Warner Music Group head Robert Kyncl appears before Congress in support of federal voice and likeness protections. Photo Credit: Shannon Finney, Getty Images for RIAA
Warner Music Group has acknowledged encountering “some pressure” during the final three months of 2024, when its U.S. recorded music revenue fell 15% year over year.
The major label today posted its financials for calendar 2024’s final quarter (Q1 of the company’s fiscal year). Simultaneously, Warner Music also unveiled a new licensing pact with Spotify and confirmed the purchase of a controlling stake in Tempo Music.
Regarding the business’s fourth-quarter financials, however, overall revenue slipped 5% YoY to about $1.67 billion. Behind that sum, the recorded side experienced a 7% YoY dip at $1.35 billion.
And within the recorded total, WMG identified $631 million in subscription streaming revenue (down 2% YoY) and $223 million in ad-supported streaming revenue (down 8% YoY).
Warner Music attributed the recorded declines in part to BMG’s ADA split (a $16 million decrease in streaming revenue, another $16 million in physical), a $30 million windfall from a digital-platform licensing renewal in Q4 2023, and a separate $75 million boost from a catalog-specific licensing extension in the prior-year quarter.
Excluding those elements, overall Q4 revenue was up 3.4% YoY, per Warner Music, which noted as well that omitting the impact of the $30 million renewal and the axed BMG distribution agreement would leave a 1.5% YoY improvement for recorded music streaming revenue.
Of course, even 1.5% YoY growth isn’t ideal in the all-important category – nor is WMG’s initially mentioned 15% YoY slip in U.S. recorded music revenue, which totaled $532 million.
The majors’ stateside subscription-growth woes are fairly well known, and DMN Pro subscribers already have a handle on Spotify’s flatlining Individual subs in the U.S. Even so, that double-digit falloff is significant and worth keeping front of mind throughout the remainder of 2025, as new licensing pacts with Spotify and Amazon Music ramp up.
Meanwhile, Warner Music’s Q4 2024 recorded revenue from non-U.S. markets, $813 million, was essentially flat YoY. (As the company reports earnings in dollars but collects a large portion of revenue in foreign currencies, execs also emphasized conversion rates’ impact on the quarter’s YoY movements.)
Rounding out the category, physical revenue, despite the above-highlighted BMG hit, jumped 7.8% YoY to $166 million.
Shifting to publishing, Warner Chappell generated $323 million (up 6% YoY) on the quarter, including $173 million in the States (up 1% YoY) and the remaining $150 million or so from different markets (up 15% YoY), WMG reported.
Additionally, WMG disclosed $205 million in publishing streaming revenue for 2024’s final quarter, up 6% YoY.
A substantial amount of the corresponding earnings call involved questions about the Spotify renewal and the Tempo Music buyout, and execs were characteristically non-committal with their responses.
But CEO Robert Kyncl did relay that there’s “not much to worry about” in terms of the TikTok situation’s impact on Warner Music’s bottom line. During today’s trading, the major label’s stock (NASDAQ: WMG) parted with about 1% of its value to finish at $31.75 per share.