Did ‘Old Town Road’ drive Sony’s 27% spike in streaming revenue?

The runaway success of Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road’ is hailed as the driving force behind Sony Music’s strong second quarter.

Overall revenues grew 11.5% year-on-year to US$1.02 billion in the three months to the end of June, and profit was up 18.4% to $348.3 million.

Streaming, which now makes up 59.38% of Sony’s global recorded music revenue, jumped in this period by 26.5% to $604.9 million – or $6.7 million per day.

Recently released Q2 figures from Universal Music Group showed it turned over $10.4 million every 24 hours from streaming.

Music Business Worldwide estimates that while Warner Music Group has not yet released its Q2 results, it would be safe to conclude that the three majors are together making $20 million a day from streams.

In the second quarter, Sony Music’s download sales were down a further 19.1% to $79.1 million, while the physical’s dip was a more moderate 3.4% to $200 million.

According to the company, its two biggest sellers around the world were ‘Old Town Road’ and Khalid’s ‘Free Spirit’.

‘Old Town Road’ this week overtook Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men’s ‘One Sweet Day’ for most weeks at #1 on the US Billboard charts, and now equals Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee’s ‘Despacito’ (featuring Justin Bieber).

Other big sellers in this period were P!nk’s ‘Hurts 2B Human’, Bruce Springsteen’s Western Stars and DJ Khaled’s ‘Father Of Asahd’.

Travis Scott, Chris Brown, Vampire Weekend and Luke Combs were also singled out by the company as strong performers.

The music publishing division – Sony/ATV, Sony Music Publishing Japan and EMI Music Publishing, with a total of 4.5 million songs – had a strong revenue boost, up 81.7% to $357.5 million.

This may partly be attributed to being the first quarter that the company was consolidated with EMI Music Publishing, which it fully acquired in 2018.

Two weeks ago, Sony combined its publishing and recorded music as Sony Music Group under CEO Rob Stringer.

In terms of the first six calendar months of 2019, Sony’s half-year recorded music revenues hit $1.97bn, up 2% (or approximately $40m) year-on-year.

Releases on Sony’s slate for the next six months include Tool, The Chainsmokers, Celine Dion, Blink-182, Bryson Tiller, G-Eazy, Miley Cyrus, Miranda Lambert, Raphael Saadiq and Rick Ross.