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Tina Knowles praises Beyoncé and Taylor Swift for boosting the economy. See how much their tours have made

Tina Knowles is celebrating two of 2023’s hottest tickets — Beyoncé’s “Renaissance Tour” and Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour.”

On Instagram , Knowles shared a screenshot of a Facebook post from New York Times , which linked out to an article that detailed the economic and cultural impact of her daughter Beyoncé’s tour.

In the caption of her post, Knowles wrote, “This is so awesome ! To b able to stimulate the economy is no small feat! @beyonce.”

Knowles also gave a sweet nod to Swift in her caption, adding, “And ! @taylorswift ! Just being young women and being able to say this , is so awesome!!! Proud of them both !”

Beyoncé and Swift’s tours overlapped in the United States during the summer. Both were a pop culture sensation, with social media platforms inundated by various trends coming out of each tour.

For Swift’s “Eras Tour,” friendship bracelets and DIY themed costumes became the norm while Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” world tour birthed the “mute” challenge and had concertgoers following her request for a silver theme in celebration of Virgo season.

With Beyoncé’s tour wrapping up on Oct. 1 and Swift’s on-going tour resuming Nov. 9 in Argentina, both tours have already generated millions of dollars along the way.

Read on to learn more about each tour's economic impact.

How much has the “Renaissance Tour” made?

Beyoncé’s “Renaissance Tour” kicked off May 10 in Sweden and will conclude Oct. 1 in Kansas City. Before the tour kicked off, Forbes estimated that Beyoncé would earn nearly $2.1 billion from her tour.

The “Cuff It” singer’s tour set multiple records over the summer, including back-to-back records for the highest one-month gross in history in both July and August, according to a Sept. report by Billboard .

In July, she grossed $127.6 million and in August, that number increased to $179 million. The outlet also reported the “Renaissance Tour” became the highest grossing tour by a female artist, surpassing Madonna's “Sticky & Sweet Tour” with $461.3 million.

During the “Renaissance Tour,” Beyoncé also gave back $2 million to students and small business through her charity foundation, BeyGOOD. Half of the donations went to entrepreneurs, with luncheons hosted by BeyGOOD the day before each show for a chance to win a $100 thousand grant. The other portion of the $2 million donation was allocated to the Renaissance Scholarship Fund.

Beyoncé’s tour spawned several special moments over the course of its run, including a special tribute to the late Tina Turner , a birthday surprise from Diana Ross , as well as numerous performances alongside her eldest daughter, Blue Ivy.

It was also a hotspot for celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio, Vanessa Bryant, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Kim and Khloe Kardashian, and more.

How much has the “Eras Tour” made?

Swift’s “Eras Tour” originally ran from March 17 through August 9. Throughout the year, Swift added on additional dates including several international dates in 2023 and 2024 as well as additional 2024 dates in the United States and internationally. 

While Swift’s tour still has 13 months to go, so far it’s been estimated she's earned $1 billion in sales , with Pollstar estimating the singer will exceed $1.4 billion in the new year .

Swift's economic impact far has exceeded solely ticket sales, too. The tour also increased revenue for hotels across the country, with fans flocking to each city to experience her career-sprawling performances.

It was also reported Swift made several donations with her tour’s earnings, including donating to local food banks at each stop and gifting $100,000 bonus checks to her truck drivers at the end of the U.S. leg of the tour.

The singer’s tour is also set to hit the big screen in the United States, and now internationally. In a press release, AMC said that it took less than 24 hours for the film to “shatter AMC’s U.S. record for the highest ticket-sales revenue during a single day in AMC’s 103-year history.”

Swift’s “Eras Tour” was not without its faults though.

The singer spoke out against Ticketmaster after fans struggled to obtain tickets to the tour due to “historically unprecedented demand” causing the website to crash. The debacle sparked public scrutiny, including questions from senators , and elicited changes from the company before Beyoncé’s “Renaissance Tour” tickets went on sale.

Francesca Gariano is a New York City-based freelance journalist reporting on culture, entertainment, beauty, lifestyle and wellness. She is a freelance contributor to TODAY.com, where she covers pop culture and breaking news.

