Record Label Market Share
What a difference a year — or a couple of months with a massive label shakeup — can make.
The reorganization of the Universal Music Group that occurred in February — which loosely divided the music giant’s labels under two umbrellas, Republic Corps and the Interscope Capitol Labels Group (ICLG) — has created a new hegemony that effectively splits its industry-leading market share in half, meaning that Republic Corps’ Monte Lipman and ICLG’s John Janick sit atop label empires that, in a given week, can rival the Warner Music Group as a whole in terms of market share. (For Republic, given its partnership with Big Loud for Morgan Wallen and the eye-popping success of Taylor Swift and others, that was already the case at times last year.) In the first quarter of 2024, for example, both Republic Corps (13.69%) and ICLG (13.81%) put up current market share figures that are more than double the next-highest label from any other company.
Yet for comparison’s sake — and to get a sense of the trends in the market — we’ll set that reorganization aside for now, particularly as it happened in the midst of a quarter and thus doesn’t reflect the totality of the first three months of 2024. And even under the old alignment, Republic (which, even prior to the shift, encompassed Island, Big Loud, Mercury and Imperial) and Interscope (which similarly already included Geffen and Verve Label Group) still lead the pack for releases through the end of March.
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Republic, on the strength of enduring hit albums by Wallen, Swift, Drake and Noah Kahan, as well as the huge success of the new Ariana Grande album eternal sunshine, posted a 12.84% current market share (defined as albums released within the past 18 months), only marginally coming down to earth from the eye-popping 13.47% full-year current share it posted in 2023, and a slight uptick over the 12.45% first quarter it enjoyed last year. Meanwhile, Interscope’s 9.10% current share is a big jump from the 7.75% it posted in the first quarter of 2023, and up from the full-year 8.80% it posted last year, with the enduring success of Olivia Rodrigo and breakout singles from Xavi (“La Diabla” and “La Victima”), among others, helping boost its position.
But perhaps the biggest story of the first quarter of 2024 has been the smash success of Warner Records, which surged from seventh place in Q1 2023 (5.23% current share) all the way to third in Q1 2024 (6.41%), reflecting the remarkable success the label has had on the Hot 100 so far this year. Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” Teddy Swims’ Hot 100 No. 1 “Lose Control” and Zach Bryan’s “I Remember Everything” feat. Kacey Musgraves are all among the top five songs of the year so far, while Bryan’s 2023 self-titled album and his 2022 album American Heartbreak are both among the top 20 albums of the first quarter. Warner — whose market share includes catalog label Rhino as well as Warner Latin and parts of Warner Nashville — continued to build on its 2023 trajectory, when it finished with a full-year current share of 5.96%.
That surge pushed Atlantic Records down into fourth place, at 5.14% current share, a drop of more than 2% from the 7.22% it maintained in Q1 2023. Atlantic — which includes 300 Elektra Entertainment in its market share — did have a big hit from Jack Harlow, whose single “Lovin’ On Me” topped the Hot 100 for five weeks in the first few months of the year. Atlantic’s hold on fourth, however, was only 0.01% above RCA Records, which came in at 5.13%, as the enduring strength of singles by SZA, Doja Cat and Tate McRae, combined with a viral smash from Flo Milli (“Cruel Summer”), kept the label in fifth place, despite dropping from 5.76% in Q1 2023, when the SZA album had a lock on the top of the Billboard 200.
Sticking in sixth place is Capitol Music Group — whose market share still contains indie distributor Virgin, as well as Quality Control/Motown, Capitol Christian, Astralwerks and Blue Note — which posted a 4.71% current share, down from 5.56% in the first three months of 2023. Dropping to seventh is Columbia, which includes some labels from indie distributor RED in its market share, at 3.71%, down from 5.85% a year ago. Though, in this particular ranking, Columbia is an unfortunate casualty of the end-of-March cutoff date; Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter debuted the week after with the biggest first week of the year, which will be reflected in the second quarter. In eighth, Epic Records saw a big boost, posting a 2.99% share (up from 2.06% last year), though that also seems like it will be trending higher in Q2, with the twin Future/Metro Boomin albums still growing. Sony Latin (2.38%, up from 1.92%) and Sony Nashville (2.08%, down from 2.30%) round out the top 10 in current market share.
