Music Industry

• Total size ~USD 29.6 billion (2024). A decade of growth after two decades of gradual decline.
• Streaming was $20.4 billion, the biggest revenue driver.
• 2014 was one of the lowest years recently. Since then streaming has changed the revenue profile and size of the industry.
• In 2014, it was a 20 year low of $12.8 billion
• At the peak of CD era (end 90s), physical music accounted for $22 billion of revenue
• The industry is as big. Where earlier the revenue came from physical sales, now the revenue is derived from streaming.
• Around 752 million people pay for a streaming service
• The largest players are Universal, followed by Sony and Warner. Independent artists and label make 31.4% of the total revenue.
• The streaming services are provided by Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal...
• It seems The amount of money music industry has made from CDs over time is yet to be replicated by any other medium
  
• Over the last decades, analysts have estimated that CDs brought in around US$ 367 billion in cumulative revenue (in U.S. only) across their lifetime.
• Perhaps streaming will, over its lifetime...

"As our chart nicely illustrates, the transition to digital distribution has both fueled the music industry’s decline and helped stop it. After the golden age of the CD, which propelled worldwide music revenues to unprecedented highs through the 1990s, the advent of MP3 and filesharing hit the music industry like an earthquake. Between 2001 and 2010, physical music sales declined by more than 60 percent, wiping out $13 billion in annual revenue. During the same period, digital music sales grew from zero to $4 billion, which wasn’t even remotely enough to offset the drop in CD sales. It wasn’t until the appearance and widespread adoption of music streaming services that the music industry’s fortunes began turning around again."

Other notes:

•  UMG amassed USD $12.88 billion in total revenues, with annual adjusted EBITDA soaring to USD $2.88 billion.(2024). As of September 2025 Universal Music Group has a market cap of $52.41 Billion USD. 

• In 2024, catalog sales (defined as music older than three years) accounted for 66% of UMG’s recorded music digital and physical revenue (aka: money from record sales and streaming). Meanwhile, frontline releases (music less than three years old) accounted for 34%

• .. UMG’s music publishing catalog now contains 5 million owned and administered titles – around a million more than two years ago

• 4. UMG’s top 50 artists accounted for just 24% of its recorded music revenue in 2024

Contract shape - A revenue-share licensing contract, with advances, minimum guarantees, and negotiated perks, where streaming services keep ~30–35% of revenue, labels/publishers take the rest, and artists are paid indirectly through their label or distributor deals.

• Instead of going fully into consumer streaming, majors:

  • License broadly (Spotify, Apple, Amazon, YouTube).

  • Take equity stakes in platforms (e.g., Universal, Sony, Warner all took stakes in Spotify early on).

  • Experiment at the edges with curated platforms: Vevo, boutique artist apps, or specialized services (e.g., high-fidelity streaming like Tidal).

  • Explore direct-to-fan tools (e.g., Universal investing in Web3/NFT or artist-subscription platforms).

This way, they get upside from streaming growth while avoiding direct antitrust confrontation or network-effect disadvantages.