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Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour breaks record as highest-grossing music tour ever

Taylor Swift's Eras Tour is officially the highest-grossing music tour ever, becoming the first to surpass $1 billion dollars in revenue.

The tour, which began in March 2023 and is set to conclude in December 2024 after a total of 151 shows worldwide, has earned $1.04 billion (£840 million) to date, according to Pollstar.

This breaks the record set by Elton John’s five-year farewell tour which ended earlier this year, bringing in $939 million (£749 million) over 328 shows. 

Swift’s sixth concert tour is in fact so popular that it has earned more than this year’s next two highest-grossing tours (Beyoncé’s and Bruce Springsteen’s) combined.

Beyoncé’s 56-date Renaissance World Tour broke Madonna’s 14-year-old record for the highest-grossing music tour by a female artist , earning $579 million (£468 million) between May and October, before The Eras Tour subsequently took the title.

Described by Swift as a journey through all her musical “eras”, each show is over 3.5 hours long with a set list of 44 songs divided into 10 acts.

It has received immensely positive reviews from critics, who have heaped praise on the production’s concept and quality, as well as Swift’s performances.

Her devoted fanbase, the Swifties, have turned out in full force to see their idol, crashing ticketing sites, selling out hotels, and even causing earthquake-like seismic activity at certain shows, as happened in Seattle in July.

With roughly 72,000 people in attendance at each concert, and tickets averaging around $238, the tour is grossing over $17 million per show.

According to Pollstar, 4.3 million tickets have been sold to date, and at this trajectory, the tour could realistically rake in over $2 billion dollars if all the remaining scheduled shows are played.

Merchandise has also proven to be a lucrative source of revenue, with estimates that it has brought in around $200 million so far.

The Eras Tour is just one of Swift’s many successes in 2023. In addition to recently being named Time ’s Person of the Year, and the re-recording of her decade-old 1989 being the best-selling album of the year, she has broken multiple world records.

In June, she was awarded the record for the most simultaneous albums on the US Billboard 200 for a living artist, with 10 of her albums charting at the same time.

She then broke several more records in July : 

• Most US No.1 albums by a female artist – 12 
• Most US singles chart entries (female) – 212
• Most Top 10 debuts on the US Hot 100 (female) – 31
• Most simultaneous new entries on the Hot 100 (female) – 26
• Most cumulative weeks at No.1 on US albums charts (solo female) – 63

And in August, she made history with the most monthly listeners on Spotify (female) , becoming the first female artist to amass 100 million.

With plans to release more music and continue on her record-breaking tour, we’ve no doubt that Taylor Swift will achieve many more Guinness World Records titles in 2024!

Want more? Follow us on Google News  and across our social media channels to stay up-to-date with all things Guinness World Records! You can find us on Facebook , Twitter/X , Instagram , Threads ,  TikTok , LinkedIn , and Snapchat Discover . Don't forget to check out our videos on YouTube  and become part of our group chat by following the Guinness World Records  WhatsApp channel . Still not had enough? Click here  to buy our latest book, filled to the brim with stories about our amazing record breakers.

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The Staggering Economic Impact of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour

Y ou don’t have to be a Swiftie to have been touched in some way by Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, a stadium arena experience that kicked off in March. The tour, which pays homage to every era of the artist’s illustrious 17-year career , is set to become the biggest tour of all time only a third of the way through its run.

If you live in one of the 20 locales Swift, 33, performed at in the last five months, your city has likely seen a boost in revenue from the hundreds of thousands of attendees who traveled from near and far. If you don’t—or simply couldn’t snag tickets due to the cost or the now infamous Ticketmaster snafu—chances are you’ve seen clips of the three-and-a-half hour show from celebrities’ Instagram stories. 

While there’s much to say about the music, costumes, and production, the impact of the Eras Tour is starkly reflected in the numbers: a projected gross of $2.2 billion in North American ticket sales alone, and hundreds of millions of streams, reaching a nearly 80% spike in those listening to her music catalog in the weeks after the tour kicked off. 