Among the label groups, UMG’s dominance continued, with its 33.90% current share ticking up slightly from 33.59% in the first quarter of 2023, while Sony Music Group’s 26.91% came in lower than last year’s 28.46% — again, likely a quirk of the calendar. Still, despite Warner Records’ individual surge, the Warner Music Group’s overall current share slipped to 15.98%, down from 16.81% in Q1 last year. (WMG’s market share still contains 1.09% from BMG, despite the latter announcing that it would be ending its distribution arrangement with Warner; projects that were in the works prior to the agreement ending are still going through the Warner system, a BMG spokesperson says.) The big beneficiary in current market share is the independent sector, which grew its mark from 21.15% in Q1 last year to 23.21% this year by distribution ownership, a significant increase. Both the independent release of the chart-topping Ye and Ty Dolla $ign album Vultures 1 and the huge success of Mitski’s “My Love Mine All Mine” contributed to the boost.
The numbers are more static when looking at overall market share, which includes back catalog, though the trends are still there: Universal (38.23%, up from 37.65%) and the indies (16.28%, up from 16.18%) both were up over Q1 2023, while Sony (27.23%, down from 27.62%) and WMG (18.26%, down from 18.55%) dipped. By label ownership, the independent sector remains larger than any individual major, accounting for 36.09% in overall market share, albeit down from the 37.38% it had in Q1 2023.
Among the individual labels, Republic’s huge current numbers pushed its overall market share above Interscope’s for first place, at 9.94%, up from 9.16% last year, while Interscope’s second-place showing at 9.85% still represented growth from its leading 9.44% last year. Atlantic’s strong catalog numbers meant that in overall share it remained in third place, at 7.65%, besting Warner Records, which jumped into fourth at 6.72%. Interscope, meanwhile, retained its top spot in catalog market share, at 10.09%, with Republic (9.03%) and Atlantic (8.43%) behind.
At the midyear point of 2023, Republic Records had put up a 12.46% current market share — defined as albums released in the past 18 months — which was a remarkable figure, and more than 4.5% higher than the second-largest label. Now, as 2023 has come to a close, Republic finished the year even higher, reaching an eye-popping 13.47% current market share for the year. That’s the highest full-year mark since at least 2015, when streaming began to lift the industry out of its post-CD doldrums, and more than 3% higher than its current share in 2022, which was a then-industry-leading 10.38%.
Republic’s high-water mark stems from a combination of both enduring releases dating back to the end of 2022 and massive albums from two of the biggest stars on the planet this year: Taylor Swift and Morgan Wallen. For full-year 2023, Swift and Wallen (signed through Republic’s deal with Big Loud, which on its own commanded a 2.33% current share) combined for seven of the top 10 albums in U.S. consumption units, according to Luminate, including four of the top five. With Metro Boomin’s Heroes & Villains ranking at No. 10, Republic had an astonishing eight of the 10 biggest albums in the United States in 2023. And Republic’s fourth quarter was even more dominant: In the final three months of the year, the label’s current market share ballooned to 16.79%, buoyed by new albums from Drake, Nicki Minaj and Stray Kids. That’s higher than the current share of the entire Warner Music Group across that three-month period, which stood at 15.50%.
Following Republic — which includes Island, Big Loud, Mercury Records, Cash Money and indie distributor Imperial in its market share — Interscope Geffen A&M (IGA) came in second in current share, at 8.80%, up from the 8.72% it tallied in 2022. The label — which also encompasses Verve Label Group — scored another big success with Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore album GUTS. It also saw critical acclaim for Verve’s Jon Batiste, once again a Grammy darling, and continued its extremely strong recent track record of breaking new artists, with Gracie Abrams up for best new artist at this year’s Grammys — a category the label has won in three of the past four years.
