in streaming market share. Despite a difficult 2023, artists direct revenue in 2023 was 57.7% higher than in 2020, though the impending streaming royalty changes will likely see growth slow further.

On the majors’ side of the equation, Universal remained the largest label group, with its $10.0 billion representing 28.3% market share, but for the first time since 2020, Sony was the fastest growing major, increasing revenues by 11.6%, growing market share 0.3 points to 20.3%

Concluding thoughts

2023 was a very positive year, and it may prove to be the one we look back upon as ‘when things started to change’. Streaming growth slowed, on the recordings side of the equation, at least; monetising fandom became a serious part of the industry; non-majors locked into long-term market share growth; and self-releasing artists started to see a clear divergence between what they streamed and what they earned. 

The industry is beginning to bifurcate between the traditional, streaming-focused business, and a new one in which fandom and creation will take centre stage. Welcome to the first year of tomorrow’s music business.

MIDiA clients read the full report here

Super fans may not be super enough

There has been a lot of talk recently of music superfans and how they may be the shining light of the industry’s future. Little surprise, given how record labels are trying to establish superfans as the next growth driver for an investor community that is growing increasingly concerned about slowing streaming growth and looming threats, such as AI. There is no doubt that superfans are crucial – they always have been. The problem is that they may not be as valuable in the future as they once were. And the reasons for that lie in the very same streaming economy that the industry is trying to build beyond.

A brief history of superfans

In the early days of the modern music business, music fans were the superfans. The means of demonstrating that fandom was buying the records and, if you were really lucky, seeing the band. A small portion were also members of (usually fan-run) fan clubs. Throughout the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, the music business further professionalised and productised. The live business emerged as a revenue generator in its own right (rather than the loss-leader for selling albums that it had largely been). Merchandise became widely deployed. Fanclubs became more serious. 

Yet, music sales were still the main fandom game in town. The CD era catalysed music buying at scale and the heyday of the album era. Superfans would buy multiple albums every month (leading to the rise of the ‘50 quid bloke’). Superfans were album fans. Superfans were album buyers. And there was no ceiling on how much they could spend.

Then along came Napster, turning the world upside down. Music sales started to plummet and the album began its long, steady demise, as consumers dissected albums, first on Napster, then iTunes, and then YouTube and Spotify. 

When everyone is super….

When Spotify came to market, the recorded music industry was in crisis, with revenues in freefall. People just were not buying albums anymore. 50 quid bloke had become an endangered species. Recorded music’s loss was live’s gain. As music sales fell, live revenues grew, almost in mirror opposite curves. Live became the place superfans began to shift their spend, with merch sales growing in live’s wake. 

So, when Spotify came along with the promise of getting people back into the habit of spending on recorded music again, it was eagerly welcomed. Perhaps not immediately, as much of the label community needed convincing, but that speed bump was cleared when labels started to see consumers commit, at scale, to monthly spend. With more people spending more frequently, revenue growth returned. The problem was that those people who used to buy multiple albums every month, now only spent the cost of less than one album to get all the music they could ever want. 

Streaming placed a cap on superfan spend. As the years passed, newer, younger music fans came into the market who had never spent large chunks of their disposable income on buying albums. The average, semi-casual fan was now spending the same as superfans. And to quote Syndrome from the Incredibles “When everyone’s super, no one’s super”.

Nurture fandom, don’t just harvest it

Over recent years, the industry has started to nudge people towards becoming superfans again, or at least spending like them. Whether that be indie fans on Bandcamp, or Swifties being convinced to ‘help Taylor’ by buying yet another re-recorded album. The problem is that this behaviour is at the fringes of consumer behaviour. We have had 15 years (i.e., almost a generation’s worth of time) of educating consumers that music does not need to cost more than $9.99….ok….$10.99. Superfans have been un-supered. 

None of this is to say that there is not a massive superfan opportunity to be had, but it will take work. Much of the latent superfan spend has dissipated due to fading habits and the wallet share shift to live. Consumers will need re-educating, re-familiarising. But there is more to it than that. When consumers spend money on a live concert, they get a unique, in the moment experience. When they used to buy five albums a month, they got hours of new music that they would not have had otherwise. Buying a special edition of an album is simply another version of something that fans already have on streaming. 

So, to Make Fans Super Again™, there has to be a genuine value exchange. Fans need new things to persuade them to spend, new things that actually build and deepen their fandom rather than simply a new opportunity to fleece them for another dollar.

