Earlier today, Sony Music reported its second-quarter financial results for 2019, with music streaming driving a sharp increase in revenues.
In the period ending September 30th, Sony Music reported an operating income of 37.5 billion yen ($344 million), which is a 19% increase over the same period the year before. These results include the following operations:
- Sony Music Entertainment
- Sony/ATV Publishing
- Sony Japan
- Visual Media/Platform
Operating profit at Sony rose even more. The company reported an increase of 23.5%, from 31.5 million yen ($282.5 million) on revenues of 203.9 billion yen ($1.83 billion) to 37.48 billion yen ($349 million) on revenue of 219.3 billion yen ($2.04 billion).
Revenue at the company also rose 8%.
The company attributed its growth to a dramatic increase in music streaming revenue.
Global music streaming revenues at Sony rose 21.4%, from 57.1 billion yen ($512 million) a year ago to 66.8 billion yen ($622 million). At the same time, total music sales rose more modestly, from 111.9 billion yen ($1 billion) to 112.2 billion yen ($1 billion). This was due to a steep decrease in downloads, from 9.8 billion yen ($88 million) to 8.84 billion yen ($82.3 million), and overall flat physical sales from CDs, vinyl and cassettes.
Music publishing at Sony rose 95% during the period as well, but this was mostly due to the company consolidating EMI Music Publishing.
Sony Music’s first-half numbers were also quite good, with operating income rising over 19% over the previous period to 75.8 billion yen ($696 million) and sales rising 9% to 421.5 billion yen ($3.87 billion). Though a change in accounting methodologies is said to have adversely affected the company sales revenues in its 2018 fiscal year.
Big hits at Sony Music helped drive its results.
Greatly helping Sony’s second quarter were the following releases:
- Fear Inoculum by Tool
- “Panini” by Lil Nas X
- Indigo by Chris Brown
- Free Spirit by Khalid
Financial results at Sony are in line with Universal Music Group’s latest numbers and with broader industry stats recently released by the RIAA.
How bad can it be when the company only has 4 hit records! Can you imagine any company surviving in the 60s with nothing more than 4 hits? Time to recognize the music revolution against all this craziness! When they don’t have good records then their lawyers are making the money by lawsuits.