The success of Republic and IGA helped parent company Universal Music Group roar back to a 35.84% current market share for 2023, jumping two points year over year from 2022’s 33.57%. In second, Sony Music Entertainment also grew year over year, up to 27.08% from 2022’s 26.99%, while Warner Music Group dipped to 16.95%, down from last year’s 18.30%. The indies, by distribution ownership, accounted for 20.13% current market share, down from 21.14% in 2022.
In third and fourth place in current share among frontline labels are a pair of Warner Music Group labels, Atlantic Records (6.83%, down from 9.15% in 2022) and Warner Records (5.96%, up from 4.86% in 2022). Atlantic (encompassing 300 Elektra Entertainment), which dipped from second to third place year over year, scored a big win with the Barbie soundtrack as well as No. 1s from Lil Uzi Vert and Jack Harlow, despite a two-plus point percentage drop in current share. Meanwhile, Warner Records — which includes Warner Latin, catalog label Rhino and parts of Warner Nashville in its share — surged from sixth place last year to fourth place this year with a more than 1% boost. Zach Bryan’s self-titled album and No. 1 Hot 100 single “I Remember Everything” led the way, with Bryan landing at No. 4 on Billboard’s year-end Artist 100 ranking and his “Something in the Orange” being the third-most-streamed song of 2023.
In fifth, Capitol Music Group also saw a big year-over-year boost in current share, from 4.97% in 2022 to 5.90% in 2023. The label — which remains in fifth place despite the jump in share and encompasses Motown/Quality Control, Blue Note, Astralwerks, Capitol Christian and indie distributor Virgin Music — enjoyed the breakout success of Ice Spice (signed in conjunction with 10K Projects) in the past year as well as a top 10 Hot 100 single from Toosii.
Sixth place in current share belongs to RCA Records at 4.70%, a one-spot jump over last year when it came in with 4.65%. The label, whose market share does not include any other labels or distributors, benefited from the enduring success of SZA’s multi-Grammy nominated S.O.S. album, the third-biggest project of 2023, as well as huge hits from Doja Cat, Tate McCrae and Ateez, the latter of which landed a No. 1 album in the fourth quarter. Dropping into seventh is Columbia at 4.67% of current share, down from fourth in 2022 when it had a 6.67% share. Columbia, which includes some labels from indie distributor RED in its market share, still racked up a big hit with Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers,” which spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100 this year on its way to becoming the fourth-most-streamed song of 2023 and the most-heard song on radio in the United States, according to Luminate.
In eighth, Sony Nashville jumped a half percentage point year over year to 2.32% from 1.89% last year, with a big Luke Combs album helping it rise one spot from last year’s ranking. Meanwhile, Sony’s Epic Records slipped to ninth year over year, despite boosting its current share from 2.23% in 2022 to 2.30% in 2023 and scoring a pair of big projects from Travis Scott — whose Utopia album was the seventh-biggest of 2023, according to Luminate — and Tyla with “Water,” which roared into the Hot 100’s top 10 late in the year. Rounding out the top 10 is yet another Sony label, Sony Latin, which also had a huge year, upping its current share from 1.24% in 2022 to an impressive 1.95% in 2023.
In overall market share, Republic’s dominance with newer releases lifted it to the No. 1 slot over IGA, 9.83% to 9.65%, despite the latter’s industry-leading 9.93% share of the catalog market. Atlantic, at 8.09%, sits comfortably in third, while Warner Records and Capitol Music Group are neck-and-neck in fourth and fifth, with 6.68% and 6.66% overall share, respectively, with their catalog shares tied at 6.92%. Columbia’s 6.65% catalog share is enough to lift it into sixth in overall share, ahead of RCA, with the two separated at 6.14% and 5.16%, respectively, in overall share. Epic (2.61%), Sony Nashville (2.05%) and Def Jam (1.84%) round out the overall top 10 rankings.
