Sony Music Group’s revenues are growing faster than the industry average, and it is the only major to grow its market share, CEO and chairman Rob Stringer said during an investor presentation on Friday.
For nine straight years, the major music company and subsidiary of the Japanese film, gaming and media conglomerate Sony, said it has achieved record-setting revenue, growing at an average compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.7% over the past four years compared to the industry’s 11.3% CAGR, while streaming revenue grew at a 15.1% CAGR. And according to MIDiA Research, Stringer said Sony was alone among the three majors to increase its market share from 2020 to 2024, due to it’s “higher independent market share than any other label or distributor” as a result of owning the indie distributor The Orchard.
In the wide-ranging investor presentation, Stringer said Sony is benefitting from the commercial success of albums by superstar artists, including Beyonce, Bad Bunny, Chappell Roan, Tyler the Creator and Charli XCX, and the more than 60 acquisitions and investments worth over $2.5 billion dollars that it has entered into over the past year alone across global frontline, catalog, creative and service businesses.
Stringer said Sony Music’s dominance of the independent market stems from The Orchard, Sony’s independent distribution organization, which has more than 26,000 label partners; AWAL which works with 20,000 artists, and the Alamo Records umbrella group, which includes Foundation distribution and Santa Anna’s incubator, and now works with nearly 3,000 artists.
“In an environment where nearly half the marketplace is made up of the independent music sector, sales flowing through our independent distribution businesses more than doubled the last four years,” Stringer said in a pre-recorded video presenation. Addressing the skepticism of some investors around Sony Music’s $1.27 billion acquisition of Queen’s recorded music, publishing and name, image and likeness rights — the highest amount ever paid for an artist’s catalog — Stringer said, “these acquisitions… are in no way based on random financial speculative tactics.”
Investments like these are made back by exploiting listeners’ growing demand for older catalog music, Stringer through merchandise sales, sync placements in films and synergies with the gaming industry.
“We see more of our catalog in the charts as every year passes,” Stringer said. “In 2020, 24 percent of the Top 200 tracks were catalog songs. In 2024, that percentage grew to about 50 percent. This trend is extremely beneficial to Sony Music given our rich, deep working content.”
Since Sony’s investment in merch company Ceremony of Roses in 2022, the company has grown revenue by seven times, and its neighboring rights division collected more than $65 million for its artists last year.
Stringer reiterated calls for price increases and new tiers across the digital streaming platforms, and called for flexible pricing structures in high growth and developing markets.
Stringer said Sony Music has worked with 800 technology companies “on ethical product creation, content protection, detection, enhancing metadata and audio tuning and translation,” and that they are going to do “deals for new music AI products this year with those that want to construct the future with us the right way,” creating and adhereing to a clear remuneration system.
“New subscription ideas with fair revenue sharing arrangements will be further additive … [and] will start to slowly and rapidly scale,” Stringer said. “We will share all revenues with our artists and songwriters whether from training or related to outputs, so they are appropriately compensated from day one of this new frontier.”
Stringer said he hopes the industry’s proof of concept will give government regulators the evidence they need to pass laws reinforcing that system.
