Universal Tunes Posts Document Revenue for 2021

The world’s biggest new music company, Universal Tunes Group, posted a document $9.4 billion in earnings for 2021, the firm introduced in its earnings report on Thursday. That marks a 14.4% enhance about 2020, though comparisons with the pandemic 12 months are clearly skewed.

Recorded audio revenues ended up up 14.3% to close to $7.52 billion, while streaming soared practically 17% to just underneath $5 billion. Actual physical earnings is up 18.6% year-around-year to all around $1.24 billion, run largely by vinyl’s continued progress and a raise in immediate-to-customer income.

Prime sellers for the calendar year provided new albums from Olivia Rodrigo, BTS, Justin Bieber, Morgan Wallen, ABBA and Taylor Swift, though the Weeknd and Billie Eilish also posted solid sales.

In accordance to the report, the firm expended close to $420 million on “catalog investments,” considerably less than 50 % of the $1.03 billion it expended in 2020, when it acquired Bob Dylan’s track catalog for an amount resources say was just about $400 million. Even though the enterprise has by now designed a pair of leading-dollar acquisitions in 2022 — the song catalogs of Sting and Neil Diamond, along with the latter’s masters — its largest publicized catalog offer very last year was a occupation-spanning agreement with Aerosmith.

Common New music Publishing’s income was up 12.6% to $1.49 billion, many thanks to ongoing development in streaming as perfectly as synch and catalog acquisition. Its EBITDA was up 14.1% to $339 million.

For the fourth quarter of 2021, UMG’s revenue was up 19% to $2.8 billion, with recorded music pulling in $2.19 billion up 15.2%. Publishing strike $451 million, up a whopping 31.6%, for the fourth quarter.

Chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge said, “2021 was still one more historic yr for UMG. We assisted our artists accomplish incredible achievement – which includes 8 of the IFPI’s prime 10 world artists of the yr. In addition to solid overall performance in streaming, we drove new parts of chance for our artists – ranging from merchandise to brand name management, sponsorship, ecommerce, and movie & tv. And we expanded our partner portfolio into emerging development spots these kinds of as health and fitness and physical fitness, Internet3 and social online video.

“Our good results in all these initiatives showed in our financial performance,” he ongoing. “Revenues amplified by 17% on a frequent currency foundation, Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded and Free of charge dollars movement improved appreciably. Heading forward, we see the industry continuing to expand and – with our one of a kind practical experience, our deep comprehending of the business and the wide artist interactions and world creative networks – we count on to further more strengthen our place as the marketplace chief as we go on to break new artists and construct on our environment-class catalogue.”