Once again, despite licensing issues with Spotify, music streaming pushes industry revenue way, way up.
Universal Music Group reported $1.1 billion in music streaming revenue alone between January and September of this year. This marks a 64.3% increase from the same period last year.
Vivendi’s 3Q 2016 report shows that its Universal Music Group unit made a whopping $4.48 million per day from streaming services. In bad news for digital downloads, but in good news for music streaming, streaming revenues doubled digital music downloads revenue. This represents a 29% drop, signaling that most fans are purchasing less individual songs and albums online, and moving towards the music streaming model.
UMG’s operating income also grew 75% to $193.1 million, compared with just $111 million last year. The company also posted a 10.8% increase in revenue, thanks in large part to Spotify and Apple Music.
Compared to last year, UMG revenues are up 3.8%, to $4.02 billion from $3.9 billion. The company’s U.S. market share is down, however.
Overall recorded music sales for UMG went up 2.9% to $3.1 billion. Sony’s recorded music division, likewise, posted $2.65 billion. The drop represents an unfavorable currency conversion. Licensing and other revenue for UMG declined to $553 million, from last year’s $565.6 million.
Quarterly recorded music streaming revenues brought in $413 million. Physical sales were down 13.4%, but still brought in $833.6 million. However, in the first nine months of 2015, physical sales brought in $971 million. Streaming compromises 36.4% of recorded music operations whereas physical accounts for 26.6%, downloads 19.4%, and licensing and other revenues 17.6%. Last year, physical sales brought in 31.6%, streaming 25.5%, downloads a strong 24.4%, and licensing and other revenues 18.4%. You can check out MBW’s helpful chart below for the 3Q 2016.
UMG is on track to post $5 billion in revenue for 2016.
4.48 x 365 = $1.635 billion dollars. Considering they are 40% of music business we are talking about ONLY $4 billion dollars in annual streaming revenues.
To STOP Sir Lucian’s streaming SUICIDE wi HAVE TO MAKE MUSIC m e r c h a n d i s e AGAIN!
Let’s talko to larm Page at Google and START $200B music harvest NOW!
How much of that gets to the artists?
So does that even begin to compensate for the losses due to declining sales and piracy?
But wait…..
Isn’t streaming “the Debil”??
Hasn’t DMN, and all of it’s echo-chamber chorus-members like David Lowery and Chris Castle shown us that, with no doubt, streaming can never scale and never make money?