After 53 shows, the first U.S. leg of the tour came to a close on Aug. 9. Swift originally announced 27 shows and has since extended the tour, adding new dates in cities like New Orleans, Indianapolis, and Toronto, which are all now anticipating a local economic boost. Eras is set to go international this month, starting with four shows in Mexico City, continuing its five-continent run through November 2024.

Swift’s tour is in a league of its own, even among legendary groups like the Rolling Stones who have been touring for decades, other major touring artists like Harry Styles and Beyoncé and contemporaries like Adele with sold-out Las Vegas residencies, as the singer-songwriter brings her mega tour directly to her dedicated fans in various cities for multiple nights.

The reasons behind the Eras Tour's unmatched success are many. Nora Princiotti, staff writer at The Ringer and co-host of the podcast of Every Single Album: Taylor Swift, attributes part of the tour’s success to the sheer depth and popularity of Swift’s music catalog. “I don't know that anybody envisioned a tour of this scale ever happening. She can go three and a half hours and just hit after hit after hit,” says Princiotti.

There’s also the timing: The tour has become the perfect outing for concert-goers itching for a post-pandemic live music immersive experience. “We are in an experience economy where people crave going out and participating in social events,” says Alice Enders, a music industry analyst at Enders Analysis and a former senior economist at the World Trade Organization. “It's no surprise that people are flocking to this Eras Tour experience in what is increasingly an otherwise digital environment we live in.”

And fans are acutely aware of Swift being connected to her body of work in a way that few artists are—she writes all her songs, has been protective of her music in the streaming boom, and is now releasing re-recordings of her discography to reclaim their master rights. It all adds up to a music industry enterprise the likes of which the world has never seen.

Read more: Why You Can't Remember That Taylor Swift Concert All Too Well

The economic and cultural impact of the Eras Tour

Analysts estimate that the Eras Tour will likely surpass the $1 Billion mark next March, while Swift is touring internationally. If this projection holds true, she will achieve the milestone of the biggest tour in music history, surpassing Elton John's multi-year farewell tour, which wrapped up earlier this summer and holds the current record of $939 million. The Eras Tour would then continue for another seven months before concluding in November of 2024 in Toronto—that is, unless rumors that Swift will release more dates come to fruition. 

But the money goes far deeper than just net profits. The Eras Tour is projected to generate close to $5 billion in consumer spending in the United States alone. “If Taylor Swift were an economy, she’d be bigger than 50 countries,” said Dan Fleetwood, President of QuestionPro Research and Insights, in a story for GlobalNewsWire . On the opening night in Glendale, Ariz., the concert brought in more revenue for local businesses than Super Bowl LVII , which was held back in February in the same stadium. To use that event as a comparison, Swift has been performing the equivalent of two to three Super Bowls every weekend for the past five months (and six of seven nights at her last round of shows in Los Angeles).

Typically, every $100 spent on live performances generates an estimated $300 in ancillary local spending on things like hotels, food and transportation. But for the Eras Tour, Swifties are taking this to the next level, dropping an estimated $1,300-$1,500 on things like outfits and costumes, merchandise, dining, and travel—boosting local economies by hundreds of millions of dollars in one weekend. 

The Illinois governor credited the musician with reviving the state’s tourism industry after her three nights in Chicago. She was even mentioned in a report by the Fed , crediting her with fueling the national tourism industry. 

The enthusiasm is so great that cities along her tour have experienced supply shortages. For one example: Swift mentions “friendship bracelets” in the song You’re on Your Own, Kid , off her most recent album Midnights . Swifties have taken this and run with it. Every concert is filled with tens of thousands of fans wearing and exchanging beaded bracelets spelling out the names of Swift songs and colloquialisms all the way up their arms. While this bracelet economy has brought new revenue to local businesses, businesses have also reported bead and sequin shortages .

This enthusiasm comes despite broader economic challenges. “There’s a cost of living crisis and people are still forking out thousands of dollars to see Taylor Swift,” says Enders. Despite this, a national study of concertgoers shows that even with an average of more than $1,300 spent per event, 91% said they would go again.