Among the label groups, the weight of catalog once again lifts all ships, with UMG jumping to an industry-leading 38.46% overall market share, up from 37.54% in 2022. Sony also saw an increase year over year, ending 2023 at 27.18%, up from 2022’s 26.87%, while Warner dipped slightly year over year, to 18.62% in overall share in 2023 compared to 19.05% in 2022. The indies by distribution ownership also fell, to 15.74% from 16.54% in 2022.
This year has been defined by consistency at the top of the charts, and one record label has led in current market share in each of the first three quarters: Republic Records, which has 12.28% of the market through Sept. 28, according to Luminate. That’s a negligible drop from last quarter’s 12.46% and more than four percentage points higher than the 8.77% share the label had for the same period last year.
Republic’s market share — much like the year overall — has been headlined by the massive Morgan Wallen album One Thing at a Time, which has racked up more than 4.5 million equivalent album units since its March debut, and Taylor Swift’s prolific release schedule, which not only includes her latest collection of new tracks, Midnights, but also the release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version). Both are among the top 10 albums of the year so far. (Republic’s share also includes Island, Big Loud, Mercury, Cash Money and indie distributor Imperial.)
Wallen’s dominance is such that his label, Big Loud, would rank eighth among all labels on its own, with a 2.69% current market share if it were broken out from Republic, with both One Thing at a Time and his last release, Dangerous: The Double Album, both counting toward current share. (Current is defined as albums released within the past 18 months or that have remained in the top half of the Billboard 200.)
Coming in at a comfortable second place, with big third-quarter releases from Olivia Rodrigo and NewJeans, was Interscope Geffen A&M, which hit a high mark for the year so far with an 8.55% current share, a half-point increase over its midyear mark. That’s down from the 9.23% current share IGA posted at the third-quarter mark of 2022, but is a strong showing in a year in which Republic has vacuumed up so much market share. (IGA’s share also includes Verve Label Group.)
In third place, Atlantic — which encompasses 300 Elektra Entertainment — has also moved to a high mark for the year, with a 7.39% share, up from 7.34% at midyear. The music group’s performance was boosted by releases by Gunna, Lil Uzi Vert and, most significantly, the Barbie soundtrack, which is among the top five albums of the third quarter with over 650,000 equivalent album units.
However, factoring in back catalog to look at overall market share shakes up the top two. Interscope takes the top spot with 9.57%, besting Republic’s 9.49% by a shade over 500,000 units through the first three quarters, with Atlantic in third at 8.31%. That’s due to the deeper catalog of IGA and Atlantic: They are Nos. 1 and 2 in catalog-only share, with 9.91% and 8.62%, respectively. Republic finished third at 8.54%. Coming into the final quarter of the year, that’s a race to watch.
Capitol, which includes Motown/Quality Control, Blue Note, Astralwerks, Capitol Christian and indie distributor Virgin Music, remained steady in fourth place at 6.01% (from 6.0% at midyear) through three quarters. (Although HYBE acquired Quality Control earlier this year, Universal Music Group [UMG] continued to distribute the label.)
In fifth, Warner Records has made large gains throughout the year, largely due to the successes within Warner Nashville. (Its market share also includes catalog label Rhino, as well as Warner Music Latina.) Zach Bryan’s self-titled album has been a standout success in the quarter, while Bailey Zimmerman’s Religiously. The Album continues to perform well. Notably, both Capitol and Warner made big leaps in current market share year over year: Capitol jumped from sixth place to fourth, growing from 4.50% in 2022 to 6.01% in 2023; Warner grew from 4.77% in 2022 to 5.89% in 2023.
Slipping down the rankings year over year was Columbia, which dropped in current share from fourth through three quarters in 2022 (6.93%) to sixth in 2023 (4.93%). Columbia scored big this year with Miley Cyrus’ Endless Summer Vacation, though 2022’s slate with releases from Harry Styles, Beyoncé and Adele represents a tough act to follow. RCA, in seventh, remains on a hot streak led by the huge success of SZA’s SOS — still the No. 2 album of the year — with the label coming in at a 4.64% share, up from 4.47% this time last year.
