Sony’s global music rights operation – across recorded music and music publishing – generated USD $1.988 billion in the three months to end of March 2022.
That’s according to MBW’s calculations based on Sony Group Corp’s fiscal Q4 (calendar Q1) results, as announced by the Japanese firm earlier today (March 10).
The $1.988 billion figure was up 13.5% year-on-year (vs. calendar Q1 2021) at US dollar-converted constant currency.
In monetary terms, Sony’s overall music rights operation (recorded music plus music publishing) generated approximately $237 million more in calendar Q1 2022 than in the prior year quarter.
[Note: Corporately speaking, Sony Group’s global music operation includes recorded music, plus music publishing, plus ‘Visual Media & Platform’. The final category primarily covers mobile games and animation projects, and has been omitted from the revenue calculations in this analysis.]
Sony’s global recorded music operation generated USD $1.523 billion in calendar Q1 2021 – according to MBW’s calculations – up 13.4% YoY versus the equivalent quarterly period of the prior year.
Within that calendar Q1 2022 global recorded music result, streaming generated $1.038 billion, up 20.2% YoY.
In monetary terms, Sony’s global recorded music operation generated approximately $180 million more in calendar Q1 2022 than in the prior year quarter.
According to Sony Corp‘s results, Sony Music Entertainment‘s ten biggest recorded music projects in the calendar Q1 2022 quarter (ex-Japan), in order of global revenue generation, were:
- Doja Cat Planet Her
- Lil Nas X MONTERO
- The Kid LAROI F*CK LOVE 3+: OVER YOU
- Harry Styles Fine Line
- TOOL Fear Inoculum
- Lil Durk 7720
- Polo G Hall of Fame
- Rod Wave SoulFly
- Rauw Alejandro VICE VERSA
- Luke Combs What You See Is What You Get
Because calendar Q1 2022 is also Sony Corp’s fiscal Q4 (FY2021), the firm additionally revealed today Sony Music’s ten biggest global recorded music projects (ex-Japan) in the twelve months to end of March this year.
Those projects were:
- Adele 30
- Doja Cat Planet Her
- The Kid LAROI F*CK LOVE 3+: OVER YOU
- Lil Nas X MONTERO
- Harry Styles Fine Line
- Polo G Hall of Fame
- Luke Combs What You See Is What You Get
- Doja Cat Hot Pink
- Travis Scott ASTROWORLD
- Rauw Alejandro VICE VERSA
Sony’s global music publishing operation – led by Sony Music Publishing – generated USD $465 million in the three months to end of March this year.
That quarterly revenue figure, at the US dollar level, was up 14.0% year-on-year.
Sony’s global music publishing operation derived $238.1 million of its quarterly revenues in the calendar Q1 2022 period from streaming.
That streaming figure was up 24.5% year-on-year.
As MBW has previously reported, in the full calendar year of 2021, Sony’s global music rights operation (recorded music plus music publishing) generated USD $7.49 billion in revenues.
That figure was up 23.9% on the equivalent figure from the prior calendar year.
In terms of recorded music only, Sony generated USD $5.77 billion in calendar 2021 – up 25.2% YoY.
And in terms of music publishing only, Sony generated $1.72 billion in calendar 2021 – up 19.7% YoY.
Because Sony Corp’s calendar Q1 results are also its fiscal Q4 results, the company today issued some interesting profit numbers for its corporate Music division in the 12 months to end of March 2022.
(The following figures include Sony’s operations across Recorded Music, Music Publishing plus Visual Media & Platform. Sony doesn’t break out profits for its corporate Music division in the same way it does revenue, so for divisional operating income VM&P cannot be extracted/omitted.)
In FY2021 (the 12 months to end of March 2022), Sony’s corporate Music division posted annual operating income of 210.93 billion Yen (USD $1.88bn).
That represented an operating margin of 18.9%, from total divisional annual revenues of 1.117 trillion Yen (USD $9.95 billion.)
In its forecast for the 12 months ahead (ending March 2023), Sony said of its corporate Music division: “Sales are expected to increase year-on-year mainly due to higher sales for Recorded Music and Music Publishing primarily resulting from an expected increase in revenues from streaming services and the impact of foreign exchange rates, as well as the impact of the acquisition of AWAL.
“This increase in sales is expected to be partially offset by decreases in both the contribution of physical media revenue in the anime business and revenues from mobile game applications in Visual Media and Platform.
“Operating income is expected to increase year-on-year due to the impact of the above-mentioned increase in sales as well as the positive impact of foreign exchange rates.”
Note: All YoY percentage rises/falls published in this story are calculated at constant currency at the US dollar-converted level. MBW uses Sony’s own quarterly average currency rates for these calculations.
See below for the breakdown of Sony’s latest (fiscal) quarterly figures for music in Japanese Yen, as published by Sony Group Corp today.
For this analysis, MBW has calculated Sony’s financials from Japanese Yen into US dollars at the following prevailing exchange rates in each quarter, as confirmed by Sony Corp:
- Calendar Q1 2020: 109.0 Yen per USD
- Calendar Q2 2020: 107.6 Yen per USD
- Calendar Q3 2020: 106.2 Yen per USD
- Calendar Q4 2020: 104.5 Yen per USD
- Calendar Q1 2021: 105.9 Yen per USD
- Calendar Q2 2021: 109.5 Yen per USD
- Calendar Q3 2021: 110.1 Yen per USD
- Calendar Q4 2021: 113.7 Yen per USD
- Calendar Q1 2022: 116.1 Yen per USD
By applying these exchange figures to each applicable period, we effectively get a US-leaning constant currency picture of Sony Music’s performance.
This isn’t a perfect system; it risks overplaying Sony Music Entertainment’s global business slightly by converting a chunk of revenues from Sony Music Entertainment Japan (which would usually be straight-reported in Yen) into US dollars.
But it provides us with a cleaner reflection of the performance of New York-based Sony Music Entertainment outside of FX distortion, because the company had to convert its US currency into Yen in the first place for Sony Corp’s results. The same is true for US-based Sony Music Publishing.
MBW believes this currency exchange system is the yardstick used internally at Sony Music Group‘s HQ in New York.
(Fiscal Year Yen-to-USD conversions have been made at 112.3 average annual rate as provided by Sony Group Corp.)
Sony’s own description of its three corporate music divisions is as follows:
- Recorded Music – Streaming includes the distribution of digital recorded music by streaming; Recorded Music – Others includes the distribution of recorded music by physical media and digital download as well as revenue derived from artists’ live performances;
- Music Publishing includes the management and licensing of the words and music of songs;
- Visual Media and Platform includes the production and distribution of animation titles, including game applications based on the animation titles, and various service offerings for music and visual products.
Within / covering the first two divisions listed above:
- Sony Music Publishing, run by CEO & Chairman Jon Platt, is Sony’s US-headquartered music publishing operation.
- Sony Music Entertainment, run by CEO Rob Stringer, is Sony’s US-headquartered recorded music operation.
- And Sony Music Group – also run by Rob Stringer, as Chairman – is Sony’s US-headquartered umbrella group for both Sony Music Entertainment and Sony Music Publishing.
Additional boring but important explainer: MBW’s year-on-year comparisons in this analysis are like-for-like (on a converted USD basis at prevailing quarterly rates) using revenues figures that reflect streaming revenue generated by partner labels on a gross basis in FY2020. (See secondary column in ‘Music Segment Supplemental Information’ chart above.)Music Business Worldwide