Not only is the Eras Tour an economic boon, but it has also become a cultural phenomenon. Every city Swift has visited over the course of the tour so far has pulled out all of the stops for her : Minneapolis was renamed “Swiftie-apolis;” Santa Clara, Calif., made her the honorary mayor; the New Jersey governor named the state sandwich of New Jersey after her. Now world leaders like the Chilean President, the mayor of Budapest, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are asking her to bring the tour to their countries. The FBI tweeted out a Taylor Swift pun in July.

Princiotti says that in her role as a fan, it’s been both exciting and strange to see such a global embrace of Swift. “For as big as she has been for so long, even if this is a new peak, I think a lot of fans feel like they've spent their entire lives defending their love of her,” she says. “And there's something very strange in seeing the U.S. government, or all of these various municipalities, just desperate to get a little sliver of the clout that comes from just being somewhat associated with Taylor Swift.”

Justice is better than revenge. You may not be Superman, but you can help the #FBI protect the country. If you have information about a federal crime, speak now. Call 1-800-225-5324 or visit https://t.co/t8G7LO4hxu to submit a tip. pic.twitter.com/kn9QhlNhGx — FBI Washington Field (@FBIWFO) July 10, 2023

Read more: Here’s Why Taylor Swift Is Re-Releasing Her Old Albums

Beyond the concert tickets

Donning beaded bracelets and drawings of the figure “13” (Swift’s favorite number) on their hands, many Swifties attending her shows are just as eager to secure exclusive tour merchandise. Thousands of them line up for hours in advance to snag the coveted merch of $75 hoodies, $55 long-sleeve shirts and $45 T-shirts. 

Fans are even clamoring to get their hands on physical copies of Swift’s music. “Streaming has taken over the purchase of the physical album product, but Taylor Swift is among the artists that still makes money from vinyl and CDs because they’ve become collector's items for her fans,” says Enders. 

Swift creates different editions, reissues, and extras that make fans want to collect more and more copies of her albums in different forms. For her Midnights album, four of the five different album covers fit together to form a clock face, while another comes with bonus tracks, making buying different versions of the album a necessity for true fans. And some diehards admit they’ve purchased the vinyl versions without even owning a record player.

Midnights was the top-selling vinyl record in 2022, with 945,000 copies sold, making it the best-selling physical album since 1991. One out of every 25 vinyl records sold last year was a Taylor Swift album, and she is the first artist in history to simultaneously occupy at least seven of the top 10 spots on the Vinyl Albums chart. For her newest re-recorded album set to come out in October, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) , Swift has already released multiple vinyl and special edition deluxe CDs for pre-order on her website , each with different cover art and unique additions.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift)

The success of Swift’s re-recording project

Swift’s mega tour isn’t the only thing she’s dominated. Her streaming and chart success from her constant release of new and re-recorded music (six going on seven albums in the last three years) adds to the vast project that is Swift’s domination of the global music industry.

“This moment for her is like an excellent HBO miniseries that’s not just a primary narrative, but also a B plot and a C plot where the main narrative is the tour, but underneath that we have the album re-recordings,” said Charlie Harding, music journalist and co-host of the podcast @SwitchedOnPop .

Swift’s “Taylor’s Version” re-recording project is an effort she started in 2019, when music mogul Scooter Braun bought record masters for her entire discography from her prior music label Big Machine Records. So far, Swift has released three re-recorded albums: Fearless (Taylor’s Version) , Red (Taylor’s Version), and Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), with the re-recorded editions all including additional “vault songs” that didn’t make it to the final versions of their original albums.

Read more: Why Music Manager Scooter Braun Is at the Center of a Media Storm

Fans have embraced Swift’s attempt to claim her music back, opting to stream the re-recordings more than the original versions, thus dethroning the catalog once owned by Braun. (He sold the rights to Shamrock Holdings in November 2020.)

Swift’s project has broken several music records in the wake of the album re-releases. Her latest re-recorded album, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) , a recording of her 2010 studio album, made history when it went straight to the top of the charts as her 12th no. 1—making her the woman with the most no. 1 albums and the first person with five albums simultaneously on Spotify’s Top Ten Albums Global chart. 