Epic has roared back after a relatively quiet 2023 on the strength of Travis Scott’s mammoth Utopia, which boosted the label from 1.82% in current share at midyear to 2.39% at the three-quarters mark — its highest quarterly showing for the year. Sony Nashville (eighth, 2.50%) and Sony Latin (10th, 1.96%) round out the top 10, with each growing more than half a percentage point year over year.
Among the label groups, both UMG (up from 32.54% to 34.61%) and Sony Music Entertainment (up from 27.09% to 27.50%) made big year-over-year strides, while Warner Music Group (down from 18.64% to 17.46%) and, collectively, independent labels (down from 21.73% to 20.43%) lost share compared with the same period in 2022.
Republic Records jumped out to a huge lead early on in the market share rankings this year among current releases (those released within the past 18 months), and maintained a 12.46% current share across the first half of the year — more than four points higher than the next-closest label, Interscope Geffen A&M (8.08%). But […]
Through the first three months of 2023, two albums have largely defined the year and had a profound effect on the record label market share rankings for the first quarter: Morgan Wallen’s One Thing At a Time, on Republic; and SZA’s S.O.S., on RCA. Combined, the albums have spent all but two weeks atop the Billboard 200 albums chart this year and have contributed significantly to major gains for their respective labels.
In terms of current market share — albums released in the past 18 months — Republic Records has had a white-hot start, posting a 12.45% mark and besting the second-highest label, Interscope Geffen A&M (7.75%), by nearly five full percentage points. While Republic has continued to benefit from an exceptionally strong fourth quarter of 2022 — Q4 releases like Taylor Swift’s Midnights, Metro Boomin’s Heroes & Villains and Drake & 21 Savage’s Her Loss are all in the top 10 most-consumed albums of 2023 so far — much of that increase can be attributed to Wallen’s album. One Thing At a Time is so big that Wallen’s Republic label partner, Big Loud Records, would have ranked as the No. 8 label in current share in Q1 if it were broken out on its own, having posted a 2.84% share so far in the year. (Republic’s market share encompasses Big Loud, Island, Cash Money, Mercury and indie distributor Imperial.) In fact, the first-week impact of Wallen’s album was so large that it boosted Republic’s single-week current market share from 9.76% the week before it came out to 18.14% the week it debuted, meaning that nearly one in every five album consumption units that week was a Republic Records release.
Meanwhile, the SZA album, which has topped the Billboard 200 for eight non-consecutive weeks in 2023 so far, helped catapult RCA to a 5.76% current market share in Q1 this year. That’s up from 4.34% this time last year and lands it in fifth place, only slightly behind its Sony sister label Columbia at 5.85%. That’s significant enough for RCA on its own — rarely, if ever, has it placed above Columbia in current share in any quarter in recent years — but alongside strong new releases like the Miley Cyrus album Endless Summer Vacation on Columbia, as well as the continuing success of releases from 2022 from Bad Bunny (Un Verano Sin Ti, The Orchard), Harry Styles (Harry’s House, Columbia), Beyoncé (Renaissance, Columbia) and Future (I Never Liked You, Epic), it’s helped push Sony Music Entertainment to a 28.46% current share in Q1. That’s up from 24.0% at this point last year and places Sony at its highest mark since the end of 2016, according to Luminate.
Those are the biggest takeaways from a first quarter that has thrown up plenty of surprises so far, as labels have settled into another year of a changing marketplace. Sony’s surge has seen the second-largest major close the gap in current share on market leader Universal Music Group, which essentially held steady at 33.59% in Q1 2023 from 33.58% at the same point last year. The indie sector also had a strong quarter of releases, accounting for 21.15% of the market, while Warner Music Group came in at 16.81% in current share. (Warner and the indies do not have a direct year-over-year comparison due to WMG-owned distributor ADA being shifted under Warner’s umbrella midway through 2022.)
