Universal Music Group published its Q1 2023 financial reports on Wednesday showing revenue of $2.62bn across all its divisions – publishing, recorded music, classical music, distribution, etc.
Within the Recorded Music segment, UMG’s Subscription and streaming revenues – including ad-supported and subscription streaming revenues – grew 7.1% YoY at constant currency to $1.42bn.
Meanwhile, Universal’s ad-supported recorded music streaming revenue was down 2.2% YoY at constant currency to $337.99m. UMG said that “the advertising industry continued to be impacted by a difficult economic environment”.
Within Universal’s recorded music business, physical revenues grew 32.6% YoY at constant currency to $335.84m.
UMG says this growth was driven “by strong CD and DVD sales in Japan and improvements in vinyl sales”.
As highlighted by UMG Chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge on the company’s call with analysts on Wednesday (April 26), Japanese pop stars King & Prince, one of UMG’s top sellers in the quarter, sold over 1 million CD copies of their single Life Goes On in its first week. Grainge noted that was “the first time in three years that sales threshold was crossed”.
Elsewhere in UMG’s recorded Music segment, ‘License and other revenue’ grew 8.1% YoY at constant currency to$242.49m.
In addition to King & Prince, top sellers for the quarter included releases from Morgan Wallen, Taylor Swift, TOMORROW X TOGETHER and back number.
culled from MBW.