And Swift’s Eras tour is directly linked to the success of her streaming. “The live music performance is actually a driver to the streaming platforms,” says Enders. “When you go to see an Eras show you’re rediscovering Taylor Swift and you go back to listen to her music when you get home and in the days after.”

So far, Swift is halfway through her re-recording project, with three albums still to come. Swift announced on Aug. 9, when closing out her six-show residency at Los Angeles’ So-Fi Stadium, that her next re-recorded album will be her synth pop 1989 album, due Oct. 27.

Surprise!! 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is on its way to you 🔜! The 1989 album changed my life in countless ways, and it fills me with such excitement to announce that my version of it will be out October 27th. To be perfectly honest, this is my most FAVORITE re-record I’ve ever done… pic.twitter.com/JFYOWhBxhj — Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) August 10, 2023

“It's kind of like the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” says Harding, using another onscreen metaphor. “We're in the Taylor Swift cinematic universe at any given moment. There's endless amounts of discussion to be had at every level of this world that she's created, and each one I think serves a different audience.”

With more tour stops on the horizon and three more albums to re-release, Swift isn’t slowing down any time soon. The music sensation has even exceeded her own expectations. On the last night of the first U.S. leg of the tour, Swift told the crowd, “I figured it would be fun, but I did not know it would be like this.”

Harding says it’s not just a recipe for financial success, but for spectacular longevity. “Taylor Swift has the capacity to be around for a whole lifetime,” he says. “I think the big question I have is: where do you go from here?”

Correction, Aug. 24

The original version of this story stated that Scooter Braun still owns the master rights to Swift's first six albums. Braun sold the rights to Shamrock Holdings in November 2020.

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The Economy (Taylor’s Version)

See how much money Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour actually made

Call it a gold rush: Taylor Swift is adding billions to the U.S. economy.

Swift’s record-shattering Eras Tour is set to be the most lucrative concert run in American history. But the massive production not only provided a jolt of money to sold-out stadiums — it also infused the American economy with a trickle-down flow of cash.

Now, as the show heads to movie theaters this weekend, millions more will experience — and shell out cold, hard cash for — a moment with Swift.

As she hits the silver screen, here’s a look at The Economy (Taylor’s Version).

The biggest windfall is headed straight to Swift, who stands to make as much as $4.1 billion from the Eras Tour, according to estimates from Peter Cohan, an associate professor of management at Babson College.

That’s assuming the pop star ends up keeping the standard artist’s share of roughly 85 percent of her tour’s revenue, with average ticket prices of $456. Swift’s earnings would be the most from a single tour for any musical act to date — and more than the yearly economic output of 42 countries , including Liberia, which has more than 5 million people.

But the impact of the Eras Tour extends far beyond what Swift takes home. In one of the few efforts to assess spending by concertgoers, software company QuestionPro quizzed 592 Swifties who responded to an opt-in online survey. Based on their answers and average concert attendance, the company estimates that Swift’s fans spent about $93 million per show — yes, on tickets, but also on merchandise, travel, hotels, food and outfits.

Add all that up, and by the end of the U.S. tour, you’ve got a $5.7 billion boost to the country’s economy. That’s enough to give $440 to each person in Swift’s home state of Pennsylvania. Or almost enough to send every American a $20 bill.

The mania began months before the March kickoff of the Eras Tour. Presale tickets went on sale in November — sending millions of fans into a frenzy and causing Ticketmaster to crash. A class-action lawsuit and a congressional inquiry followed, as did the ire of many Swifties.

Tickets, which started at $49, sold for many multiples of their face value on resale sites like SeatGeek.

That burst of spending has revived the entertainment industry after a years-long pandemic slump.

“Swift and her ‘Eras’ tour have redefined entertainment economics,” said Chris Leyden, director of growth marketing at SeatGeek.

The tour’s economic boost spread far past the walls of Swift’s stadium venues, as fans traveled from near and far to any show they could get their hands on. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia even put the Swift effect in a report — saying concertgoers provided a sizable boost to hotel revenue in May.

