Music Label Revenue

Delivered April 17th, 2020. Contributors: Seyi A., Hanine K., Aleksandar G., Eunice A., Ian C., Oshione S. and

Part

of six

Part

Music Label Revenues (1)

The annual revenues for the indicated record labels range from $1.8 million to $87.2 million. The details of each of the companies are in this attached spreadsheet.
Record Labels RevenuesAlert Music has a revenue of $5 million.
Asthmatic Kitty (IND) has a revenue of $10 million.
Ardent Records has a revenue of $1.8 million.
Big Loud Records has a revenue of $4 million.
ATO Records has a revenue of $10 million.
Atlantic Records has a revenue of $87.2 million.
Research StrategyWe started the research by searching for each company’s annual report, since the annual revenue could be available there, but it was not available. We then expanded the research by looking at company databases. These included ZoomInfo, Hoovers, and Crunchbase, and they provided the revenue of the companies but 5 of them. The companies are 2101 Records, 300 Entertainment, American Recordings, Bad Boy Entertainment, and Best Beat Records. For these remaining 5 companies, our next strategy was to expand the research by looking at news articles, which included PR Newswire, Financial Times, Music Business Worldwide, Forbes, and Billboard. The rationale for this is that the revenue of these companies could be available in the music industry publications, but only information on the music industry market size and musicians partnering with the record labels were available. 
Our next strategy was to determine if these record labels have parent companies. This is because the parent companies could have reported the revenues based on their subsidiary companies. We discovered that 2101 Records, 300 Entertainment, Bad Boy Entertainment, and Best Beat Records had parent companies. However, none of the parent companies provided breakdowns of their revenues. The unavailability of the revenue of these companies could be due to competitive reasons.

Part

of six

Part

Music Label Revenues (2)

Black River Entertainment, Bloodshot, and Concord Music Group generate $6 million, $17 million, and $33.57 million in annual revenues, respectively. The attached spreadsheet contains the revenues for the record labels in rows 23-43. All the listed labels are privately-held. Thus, none of these record labels report their marketing spends. Below is a summary of our findings.

The annual revenues of Black River Entertainment, Bloodshot, and Brushfire are $6 million, $17 million, and $5 million, respectively.
Broken Bow's annual revenue is between $25 million and $30 million.
Canvasback, Capitol, Carnival, and Cashmoney generate $4 million, $98 million, $5 million, and $8 million in annual revenues, respectively. 
Century Media's annual revenue is $4 million, while
 Columbia's annual revenue is $100 million.
Compass generates $36 million in annual revenue, while Concord generates $33.57 million. 
The annual revenues of Curb and Decca Label Group are $8.14 million and $5 million, respectively. 
Blue Note Records is privately-held. The only available revenue estimate was provided by Owler ($26.3 million).
Capitol Christian Music Group is privately-held. The only available revenue estimate was provided by Owler ($1.2 million).
Cherrytree Records is owned by Cherrytree Music, whose annual revenue is $6 million.
DB Records is owned by BMG, which has an annual revenue of $674 million.
Research StrategyDespite our research through each company's website, company profiling databases, research firms, and the public domain, we were unable to find the annual revenue of Blue Note Records, Capitol Christian Music Group, Cherrytree Records, Custard Records, DB Records, and Broken Arrow. Thus, we tried an alternative strategy. We aimed to verify whether these two companies are owned by parent companies. Our strategy was to find the breakdown of these parent companies in terms of owned brands. Luckily, we identified Cherrytree Music and BMG as being the parent companies of Cherrytree Records and DB Records, respectively. However, none of these parent companies provided the breakdown of their annual revenue. Therefore, for Cherrytree Records and DB Records, we provided the annual revenue of their parent companies. However, this strategy was fruitless for Blue Note Records, Capitol Christian Music Group, Custard Records, and Broken Arrow since these companies are not owned by other companies. 
For Blue Note Records and Capitol Christian Music Group, we provided data from Owler because it is the only available revenue estimate. 

Part

of six

Part

Music Label Revenues (3)

Ingrooves generates around $100 million, while Epic has an estimated revenue of $27 million. The annual revenues for the listed record label companies have been entered in rows 44-64 of the attached spreadsheet and a brief overview of the findings is presented below. 
SummaryGlassnote has an estimated annual revenue of $5 million.
Epitaph has an estimated annual revenue of $7 million.
Fueled by Ramen is owned by the Warner Music Group, which had a revenue of $4.47 billion in 2019.
Hybrid Recording is a division of Metropolitan Talent Inc.
Hidden Beach generates around $9 million in revenue annually.
Island's estimated annual revenue is $30 million.
Research StrategyTo obtain the annual revenues for the listed record label companies, we searched their websites, databases such as ZoomInfo, Dun & Bradstreet and Craft.co and news articles and publications such as Billboard, Music Business Worldwide, PR Newswire and others. Unfortunately, we were unable to find revenues for Epic U.K., Fueled By Ramen and Hybrid Recordings. We then tried to find revenues for their parent companies. However, we only found this information for the Warner Music Group, the owner of Fueled by Ramen.

