STRINGER TALKS STREAMING, AI AT SONY BIZ CONFAB

Sony Music ruler Rob Stringer offered a deep dive into the company yesterday as part of its 2024 Business Segment Meeting, with his presentation underscoring the means by which its recorded-music revenue recently topped $10b for the second fiscal year in a row.

Per Stringer, investment in Sony's repertoire ecosystem, which includes The Orchard, AWAL and Sony Music Publishing, has led to a 24% increase in new tracks released to DSPs and a 28% jump in administered tracks since fiscal year 2019. The company's digital growth continued apace last year, with more than 500m paid streaming accounts representing 73% of its overall streaming revenue.

While welcoming recent DSP price increases, Stringer also pointed out that the gap between free and paid subscriptions has widened.

"In mature markets, we hope that our partners close that gap by asking consumers using ad-supported services to additionally pay a modest fee," he said. "This would help develop this segment of the streaming business to be more than just a marketing funnel for paid subscription and still be a tremendous value for users. Ultimately, we are trying to get better monetization of free tiers. We think everyone is willing to pay something for access to virtually the entire universe of music.”

Touching on SMG's focus on global expansion, Stringer highlighted key investments across Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Thanks to the success of subsidiaries such as Som Livre, Rimas and Alfonte, SMG enjoyed a 19% increase in market growth in Latin America, where it retains the top market share.

As for Asia, Stringer noted, "We have focused our attention on rapidly developing India, where we are the #1 major music company. Similarly, key artist signings and strategic label deals supplemented our footprint in China, and we are the only global company to have artists represented on leading Top 10 streaming charts in the region."

The use of generative AI remains a hot-button issue, and Stringer said Sony has sent letters to more than 700 AI developers to opt out of its repertoire being used for machine learning. The company has also developed programs such as Artists and Songwriters Forward to provide its roster with high-level information and support.

"A sustainable business-rights model needs to be established and respected, and we will take an active role in bringing one about," he said. "Once it is in place, AI will be a multidimensional tool for creativity, scalability and efficiency in our industry. We will go where our artists want to go creatively in the AI space whilst protecting their rights at every step, and we look to find common ground with our future partners in this era."

In related news, we tried to use AI to generate a joke for the end of this story, but it broke. Sorry about that.