Hotels, restaurants and shops around the country felt the upswing, with millions of dollars flowing into the 20 U.S. cities Swift visited this summer. Cincinnati estimated that it would see about $48 million in additional economic impact, according to Visit Cincy and the Cincinnati Regional Chamber’s Center for Research and Data.

In Los Angeles, where Swift performed six shows, the California Center for Jobs and the Economy predicted a $320 million boost to the county. Kansas City tourism organization Visit KC said the region got an estimated $48 million impact from the tour’s July stop. The Common Sense Institute, which studies the state of Colorado’s economy, predicted the boom from Swift’s Denver performances would add up to $140 million statewide.

“The [Eras Tour] was a shot in the arm to a part of the regional economy that’s really been lagging,” said Mike Kahoe, chief economist for the California center. “It brought some much-needed dollars to the tourism industry.”

Hotel analytics group STR calculated tour cities produced a $208 million bump in hotel room revenue, over and above normal seasonal levels.

In Seattle, Swift set a record for single-day revenue for downtown hotels — notching $7.4 million, about $2 million more than the record set during a Major League Baseball All-Star Game earlier the same month, according to Visit Seattle and STR.

“To put the impact into context, $208 million is basically the combined room revenue generated in New York City and Philadelphia in one week,” STR senior research analyst M. Brian Riley wrote. And that’s just for the actual nights of the tour, not including fans who arrived early or stayed longer.

Swift’s fans want to embody their favorite Era — and that means splurging on elaborate outfits and costumes.

“Is there anyone here who put a lot of work, thought and preparation into lyric memorization and/or what you were going to wear?” Swift asked the crowd to loud cheers at a Los Angeles show in August.

A core accessory for any Swiftie is a few — or a few dozen — friendship bracelets to grace their wrists and to trade at shows. The jewelry, inspired by a lyric in Swift’s song “You’re On Your Own Kid,” is often handmade or bought online and boasts popular Swift lyrics.

One Etsy seller, Kara White, started making the bracelets with her mom earlier this year, when the tour began. They got orders for 1,500 bracelets in a single day as fans prepared for the Los Angeles shows. White and her mom have made about $15,000 this year selling bracelets.

“It just shows how much she makes her fans go crazy,” White said.

Coveted tour merchandise that were hard to nab had fans turning to internet resale sites. One of the most popular items: a $65 blue crewneck with the Eras Tour logo.

At the venues, merch lines were long — inside and at trucks parked outside. Justin Paul, a DJ, producer and creative director who teaches music business courses at UCLA Extension, came up with a conservative estimate — $864,000 for each show — for Swift’s merch sales inside venues by using the number of people at each show and an average of how much concertgoers typically spend on merch. Still, Swift is a special case.

“You look at how much consumers are spending to see Taylor Swift, and it is quite an astonishing amount,” said Dan Fleetwood, president of research and insights at QuestionPro. “And not only are they spending this money, but in a lot of cases, they’re saying they would gladly do it again.”

Judging by the QuestionPro survey respondents, the average fan spent nearly $1,300 on outfits, travel, tickets and extras for the concert.

All of that Swiftie spending meant restaurants, shops and security firms had to keep up. One solution: hiring temporary workers while the tour is in town.

“When Taylor Swift comes to town, she brings a surge of economic activity,” said Daniel Altman, chief economist at Instawork, which allows businesses to employ workers by the hour.

Not only are there more jobs in and around Eras stadiums, but they pay better, too: The average hourly rate offered on Instawork within a five-mile radius of Swift’s May 13 show in Philadelphia was $20.57, $2 higher than usual.

There have been longer-term lifts in employment, too. In Los Angeles, Swift’s six-day stop was estimated to generate enough revenue to fund 3,300 new jobs, according to the California Center for Jobs and the Economy. That would be enough to staff every bookstore and news stand in the L.A. area.

Swift also passed on some of that karma — and cash — to her employees.

She gave every truck driver on the tour an extra $100,000 this summer, and she gifted bonuses to sound technicians, caterers, dancers and other staff, People magazine reported in August .