Part

of six

Part

Music Label Revenues (4)

Loma Vista, Marsalis Music, and Matador generated $4 million, $30 million, and $28 million in annual revenues respectively. The annual revenues for the record labels in rows 64-84 have been provided in the attached spreadsheet. Further details are presented below.
Summary of FindingsIsland Records, Mercury U.S., and Mercury U.K. are owned by Universal Music Group. The annual revenue of Universal Music Group was $7.7 billion in 2019.
Ministry of Sound was acquired by Sony Music U.K. in 2016. The annual revenue of Sony Music U.K. was $4 billion in 2019.
Maple Music is owned by MapleCore Ltd. MapleCore has an annual revenue of $4.6 million. 
Warner Music Group acquired Parlophone in 2013. Warner Music Group generated annual revenue of $4.5 billion in 2019.
Motown's annual revenue is $45 million.
Motown Gospel has an annual revenue of $6 million. 
Research StrategyWe were unable to provide the annual revenues for Island Records, Mercury U.S., Mercury U.K., Ministry of Sound, Maple Music, Parlophone, Nettwerk, Patriot, and Peak. We scoured through the company websites, public domain, and company databases (Manta, Craft.co, Zoominfo, Crunchbase, and others). Thus, we tried an alternative strategy to verify if these companies are owned by parent organizations. Our strategy was to find the breakdown of these parent companies in terms of owned brands. Luckily, we identified the parent companies of six companies except for Nettwerk, Patriot, and Peak. None of the companies provided a breakdown of their revenues. This strategy was futile for Nettwerk, Patriot, and Peak record labels. Consequently, we entered N/A in their respective rows and provided the annual revenues for the parent companies. 

Part

of six

Part

Music Label Revenues (5)

The annual revenues for the assigned record labels have been provided in rows 84 to 106, Column C of the attached spreadsheet. Below is a summary of the key findings. 
Summary of FindingsThe annual revenue for Provident Music Group is approximately $21,602,748.
Q Division's annual revenue is about $4,000,000. 
RCA Records has an annual revenue of approximately $385,000,000. 
The annual revenue for RED Music is approximately $30,010,000.
The annual revenue of Republic Records is approximately $625,000,000.
Research StrategyIt is noteworthy that we did not find revenue information for Peak, Polo Grounds Music, Priority, Razor & Tie, RCA (UK), Republic Nashville, Rough Trade, Sony Music Canada, and Sony Music Latin. We first looked through their respective websites for revenue information but did not find useful data. We further searched through industry sites, such as Forbes and NPR but these sites did not have any information on the companies besides the artistes they have signed. Data aggregators, such as Dun & Bradstreet and Rocketreach also did not have revenue information about the companies. The information that we found focused on their parent companies, which were mainly Concord Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment. The three labels have annual revenues of $33.57 million, $7.7 billion, and $1.99 billion respectively. 

Part

of six

Part

Music Label Revenues (6)

The annual revenues for the assigned record label companies have been provided in rows 107 to 128, column C of the attached spreadsheet. While we were able to provide the revenue of a majority of the companies, the revenues for Verity, Warner Brothers UK, and Word (WEA) are unavailable in the public domain. An overview of our key findings is outlined below:

Team Love Records' revenue is estimated to be approximately $4 million. 
Tommy Boy’s revenue is about $1.55 million.
Vanguard has estimated revenue of $2 million.
Vapor Records Inc’s revenue is approximately $250,000.
Verve Music Group has estimated revenue of $10 million 
XL Recordings recorded approximately $65 million as revenue in 2018.
In 2019, Warner Music Nashville (WEA) recorded $953 million.
Wind-up's revenue is estimated to be about $16 million.
Research StrategyTo provide the annual revenues for the listed music record labels on rows 107 to 128 of the attached spreadsheet, your research team combed through the websites of the various companies as well as third party company data aggregators' databases, business directories and media sources such as Dun & Bradstreet Inc, ZoomInfo, Rocket Reach, Manta, Billboard, Music Business Worldwide, PR Newswire, and Business Insider. While we were able to locate the revenue of a majority of the assigned record labels, we were unable to locate the revenues for Verity, Warner Brothers UK, and Word (WEA) after an extensive search through these sources. 

We also reviewed multiple market reports on the global music record industry intending to find data points (such as market share) to estimate a proxy for Verity, Warner Brothers UK, and Word (WEA) revenues. Unfortunately, none of the reviewed market reports provided information on the market share or other data points that can be used to triangulate a proxy for these companies' revenue. Hence, we could not estimate a proxy for these companies' revenue.

 An extensive search for the revenue of Warner Brothers UK shows that the record label has not published its revenue information in the public domain or currently generates zero revenue.