GLOBAL BIZ ROSE TO $17.4B IN 2017

Midia Research got out their abacus, sharpened their pencils and did the math on the global recorded music business. They discovered that the biz rose 8.5%—$1.4b—in 2017 on revenues of $17.4b.

Among their other findings:

Streaming revenues grew 39% to $7.4b.

Universal Music is the marketshare leader at 29.7% of all revenue ($5.16b) followed Sony Music at 22.1% ($3.6b) and Warner Music at 18% ($3.13b).

Independent labels and artists direct sales combine to represent 30.3% of global recorded music revenues in 2017.

Artists without labels saw tremendous growth—27.2%—pulling in $472m from platforms such as Tunecore, CD Baby and Bandcamp.

All these companies performed strongly in 2017, collectively generating $472 million of revenue in 2017, up from $371

Their takeaway? “The market is becoming increasingly diversified, with artists direct outgrowing the rest of the market by far. Although this does not mean that the labels are about to be usurped, it does signify—especially when major distributed independent label revenue and label services deals are considered—an increasingly diversified market. Add the possibility of streaming services signing artists themselves and doing direct deals with independent labels, and the picture becomes even more interesting.”

The report is here.