After a miserable year for music stocks — and stocks in general — 2022 could end on a string of positive notes. Since Oct. 28, the week when music companies began to release third-quarter financial results, the stocks of major labels rose an average of 23.1%. Indie music companies — Reservoir Media, Believe, Hipgnosis Songs Fund and Round Hill Music Royal Fund — rose an average of 8.2% over that time period.
Source: The Ledger: Music Stocks Are Rebounding at the End of a Rough Year
Source: From CNN to Paramount, Media Companies Cut Jobs as Pressures Mount
Source: Amazon Executive Who Oversaw Entertainment Push Exits Company
In a letter sent to [PIAS]’s partners November 29, the day before the deal was announced, the indie firm’s founders, Kenny Gates and Michel Lambot, outlined the background and reasoning behind their decision to strike the deal with UMG. “These days we are competing with tech and financial giants who do not value the cultural importance of the artists and labels we work so hard for, but rather see music merely as an ‘asset class’ to be ruthlessly exploited in exchange for a quick return,” they said in their letter.
Financial giant Apollo Global Management is reportedly selling a $1.65 billion bond backed by music rights from Concord’s catalog, which would mark the music company’s first securitization. That’s according to Bloomberg, citing people with knowledge of the matter, who said that Apollo ‘has already secured an anchor order for a large chunk of the debt’.
Source: Concord music rights to fuel $1.65bn Apollo bond offering – report
Iger is responsible for Disney’s all-in embrace of streaming, and the launch of its marquee service, Disney+, but he acknowledged the measurement of success has changed. Wall Street investors now focus on profitability, not merely subscriber gains. “Instead of chasing (subscribers) with aggressive marketing and aggressive spend on content, we have to start chasing profitability,” Iger told an employee town-hall meeting.
Source: Disney CEO Iger makes profitable streaming a priority
Warner Music Group categorizes revenue from a bunch of social, gaming, and video streaming platforms – Facebook/Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and Roblox amongst them – as “alternative” or “emerging” platforms. In September 2021, Warner Music Group was generating around$273 million annually from these platforms (on a run-rate basis) across recorded music and music publishing combined. A year on, that figure has an increased by around +$100 million.
The Top 5 biggest-selling artists at one of the major record companies, as a subset, has seen their cumulative share of generated revenue at that major record company slashed by two-thirds over the past 10 years. In any given year, an ever-greater share of total streams is drifting away from the Top 10 biggest hits, and towards a much wider array of ‘middle class’ artists with significant, but not necessarily chart-bursting, fanbases.
Launched in November 2020, the company has made over 500 advances to artists and labels, ranging from $1,000 to as much as $2 million per artist for a limited share of revenues on catalog, and, if the artist chooses, on new unreleased music. These advances are repaid from a share of an artist’s streaming and airplay revenues, over a period of the artist’s choosing.
Source: Artist financing platform beatBread closes $100m fund to ’empower independent artists and labels’
Warner Music Group, helped by digital revenue growth across recorded music and publishing, reported quarterly revenues rose 16% at constant currency (9% as reported) to $1.5 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 30, the company announced Tuesday (Nov. 22). Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, amortization and depreciation (EBITDA) grew by 16% to $276 million.
Source: Warner Music Posts $1.5B in Quarterly Revenue as Publishing Rises 32%