Everyone hurts – the problem with ‘fixing’ streaming

Apple’s Q4 2022 revenue fall was further illustration that the global economic environment is affecting everyone. During such times, companies look for ways to avoid the worst of the impacts, partially through ‘efficiencies’ but also through growth, by exploring new income streams and improving deal terms. The music industry is no exception. With global streaming revenues slowing – despite a strong performance from Spotify– there is growing pressure on music rightsholders to identify new growth drivers. This is especially the case for major labels, who have new institutional investors who have become acclimatised to rapid growth. All of which leads to streaming royalties taking centre stage. But the problem is that everyone in the streaming ecosystem has problems with the model. So, can any fix make everyone happy? [TL;DR, no]

To heavily oversimplify, streaming has three main constituents:

• Creators (songwriters, artists, etc.)
• Rightsholders (labels, publishers, distributors, CMOs, etc.)
• Streaming services 

At the start of 2023, all three have issues with streaming:

1. Songwriters continue to push for higher royalties while long and mid-tail artists cannot make streaming economics add up
2. Publishers continue to lobby for higher rates while UMG is now advocating for a new royalty system
3. Spotify just reported a net loss of nearly half a billion dollars for 2022

Then add in all the perennials: too much music being released; no artist longevity; the commodification of music; listening fragmentation; the decline of superstars etc.

We have a streaming market in which none of the stakeholder groups feel entirely content with the current market and all would like a larger share of the revenues to flow to them. Because they all extract value from the same revenue pot, the arithmetic is simple: one stakeholder’s gain is another’s loss.

None of this is an argument for, or against, the relative merits of the case of any of the three main interest groups. But it does mean that any change to the system will leave someone unhappy. This is the impossible equation that must be balanced.

What further complicates matters is that market benefits to different stakeholders can be perceived as negatives to others. For example:

• Streaming helped democratise the means of production and distribution. Long-tail and mid-tail artists benefit, and superstars lose their share
• Streaming helped make music the soundtrack of daily routines. Suppliers of mood music benefit, traditional artists, and labels lose listening share
• Streaming helped level the playing field, making it easier for smaller labels to compete. Larger labels faced stronger competition

The debate around new royalty regimes has been around for some time, but momentum is picking up. When the CEO of the world’s biggest record label weighs in, then you know that change is going to come. But as the above illustrates, what might make a major label happy, has the potential be detrimental to other stakeholders. There is no ‘make everyone happy’ fix.

Here are two pragmatic alternatives:

Lean forward premium 

One of the cleanest fixes would be to create a two-tier royalty system based on the nature of the plays:

1. Lean forward plays (higher royalty): when a consumer plays from their own collection or seeks out a song to play it
2. Lean back plays (lower royalty): when a consumer listens to music in an algorithmic ‘radio’ channel or listens to curated playlists

As with all streaming ‘fixes’, the approach would not be without problems. Mood-based music would certainly find itself generally collecting a smaller share of royalties, but also, many of streaming’s hits (including those from majors) rely on driving larger numbers of streams in curated playlists and ‘stations’ – which in turn help fire up the algorithms and power songs to further success.

Penny per stream

Another approach would be a fixed stream rate, which would effectively mean metered streaming. For example, if every stream generated $0.01, a subscriber would be able to listen until their subscription fee was used up, with the ability to top up to listen further or upgrade to a higher capacity tier. This would certainly help drive increased ARPU (something all parties want) but could deter some subscribers as it would mean an end to the all-you-can-eat (AYCE) proposition. But maybe it is time for that. Music is not a scalable resource in the way that, say, mobile data is. Everyone’s song is someone’s creation. Also, there would need to be a solution for free streams.

Don’t forget the listener, ever

Of course, there is a massive missing detail in all of this, the missing stakeholder in the streaming economy: the listener. Crucially though, for all the problems creators and rightsholders face, consumers are not complaining en masse. They are content with a proposition that not only represents exceptional value for money but that also evolves to meet their tastes and behaviours. 

Streaming’s problems are supply side issues, not demand-side. All industry stakeholders should be careful about pushing solutions that could favour the supply side without proper consideration of the demand side. The history of business is littered with the corpses of companies that did not properly consider the needs of their customers.

