Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: streaming is paying off rather well for the world’s largest music company. Universal Music’s revenues grew by 18.6% year-on-year for the first half of 2019, according to yesterday’s financial results from its parent company Vivendi.
The company’s revenues were €3.26bn (around $3.68bn), with UMG’s recorded-music revenues growing by 16.9% to €2.6bn as part of that. And within *that* UMG’s recordings revenue from streaming and subscriptions grew by 25.5% to €1.57bn, making streaming now more than 60% of UMG’s overall recorded-music revenues – double-digit daily streaming revenues as MBW pointed out.
Universal’s publishing business, meanwhile, saw revenues jump 10.5% to €467m in the first half of 2019. Alongside the publication of these figures came confirmation that Vivendi has now chosen the banks who’ll be advising it on its sale of up to 50% of UMG. While it didn’t name the banks involved, Vivendi did say that its plans “for the acquisition of a minority interest by one or more partners” are progressing.
Music Ally’s next Learn Live webinar will help you understand what’s required for artists to thrive in new international markets!