I’ve had the same feeling, that digging up this information is a huge task. 
With so little discussion or likes, I haven’t bothered to post everything here.
Please like posts and bring up things that interest you, so I know if it’s worth posting everything. 
It’s great that a discussion has sparked.
Post-listing financial data can be found here:
https://investors.universalmusic.com/reports/annual/
Just use the drop-down menu to find last year’s quarterly financial figures. UMG was spun off into the stock market by the French media company Vivendi. Vivendi owns, among others, Canal+ and Gameloft.
UMG’s earlier financial reports can be found in their financial information:
https://www.vivendi.com/en/shareholders-investors/financial-publications-and-reports/financial-results/
The listing prospectus might also be missing for some.
https://www.vivendi.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Universal-Music-Group-Prospectus-14-September-2021.pdf
Interesting read.
I can’t really say which of these big players will be the one to bring it home. But you rightly said that UMG has increased its market share.
If you listened to the Odd Lots interview, it will be quite difficult for independent artists to get their voices heard with the big streamers. Without them, it’s also difficult to get their voices heard, as people simply get their music from there and are willing to pay monthly fees for music. Getting to the negotiating table requires some kind of organization. I would say it’s an even more frustrating evil than the stereotypical 80s manager that the DNA commercial mocks.
When you listen to both sides, the relationship between artists and record labels has soured over the years. For good reason. There’s the artist who wants to make music and get their share of the hard work. There’s the manager who sees the artist as a product to sell, and there’s the record label that, by investing in 10 artists, expects one of them to probably turn into a cash cow. It’s quite a risk, but for the record label, it’s enough that one of their artists succeeds. On the other hand, the successful artist probably doesn’t feel the need to finance the deals of the other nine less successful ones. We rarely hear about the stories where an artist signed a record deal, got a million, and just didn’t happen to succeed.
Somehow, reading between the lines, it seems that record labels have realized that it’s a real problem that artists don’t want to cooperate with them, but they just have to. This is a problem that needs to be changed, and apparently UMG intends to do so. In addition to already owning copyrights to evergreen classics, it is important for them to be an attractive partner for artists, helping them succeed, providing the keys to success, and enabling artists to focus on what they do best: making music.
A successful musician is often a polymath of our time. Success doesn’t come to anyone for free. Work has been put into it. However, people have a limited number of hours in a day. Being visible everywhere, creating very different fan experiences for many needs a lot from an organization, and in addition, negotiating good deals with big players for everything. Let’s also consider that the best financial potential of a single hit song is during the first three years after its release, and at the latest after ten years, only a fraction of the initial potential remains. Let’s not confuse this with the artist’s potential, but focus on the financial potential of a single song.
Phew… Finally, we get to this:
Spotify, for example, is only a fraction of the streaming market. Even with that, UMG’s negotiations lasted two years and were concluded in 2018. With YouTube, in 2019.
Over the past 12 months, UMG has negotiated agreements with, among others:
- Snapchat
- TikTok
- Amazon Music
- Twitch
In addition, it is clearly investing in entering the NFT market. Let’s see later what that will mean in practice. Will artists also receive royalties for images in which they appear in the future? It’s not yet entirely clear to me.
UMG already has negotiated contracts, and the big record labels accounted for 70% of all musical content.
So… It seems a bit like these scepter-wielding record labels would be needed. What I’ve tried to dig into with these competitors, it seems so far that UMG is further along in negotiations compared to other big players, and independents are just properly starting.
There are interesting pendulum swings in history. Netflix began an era where it had power because it had viewers. Competition has intensified among service providers, so perhaps negotiating power is slowly shifting towards those who own intellectual property rights. What will happen to the record labels’ venture capital model? I have my own educated guess for this. I will follow with interest.
Is Hipgnosis more reliable than, for example, the acclaimed BMG, and on what grounds?