Streaming was built for yesterday’s music business

The saying goes that in a good compromise, no one is truly happy. So, there is an argument that streaming is already the balance of compromise. Against this though, streaming was built for an industry that is very different than today, so it is only logical that the model needs honing to catch up, and many of streaming’s second-order consequences cannot be undone. On the demand side, music consumption has become commodified, transformed from a largely artist-centric fan experience (radio excepted) into an audio soundtrack to everyday life. On the supply side, there are simply more people than seats at the table.

Any significant ‘fix’ is going to come at one, or more, stakeholder’s expense. And even then, increased royalties will only go so far. For example, an independent label artist might expect to earn around $2,000 from a million streams (after distribution and label deductions). Members of a four-piece band would thus take home $250 each. Even doubling the standard royalty rate (which could not happen without breaking the entire model) would still only mean $500 each, which is not going to turn streaming into a living wage for most mid-tail artists, let alone the long-tail. So, ‘fixes’ will only go so far. Perhaps it is time to double down on building new things on top of and around streaming, and nurture those that already exist (Bandcamp, etc.). 

Absolutely continue to focus on improving streaming economics but do so alongside building a new industry infrastructure that is built to meet the needs of today’s creators and business rather than those of the noughties. In short, grow the pie rather than simply look at how to re-slice it.

The coming long-tail cull

When governments plan to introduce controversial new policies, they prepare the ground in advance (dropping hints in speeches, privately briefing journalists, etc.), so that by the time the new policy finally arrives, it does not feel quite so controversial. A similar process is currently playing out in the music business. The biggest major label executives are starting to seed a narrative into the marketplace about the potentially corrosive effect that the rapidly-growing long-tail of music and creators is having on consumers’ music-streaming experiences. Of course, it also happens to dent major label market share too, but the issue is not quite as clear cut as it might first appear.

There are three main industry constituents that are at risk from the fattening of the long tail:

1. Major labels and their artists
2. Consumers
3. Long-tail creators

Let’s look at each of those in turn:

1 – Major labels

The first on the list is the most obvious, and also the easiest, to demonstrate. Over the course of the five years from 2016 to 2021, the majors grew recorded music revenue by 71%, which is impressive enough, except that artists direct (i.e., artists who distribute without record labels) grew revenues by 318% over the same period. Consequently, artists direct increased global market share from 2.3% to 5.3% while majors went from 68.8% to 65.5%. Meanwhile, the top 10 and top 100 tracks continue to represent an ever smaller share of all streaming. The very least that can be said is that majors and their artists have collectively grown more slowly than long-tail creators, and at the most, the case could be made that long-tail creators have eaten into major’s growth.

2 – Consumers

This one is far harder to make a definitive case either for or against. Consumers tend not to categorise music anywhere near as precisely as the music business. For example, only a third of consumers say they mainly listen to older music, despite industry stats showing that catalogue consumption dominates. Most consumers do not consider music to be ‘old’ as soon as the music business does. So, imagine how difficult it would be for consumers to delineate ‘what is long tail?’ They may say in surveys ‘music isn’t as good as it used to be’, but they could equally be referring to majors’ music as the long tail. So we are in the realms of measuring second-order effects (are consumers disengaging from streaming? Not yet, but they might) and of making logical assumptions. If consumers consistently hear poorer quality music, then it is reasonable to assume that their satisfaction would decline. However, DSP algorithms push music that matches users’ tastes, and there is so much high quality in the long tail that there is no particular reason to assume that more long-tail consumption should inherently equate to an increase in consumption of poorer-quality music. And do not forget, consumers have demonstrated plenty of tolerance for ‘average’ music in mood and activity playlists.

3 – Long-tail creators

It may sound oxymoronic to suggest that long-tail creators could be hurt by the rise of the long tail. But, as Will Page put it, the rise of the long tail means that “there are more mouths to feed”. The fractionalised nature of streaming royalties means that the more long-tail creators there are, the lower per-stream counts there are and, even more important, the harder it is to cut through. The irony is that it is easier to make the case that the long tail is eating itself than it is to establish causality between its rise and majors’ loss of share.

Divide and conquer

Of course, the missing constituency is the DSPs themselves, but they do not warrant a place here, because they are the ones with the power to scale up or down long-tail consumption via their algorithms. It serves DSPs to have listening fragment to a degree as it lessens the share and, therefore, the power of any individual label. But if DSPs ever thought they were pushing too far, then they would rein in the algorithms.

