Written by Tim Ingham — Streaming revenues from recorded music comfortably surpassed $1bn at Universal Music Group in the first nine months of 2016.
From January-September, UMG’s recorded sales from streaming and subscription services reached €1.03bn ($1.1bn) – up 64.3% on the same period in 2015 (at constant currency and perimeter).
That was enough to push overall recorded music sales to €2.83bn ($3.1bn), up 2.9% year-on-year (or 3.8% using the constant currency/perimeter yardstick).
It’s worth comparing that to Sony’s recorded music division which, blighted by unfavorable currency conversion, posted $2.65bn (280.65bn Yen) in the same period.
MBW has calculated that UMG’s quarterly recorded music streaming revenues in Q3 hit €377m ($413m).
That was enough to take a whopping 47% of all retail recorded music income during the period (not including licensing revenues).
Physical products accounted for 33% of Q3 sales (€263m), with download making up just 20% (€165m).
That’s a slightly different make-up than Sony, which saw a recorded music retail revenue breakdown of 42% streaming, 18% download and 40% physical in the same quarter.
According to UMG’s latest results from Vivendi, download revenues fell by 29% in the first nine months of this year (constant currency/perimeter).
Other headline figures:
- In the three months across Q3, UMG turned over $4.48m (€4.1m) every day from streaming;
- Streaming delivered more than double the revenues from download in Q3, and just under double in the nine months from Jan-Sept;
- UMG is on course to post revenues somewhere above $5bn across the company – including publishing, merchandising, live income etc. – in this calendar year. You wouldn’t bet against streaming making up more than $1.5bn of that figure.
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