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Goldman Sachs ups its forecasts for music streaming (and UMG)

Financial giant Goldman Sachs’ bullish music industry forecasts have sparked questions in the past about potential conflicts of interest in its work for and/or ownership of shares in companies including Vivendi and Spotify.

It’s useful to bear in mind whenever reading breathless headlines about its latest predictions. At the same time, these figures and the reports that they come from are influential in investment circles, including fuelling the ongoing wave of finance for acquisitions of music catalogues and companies alike.

With that in mind: stonks! Goldman Sachs’ latest report ups some of its already famously-big numbers. It values Universal Music Group at €44bn (around $53bn), for example, compared to €30bn in its previous report last year. The increase will certainly be welcome to UMG as it prepares to go public later this year.

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Goldman Sachs predicts $41bn recorded-music industry by 2030

At our NY:LON Connect conference in January this year, Dot Blockchain boss Benji Rogers caused a stir by making the confident prediction that “we’ll be at $100bn a year as an industry in two years” – albeit with the caveat that “it’s going to be really painful to get there”.

It’s fair to say that Goldman Sachs’ latest industry forecasts are more conservative.

The company is predicting a global recorded-music market of $41bn by 2030, with $34bn of that generated by streaming; $4bn from performance rights; $700m from physical and download sales; $500m from sync; and $1.2bn from other sources.