Where next?

So where does all this leave us? In the ‘do nothing’ scenario, listening continues to splinter, majors lose more share, long-tail creators find it harder to cut through and earn while consumers may (or may not) see any meaningful change to their listening experiences. In short, the head loses out, as does the long tail, while the market further consolidates around the ‘body’ of streaming catalogue (which, by the way, the majors are already key players in and could easily ramp up their focus – as WMG is already doing). 

The ‘do something’ options fall into two key groups:

1. Gate / limit consumer access to catalogue
2. Gate / limit creator access to royalties

There are many ways to achieve the first (preventing long-tail music getting onto DSP catalogues; lowering long-tail priority in algorithms; creating a separate tier of catalogue; deprioritising / blocking it from search and discovery, etc.). All of this risks looking very much like the establishment trying to prevent the next generation of creator and industry breaking through. That is without even considering the moral dilemmas of choosing who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’.

Option two, however, could be more altruistic than it looks. For an enthusiast hobbyist with a few hundred streams, royalties are going to be little more than a novelty. But for a hard-working, self-releasing singer / songwriter with tens of thousands of streams, the hundreds of dollars are already important. Let’s consider that there was a pay-out threshold, where 1,000 annual streams are the point at which royalties are paid, with all the royalties associated with the sub-1,000 stream artists being distributed between all other artists. Suddenly, those slightly more established long-tail artists can earn more income. 

None of these options are without challenges and moral dilemmas. But the direction of travel appears to be towards something being ‘done’ about the long tail. If that really does end up having to happen, then let us at least try to ensure that the changes benefit long-tail artists too, not just the superstars.

Did independents really do three times worse than the majors in 2021?

Today, the IFPI released its estimates for the global recorded music market, with reported revenues of $25.9 billion. Last year, the IFPI estimated global revenues to be $21.6 billion (note that the IFPI retrospectively changes its historical figures every year, but you can see its actual 2020 figure here), which implies a growth rate of 20% (18.5% against the IFPI’s rebased 2020 figure of $16.9 billion). The IFPI estimate is significantly below MIDiA’s figure of $28.8 billion – but before getting into the reasons for the differences*, it is worth diving into just what the IFPI’s $25.9 billion figure implies for the size and performance of independent sector.

The major labels’ combined revenue in 2020 was $15.2 billion, and in 2021 it was $18.7bn, representing 25% annual growth. If you simply deduct those figures from the IFPI figures you end up with an implied independent figure of $6.5bn for 2020 and $7.0 billion for 2021. Here is where things start to get interesting. The implied indie growth rate is therefore just 9%, i.e., indies (according to the IFPI) grew three times more slowly than the majors, with implied market share dropping from 30% to 27%. Everything that MIDiA has been hearing from the market suggests that 2021 was actually a strong year for the non-majors. Indeed, Believe just reported a 31% growth, while the ‘label’ portions of HYBE’s revenues increased by 29% (though, not all of that growth was organic). If we remove the revenues of those two labels from the IFPI’s implied indies figure, the remainder of independents would have grown by just 4% in 2021.

To take this line of thought a step further, if we additionally remove the artists direct (i.e., self-releasing artists, which grew by 30%) revenue from the IFPI’s implied indie segment, the growth drops to minus three percent. Even accounting for bigger, older independent labels that did not fare so well in 2021, a -3% growth does not feel like a reflection of an otherwise vibrant sector.

One key reason for the growth and values looking smaller in the IFPI’s figures is that they may not include non-DSP revenue (TikTok, Meta etc), which MIDiA pegged at $1.5 billion in 2021. The IFPI reported all streaming revenues as $16.9 billion which is in line with MIDiA’s $17.0 billion for DSP-only streaming. It is worth noting that majors have around 65% market share on DSP streaming. If the IFPI’s streaming figures do include non-DSP, the implied market share for majors would be 74% (total major label streaming revenue was $12.6 billion in 2021).

Numbers are important, as they are what enable people to understand how markets are performing and what decisions to make. MIDiA’s overriding objective is always to provide the most comprehensive and authoritative data as possible, in an entirely agenda-free way. We have no intention nor objective to make the market look any bigger than we think it actually is. In fact, MIDiA has a well-earned reputation for being on the bearish side of market sizing and forecasts. Nonetheless, this year, our work has led us to the viewpoint that 2021 was a great year right across the recorded music market, with majors and indies alike finding success in a rejuvenated marketplace. And long may that continue.

