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Music

Universal Music Group's Revenues Last Year Were Biggest in a Decade

The music corporation raked in $5.6 billion, a 12.1%​ increase from the previous year in actual terms.

Photo courtesy of UMG

Universal Music Group—international music corporation, and subsidiary of French media conglomerate Vivendi—posted the highest venues in a decade in 2015, according to Music Business Worldwide. The company raked in a total of $5.6 billion (€5.1 billion) which was a 12.1 percent increase from the previous year in actual terms.

On February 18, Vivendi shared their full year results for 2015, telling investors that "significant growth in subscription and streaming revenues more than offset decline in physical and download revenues." Streaming income was up 56.2 percent from 2014's figures to $1.051 billion (€954 million). Even though UMG's revenue from downloads fell 13 percent in the year, it still beat out streaming at $1.123 billion (€1.02 billion).

The revenue in 2015 made specifically from the consumption of recorded music wasn't UMG's highest in a decade, which means that there were other important factors at play in their game-changing year. Two major shifts included rises in income from their songwriter and composer-focused division Universal Music Publishing Group (up 12.4 percent from the previous year to $833 million [€756 million]) and "merchandising and other," which went up 19.1 percent to $304 million (€276 million).

MBW also noted that a favorable Euro-to-Dollar exchange rate also significantly helped UMG's 2015 numbers, as North America provided the company with 41 percent of their total business last year.

UMG did not respond to THUMP's request for comment.

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