In current share, Interscope and Atlantic both receded from the first quarter of 2022 to 7.75% (from 8.91% last year) and 7.22% (from 10.57% last year), respectively, coming in second and third. (Interscope’s market share encompasses Verve Label Group, while Atlantic’s includes the combined 300 Elektra Entertainment Group). Surrounding RCA on the list is a trio of labels who all also boosted their current market share year over year, with Columbia coming in fourth (5.85%, up from 5.78%), Capitol Music Group coming in sixth (5.56%, up from 4.13%) and Warner Records finishing in seventh (5.23%, up from 4.22%), marking encouraging starts for those labels over the first quarter of 2022. (Columbia’s share includes some labels from indie distributor RED; Capitol includes Motown/Quality Control, Astralwerks, Blue Note and indie distributor Virgin; and Warner Records includes catalog label Rhino, Warner Latin and the bulk of Warner Nashville.)
Coming in eighth in current share is Sony Nashville at 2.30%, bolstered by the continued success of Luke Combs and his brand new album, Growin’ Old. That’s up big from the 1.51% it had in Q1 last year before Growin’ Up was released last April. In ninth place is Epic Records, which at 2.06% saw a boost from 1.83% at this point in 2022. Sony Music Latin rounded out the top 10 among current share with 1.92%.
In overall market share, which factors in current as well as a label’s catalog, Universal Music Group’s dominance extends to more than 10 percentage points, at 37.65% over Sony’s 27.62%. That gap has narrowed, however, as Sony picked up nearly two full percentage points year over year, posting its best number since the end of 2016. Warner, in overall share, flipped back above the indies, at 18.55%, with the latter posting 16.81% for the first quarter.
Among the individual labels, Interscope was No. 1 in overall share, at 9.44%, coming in just ahead of Republic’s 9.16%. That represents a slight dip for IGA (9.76% in Q1 last year), while Republic’s strong current share boosted it significantly from the 7.91% it posted in the first quarter of 2022, when it came in third. Dropping from second to third in overall share this year is Atlantic, at 8.31%, down from 9.49% this time last year.
Also making a jump in overall share is Capitol, which rebounded from sixth at this point last year to reach fourth in overall share in Q1 this year with 6.68%, up from 5.91% in 2022. Following in fifth and sixth are Columbia (6.55%) and Warner (6.38%), respectively, each up slightly year over year. RCA’s strong current figure this year allows it to stay in seventh, albeit with a larger 5.50% versus 4.92% in Q1 2022. Epic (2.63%) and Sony Nashville (2.03%) follow in eighth and ninth, while Def Jam’s stronger catalog figure lands it in 10th at 1.96% overall.
Additional Notes
— Because 300 Elektra Entertainment’s market share is included under Atlantic, they were excluded from breaking out in the rankings so as to not double count the figures. But its combined overall share comes out to 2.24%, which would have been good enough for ninth overall on its own. And that’s without digging into the success of Bailey Zimmerman, who has a top 10 record on the Hot 100 right now with “Rock And a Hard Place.” Zimmerman is signed to Elektra, which has its market share run through Atlantic, but is worked at radio through Warner Nashville, which has its market share split between Warner Records and Atlantic.
— Island, which runs through Republic, had a 1.51% overall share on its own, which would have been good enough for 15th had it been broken out thanks to a current share that has grown from 0.51% to 0.70% year over year. Similarly, Motown, which runs through Capitol, came in at 1.04% overall, driven by a big leap in current share from 0.71% in Q1 last year to 1.48% in Q1 this year thanks to releases from Lil Yachty and Lil Baby, among others.
— Elsewhere, Alamo continued punching high. Despite the fact that it’s the youngest label with probably the smallest roster of any label that made the rankings, it ranked 15th in current market share, at 0.88%, higher than several much larger and older labels.
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