*The main distinctions between MIDiA’s revenue figures and the IFPI’s are the following:

• MIDiA includes all reported major label revenue
• MIDiA includes the masters side of music production music libraries (including royalty free)
• MIDiA includes a portion of D2C independent artist and label revenue that does not get tracked via traditional tracking methods
• MIDiA includes some independent label revenue that does not get tracked via traditional tracking methods

NOTE: a previous version of this post had incorrectly stated non-majors have around 65% share on DSP streaming. It now reads ‘majors’

Recorded music market shares 2021 – Red letter year

We suggested back in 2020, that 2021 was going to be a strong year for the recorded music market. As it turns out, 2021 was the fastest growing year in living memory, with growth across most formats, contrasting strongly with 2020 when streaming was the only growth segment. 

After 2020 was constrained by the global pandemic, the global recorded music market rocketed into stellar growth in 2021, growing by 24.7% to reach $28.8 billion (the largest annual growth in modern times). 2020 growth was a much more modest (7%), but this reflected the suppressing effect of the global pandemic in the first half of the year.

2021 was a big year for the music business, with a record amount spent on music catalogue acquisitions and IPOs for Warner Music Group (WMG), Universal Music Group (UMG) and Believe Digital. These developments turned out to be the symptoms of a surge in global market growth, with recorded music revenues. 

Streaming revenues reached $18.5 billion, up by 29.3% from 2020, adding $4.2 billion – also a record increase. One of the key drivers of streaming growth was non-DSP revenue, representing deals with the likes of Meta, TikTok, Snap, Peloton and Twitch. Non-DSP streaming recorded music revenue totalled $1.5 billion in 2021, a massive uplift from 2020. DSP streaming (Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, etc.) also grew strongly too, reaching $17 billion. 

UMG remained the biggest label, with $8.2 billion, giving it a market share of just under 29%. However, for the second successive year, Sony Music Group (SMG) was the fastest growing major, and it increased its market share by growing significantly faster than the total market. For the first time since 2017, the major labels did not see their collective market share decrease.

Independents also had a good year, with strong growth across both larger and smaller labels. But it was, once again, artists direct (i.e., self-releasing artists) who were the big winners, driving $1.5 billion of revenue and increasing market share to 5.3%. They also added more revenue than in the prior year, something the segment has done every year since 2015. However, because 2021 was characterised by all segments performing strongly, artists direct’s increase in market share was smaller than in previous years.

The concept of evenly distributed growth was also reflected across geographies and formats, with physical and other (i.e., performance and sync) all growing strongly. Physical growth was so strong that revenues surpassed 2018 levels.

The recorded music market looked vulnerable in 2020, relying entirely on streaming for growth, with the outlook inextricably tied to that of DSPs. 2021 was a very different story, with growth on most fronts, but, most importantly, the rise of non-DSP revenue, reflecting an increasingly diversified future in which labels can fret a little less about the prospect of slowing subscriber growth in mature markets. When coupled with longer-term growth opportunities (NFTs, the metaverse, etc), the outlook is positively rosy. Although 2021 was boosted by exceptional circumstances (e.g., the wider economy rebalancing after the Covid-depressed 2020, and much of the non-DSP income being in the form of one-off payments), annual growth of 24.7%, points to the emergence of a new era for an increasingly diversified recorded music business.

The full report and dataset (with quarterly revenue by segment and format going back to Q1 2015) is available here. If you are not a MIDiA client and would like to learn how to get access to our research, data and analysis, email stephen@midiaresearch.com

Major label revenue surged in 2021, but what does that mean?

2021 was an anomalous year for the recorded music market. Two of the majors did an IPO, the pandemic continued to disrupt the marketplace, and major label revenues grew at unprecedented rates. If the fourth quarter majors’ earnings follow similar seasonality patterns to previous years, collective major label recorded music revenue will be up by 29% in 2021, reaching $19.6 billion (a more bearish estimate is $19.3 billion). By way of comparison, 2020 growth was 6%, and 2019 was 10%. To put it another way, major label revenue increased by $787 million in 2020, and in 2021 it was up by $4.4 billion. 2021 was a red-letter year for the major labels, but was it a one-off or an industry pivot point?

