Subscription growth sees Universal Music generate $3.15bn in Q3, 2024

Universal Music Group (UMG) has published its financial results for Q3 of 2024, reporting revenues of $3.15bn (€2.870 billion) across all its divisions, including recorded music, publishing, and more. The revenue was up 4.9 percent year-on-year (y-o-y) at constant currency.

UMG’s Top sellers for the quarter included Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, and Post Malone. UMG’s Recorded Music, Music Publishing and Merchandising, and other segments contributed to revenue growth in the quarter.

Other highlights in the Q3 report include that UMG’s subscription streaming revenues were up 8.2 percent y-o-y.

UMG’s ‘Subscription and streaming revenues’ (including ad-supported and subscription streaming revenues) grew 6.2 percent y-o-y at constant currency to $1.637bn in Q3.

Breaking down UMG’s recorded music streaming figure for Q3 further reveals that the company’s subscription streaming revenues grew 8.2 percent YoY at constant currency to $1.248bn and were driven, according to UMG, “primarily by the growth in global subscribers, as well as price increases at certain platforms.”

Commenting on UMG’s latest quarterly results, Lucian Grainge, UMG’s Chairman and chief executive officer, said, “Even as we continue to grow revenue and Adjusted EBITDA, we are already making progress on the strategic initiatives we outlined at our recent Capital Markets Day.

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“We continue to advance our Artist-Centric strategy, a key pillar of our work to evolve streaming’s underlying business model, or what we call ‘Streaming 2.0’,” said Grainge, “Through these initiatives, we are setting the stage for a new wave of streaming growth and new opportunities to UMG, its artists, songwriters, and shareholders.”

UMG noted on October 31 that, as previously disclosed, its revenue in the third quarter of 2023 included a €53 million benefit in Music Publishing from the accrual for a catch-up payment from certain digital service providers related to the Copyright Royalty Board Phonorecords III ruling in 2023 (the “CRB Phonorecords III Accrual”).

Universal’s overall recorded music revenues for Q3 2024, including streaming plus physical, etc, were $2.356bn, up 6.2 percent YoY at constant currency. Meanwhile, the company’s ad-supported recorded music streaming revenue was up 0.3 percent YoY at constant currency to $388.8 million in Q3 due, according to UMG, “to mixed performance at advertising-based platform partners as the digital advertising market remains volatile.”

Within Universal’s recorded music business, physical revenue decreased 0.7 percent y-o-y at constant currency to $316.31m, “as growth in vinyl sales largely offset a difficult comparison against last year’s strong CD sales in Japan,” according to UMG.