How Sony Music continues to solidify as a streaming-led business

Two sets of figures from Japan’s Sony Corp show that streaming continues to be the strong point for its New York-based recorded music division.

Sony Corp released figures for January to March ’19 (which is the company’s Q4 financial year), and the full year 2018 which also ended in March 2019.

In Q1 streaming makes up 53.2% for Sony Music Entertainment, after rising by 8.2% year-on-year to A$715.5 million.

For the full year, streaming revenue rose 15.2% to ¥227.5 billion ($2.91 billion).

Q1 2019 RESULTS

After strong performances in the last two quarters, Q1 for recorded music was down 4.9%, pulled down by physical’s
36.8% dip to $251.3 million.

Physical made up 18.7%, downloads were 8.6% and ‘other’ was 19.5%.

Sony’s biggest-selling releases in this period were Travis Scott’s ASTROWORLD, 21 Savage’s I Am > I Was, Khalid’s Free Spirit, Future’s Future Hndrxx Presents: The WIZRD and Backstreet Boys’ DNA.

Music publishing – Sony/ATV, Sony Music Publishing Japan and EMI Music – generated revenues of ¥35.39 billion ($455.9 million) up 76.9% year-on-year.

FULL FISCAL YEAR 2018

In the 12 months ending on March 31 2019, total music revenues (recorded, publishing and mobile game business of “visual media and platform”) was flat, with only gains of 0.9% to ¥807.49 billion ($10.34 billion).

Recorded music reached $5.46 billion, down by 4.5% due to physical free-falling by 33.7% to ¥426.9 billion ($1.14 billion).

Full-year publishing revenues benefitted from EMI Music becoming a full-fledged Sony company last November.

They hit ¥106.66 billion ($87.7 million).

Profits for the music division were up 81.9% to ¥232.49 billion (A$2.9 billion).

Operating income rose by 82% to ¥232.5 billion ($2.9 billion).

Sony’s biggest-selling artist projects in the 12 month period were, in order: Travis Scott’s ASTROWORLD, Camila Cabello’s Camila, Luke Combs’ This One’s for You, George Ezra’s Staying at Tamara’s and various releases from Calvin Harris.

Sony Corp attributed the rises in profit and operating income to the full acquisition of EMI Music.

COMING UP IN 2019

The major singled out noteworthy current and forthcoming releases for the next three months from Pink, BTS, Khalid, DJ Khaled, Bruce Springsteen, Calvin Harris, Chris Brown, Mark Ronson, Tyler, The Creator and Vampire Weekend.