To get to the answer, we first need to contextualise major label revenue growth within the wider market. 

Streaming 

Predictably, streaming was the core driver of major label revenue growth in 2021, accounting for 67% of the revenue, and up by 31% to reach $12.8 billion. That level of annual streaming growth has not been seen since 2016. 2020 streaming growth was 18%. But streaming’s leading player, Spotify, did see that kind of growth. Spotify’s full year 2021 revenues look set to hit €9.6 billion (which would be up by 22% from 2020), and if we only consider premium growth (i.e., the part that is not boosted by podcast revenue), then growth was just 19%. And it is not as if Spotify is losing much ground in the global streaming market – its subscriber growth was largely in line with the global market average (excluding China). So, the majors grew streaming faster, somewhere beyond Spotify.

The total market

The major labels’ total revenue growth also follows a different trajectory to other parts of the market, The year-to-date performance of just one of the top four recorded music markets matches the majors’ trend (bear in mind that these four markets were 62% of global label revenues in 2020, so they shape global growth trends):

• US: 27.1% growth (H1) – RIAA
• Japan: -1.0% (Jan-Nov) – RIAJ 
• UK: 8.7% (FY) – ERA
• Germany: 12.4% (H1) – BVMI

(It will be interesting to see how the IFPI allocates the revenue. There may well be quite a gap between their global total and the sum total of all the individual countries if this is indeed largely attributable to one off payments rather than reflecting organic, country level revenue.)

All of this means that the additional major label growth is likely reflective of factors such as:

• Large, one-off payments from the likes of ByteDance, Twitch and Facebook
• Licensing income from the same parties
• Increased contribution from other markets
• Market share increase from catalogue acquisitions 
• Revenue growth from major-distributed independents
• Organic market share growth

While all of these factors will be at play, it is the first two factors that are likely the most consequential. MIDiA estimates that these new non-DSP streaming income sources accounted for between $0.8 and $1.2 billion in 2021. Even at the lower end of the estimates, that revenue alone would have driven the same amount of growth in 2021 as all major label revenue growth combined in 2020. 

There is a clear narrative that post-digital service provider (DSP) revenue is now becoming a central growth driver for the recorded music business. Clearly a very beneficial narrative to have had during an IPO year, especially if the trend was accentuated by one-off payments and settlements – which would help explain the divergence between major label growth and local market growth. 

There are two key potential scenarios:

1. Upfront payments for post-DSP streaming partners exceed organic mid-term revenue, resulting in slower growth rates in 2022 and 2023
2. Post-DSP streaming partners meet / exceed expectations, making 2021 and 2022 look much like the late 2000s and early 2010s did for DSP streaming, with minimum guarantees being more often than not 

So, by 2023 we should be able to tell whether 2021 was a spike or a pivot point. If I was a betting man, I would probably put money on the outlook being closer to 2 than to 1.

Music market shares: independent labels and artists are even bigger than you thought

It has been a long time since the music industry has been in such good shape. So long, in fact, that there are not too many executives left who worked through the pre-crash days. 2021 was the year in which the major label groups capitalised on the momentum, with Universal and Warner going public, and Sony going on a spending spree. This was off the back of a strong 2020, in which the majors collectively generated $15.1 billion, giving them a market share of 66.1%. So far, so normal, but all is not quite as it seems. This market share may be how the world sees the majors’ success, but it significantly underplays the revenue contribution of independents. MIDiA decided to fix that.

At the start of this year MIDiA fielded a large-scale, global survey of independent labels, collecting billions of dollars’ worth of revenue figures. We think that it is the most comprehensive survey of the independent sector done yet. In the survey, we asked labels about a range of factors, which enabled us to paint a complete picture of the state of the independent sector in today’s music business. Crucially, we collected detailed data on distributors, and this is where the under reporting of independents comes into play.

The undoubted benefit of the streaming era is that it presents artists and labels of all sizes with the ability to reach global audiences. But most independent record labels do not have sufficient scale nor resources to license and distribute directly to streaming services, and thus turn to the ever-expanding marketplace of digital distributors. Never shy to an opportunity, the major record labels have established themselves as key players in this space, distributing independent labels either directly or via their distribution arms. The value that they deliver to independents is clear, but the revenue goes via the majors’ accounts, and so major label revenues are boosted by independent revenue, thus inflating the market share of the majors. With the data we tracked in our independent label survey, we were able to unpack this ‘embedded’ distributed independent label revenue from the majors’ total to arrive at the ‘actual’ market share of independents, based on who holds the copyright, not simply on who distributes it.

Measuring market share on this ‘ownership’ basis, independent market share (which includes artists direct) goes from 33.9% (the ‘distribution’ basis) to 43.1%, i.e., an additional 9.2% of share. Or, put another way, an addition of $2.1 billion. The independent share was up from 41.3% in 2018, and in 2020, independent revenue (on an ‘ownership’ basis) grew by 12% compared to a total recorded music market growth of 12%. All of which means that independents (labels and artists) are a) bigger than standard industry measures suggest, and b) growing faster than the total market and are thus increasing market share. Which makes the majors’ strategy even smarter. If they were not so active distributors of independents, they would simply be ceding all of the revenue, instead of, as they are, capturing some it and being able to report the market share as their own.

These findings and much more (including regional market data and data on label operations (e.g., A+R, marketing, catalogue size, years in operation)), are available to MIDiA clients in this full report.

All independent labels that took part in the survey have already received a copy of the report. If you want a copy of next year’s edition, be sure to take part in the next survey when we announce it!

UMG’s buoyant stock debut is a new chapter for the music business

Universal Music Group (UMG) had an extremely positive first day of trading as a standalone entity, with shares at one stage trading 35% up from their reference point and making the market cap leap to $55 billion, while former-parent, Vivendi, saw a drop of two thirds in its value. Prior to the first day of trading, there were questions over whether Vivendi had pushed the indicative value of UMG shares too high, due to, in part, a series of UMG equity sell offs – but day one suggests that pent-up demand was sufficiently high to negate those concerns. Meanwhile, Warner Music Group’s (WMG) stock also surged, showing that investors see this as a market dynamic rather than a pure company dynamic. So, what is going on? Why is there so much investor enthusiasm in the music industry? The answers lie in the two-tier narrative that is building around today’s music business.

If the UMG listing had happened as recently as two years ago, we probably would not be talking about such a stellar trading debut. The fact that we are doing so now is because the music market has moved on a lot since then – and I mean a lot. This is what the music market looked like in September 2019:

• Spotify had only just closed down its direct artists platform – the first to blink in its contest against the labels to decide who would be the future of the music business
• Hipgnosis had not yet moved to the premium segment of the London Stock Exchange (it did so in November). 2019 was the year in which catalogue M+A first truly lifted off, with $4.2 billion of deals compared to $2.6 billion in 2018
• Article 13 had only just been put into the legislative process in April
• Downtown Music Holdings had only recently acquired AVL (CD Baby etc) in March 2019
• Marshmello had kicked off the music / games cross over boom with his Fortnite event in February 2019
• TikTok passed 500 million global users and had just 4% US penetration in Q2 19, compared to 44% in Q2 21

For those deep in the music business, it is sometimes hard to appreciate just how much change has happened in such a short period of time. As CS Lewis once wrote: Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different? Crucially for UMG’s listing, these changes have contributed to a major shift in the music industry’s metanarrative for investors:

• 2019: The Spotify vs the labels narrative was in full swing. Investors viewed the market through the lens of ‘rights vs distribution’. They were backing Spotify against UMG, vice versa or simply backing both horses in the race as a sector hedge. Record labels looked vulnerable in a market which was dominated by digital service provider (DSP) growth, which, in turn, was dominated by Spotify. Streaming’s future was bright, but there was a risk that as streaming got bigger, the labels would get weaker.
  
• 2020: Streaming revenues continue to grow strongly, up 18.3% in 2020 with 467 million subscribers, and up a further 25.9% in H1 21 in the US. But, crucially, the market is diversifying beyond DSPs. New growth drivers (social, short-form video, games, fitness, and mindfulness) are now making a truly meaningful contribution to label revenues (around $1.5bn in 2020). Music is becoming the soundtrack to the new digital entertainment universe. Vitally, unlike the traditional approach of sync (an ad hoc model that struggles to be agile and to scale), the labels are applying scalable licenses, born out of the DSP model, to ensure music rights can be agile enough to grow with the fast-changing digital entertainment marketplace. On top of this, a) the catalogue M+A boom has established music as an investor asset class, b) recorded music grew during the pandemic while live declined, thus demonstrating it to be the most resilient component of the wider music industry. The outlook for music is now a multi-layered narrative, with DSPs still centre stage but no longer the only game in town.

What this all means is that music rights are a compelling investment proposition for bigger institutional investors. However, the thing about bigger institutional investors is that they typically like to invest in big established companies. So, looking at the marketplace, unless an investor wants to build a catalogue investment fund (which is a highly specialised approach), there are not many big companies to invest in. WMG is the smallest major, Sony Music is just one smallish part of the Sony Corporation, and Believe is an indie label. So, while those are still interesting options for investors, the opportunity to invest into the world’s largest music company was previously the exclusive domain of a few large investors. Now, finally, everyone can have a part of UMG. 

So, what we have is the confluence of two factors:

• Pent-up investor demand
• A compelling and diversified industry narrative

The timing for UMG is perfect, but, of course, it has not been a neutral player simply watching the sands shift. It has actively driven this narrative, not just through what Sir Lucian Grainge and other executives have been telling the market, but also through its succession of equity transactions which helped build demand and value recognition. Part of the reason UMG is the world’s biggest music group is because it is the world’s biggest music group. It uses its scale and influence to help shape the market and its future trajectory. This is arguably one of UMG’s most valuable assets: it exercises control over its own destiny.Whether UMG’s share price falls or whether it grows in the coming weeks, the listing represents a high water mark for the music business as an asset class and may well be reflected upon as a useful bookend for one phase of the music business as another emerges.

The record labels are weaning themselves off their Spotify dependency

The major labels had a spectacular streaming quarter, registering 33% growth on Q2 2020 to reach $3.1 billion. Spotify had a less impressive quarter, growing revenues by just 23%. After being the industry’s byword for streaming for so long, Spotify’s dominant role is beginning to lessen. This is less a reflection of Spotify’s performance (though that wasn’t great in Q2) but more to do with the growing diversification of the global streaming market. 

Spotify remains the dominant player in the music subscription sector, with 32% global subscriber market share, but streaming is becoming about much more than just subscriptions. WMG’s Steve Cooper recently reported that such ‘emerging platforms’ “were running at roughly $235 million on an annualized basis” (incidentally, this aligns with MIDiA’s estimate that the global figure for 2020 was $1.5 billion). 

The music subscription market’s Achille’s heel (outside of China) has long been the lack of differentiation. The record labels showed scant interest in changing this, but instead focused on licensing entirely new music experiences outside of the subscription market. As a consequence, the likes of Peloton, TikTok and Facebook have all become key streaming partners for record labels – a very pronounced shift from how the label licensing world looked a few years ago.

The impact on streaming revenues is clear. In Q4 2016, Spotify accounted for 38% of all record label streaming revenue. By Q2 2021 this had fallen to 31%.

Looking at headline revenue alone, though, underplays the accelerating impact of streaming’s new players. Because Spotify already has such a large, established revenue base, quarterly dilution is typically steady rather than dramatic. Things look very different though when looking specifically at the revenue growth, i.e., the amount of new revenue generated in a quarter compared to the prior year. On this basis, streaming’s new players are rapidly expanding share. Spotify’s share of streaming revenue growth fell from 34% in Q4 2017 to just 26% in Q2 2021. Unlike total streaming revenue, the revenue growth figure is relatively volatile, with Spotify’s share ranging from a low of 11% to a high of 60% over the period – but the underlying direction of travel is clear.

Spotify remains the record labels’ single most important partner both in terms of hard power (revenues, subscribers) and soft power (ability to break artists etc.). But the streaming world is changing, fuelled by the record labels’ focus on supporting new growth drivers. The implications for Spotify could be pronounced. With so many of Spotify’s investors backing it in a bet on distribution against rights, the less dependent labels are on it, the more leverage they will enjoy. From a financial market perspective, the last 18 months have been dominated by good news stories for music rights – from ever-accelerating music catalogue M&A transactions to record label IPOs and investments. 

Right now, the investor momentum is with rights. Should the current dilution of Spotify’s revenue share continue, Spotify will struggle to negotiate further rates reductions and will find it harder to pursue strategies that risk antagonising rights holders. Meanwhile, rights holders would be surveying an increasingly fragmented market, where no single partner has enough market share to wield undue power and influence. That is a place where rights holders have longed dreamed of getting to, but now – divide and conquer – may finally be coming to fruition.