Swift may have been the main event, but fans shelled out for days of related festivities, with plenty of small businesses happy to bask in her afterglow. There were tour-inspired ice cream flavors in Pennsylvania , bonbons in Colorado and lattes in New Hampshire .

In Washington state, Neko Cat Cafe hosted feline-friendly “Taylor listening parties” at its two locations to commemorate the tour’s arrival. The small business made over $3,000 from the event, with ticket sales at its Bellingham location — almost 90 miles north of Seattle — 140 percent higher than on a typical Friday night.

Forty cats, all available for adoption, wore Swift-themed bandanas while humans drank glittery wine and ate “Lover”-themed cookies. Tickets, at $40 a pop, promptly sold out.

That Midas touch extended around the country: In California, Susie Cakes sold $50,000 worth of Swift-themed cupcakes. Seattle’s Japonessa Sushi Cocina dished out $10,000 in “Reputation” sushi rolls and glitter-filled cocktails. And in Kansas City, Donutology filled orders for 20,000 Eras-themed donuts, which became a staple at “Tayl-gating” parties in the parking lot before Swift hit the stage.

In Minneapolis, Inbound Brew Co. racked up twice as much money than on a normal weekend when it hosted three nights of Eras-related festivities this summer, including trivia games, live-band karaoke and a dance party, according to general manager Emily Elmer.

“This was bigger for us than when the Super Bowl came to town in 2018,” she said.

The first leg of her North American tour may be over, but Swift can’t stop, won’t stop moving … this time into movie theaters and football stadiums (when athletes are actually on the field). She has become a recognizable figure at Kansas City Chiefs games to watch her rumored paramour, tight end Travis Kelce. Her appearances have caused sales of Kelce’s jersey to jump and, in at least one case, NFL ticket prices to rise after rumors Swift would be in attendance, according to NPR.

Eras, too, is onto its next phase. In November, the pop star will take her 146-show tour international, with stops in South America, Asia, Australia and Europe. But first, Swift heads to the movies — where global pre-sales have already surpassed $100 million, according to AMC. Fans, the movie chain said, are turning up “from the largest cities to the smallest towns.”

Long story short: Swift’s economic dominance is about to begin again.

About this story:

The following songs are referenced in this story:

Abha Bhattarai became a Swiftie during the pandemic, when she listened to “Evermore” and “Folklore” on repeat.

Rachel Lerman managed to get tickets for Swift’s Munich show, where she will be embracing her “1989” era.

Emily Sabens became a Swiftie at age 10 while performing songs from the debut album in her basement with her cousin. She was blessed with “Haunted” as a surprise song at the Eras Tour in Detroit.

Editing by Karly Domb Sadof (who is still trying to get her Eras Tour tickets), Betty Chavarria (who has a song named after her), Jennifer Liberto (mom of a Swiftie), Mike Madden (who is not a Swiftie — yet), Paola Ruano (who is going to the Eras Tour for a second time in London) and Haley Hamblin (who promises to finally listen to 1989 soon).

By The Barricade

How Much Money Bands Make on Tour: The Breakdown

There are always plenty of myths about how much money bands make on tour. If you ask megastars, then they’ll easily say millions. Yet, you might find a different answer from a much smaller act.

The true figures about how much money bands make on tour depend on their schedule, crew, attendance of the show, and the amount of merchandise sold each night.

What may seem like a lucrative part of the industry can be particularly misleading, and amounts will vary from act to act.

The music industry’s costs and potential earnings from touring can vary heavily. So just how much money do bands make on tour, and is it worth all the effort?

4 Ways Bands Make Money While On Tour

Considering the money bands make on tour, it’s about getting bodies in the venue.

The more people attend a show, the more money you make. What gives the band revenue streams are factors such as:

• Promoters rate
• Ticket price
• Merch sales

So let’s see how these can earn bands money when playing on tour, as they are all slightly different in how they bring in money.

1. Flat Promoter Fees

Bands first receive a flat amount for playing a tour or show from the promoter .

This fee will vary depending on the band’s place on the card and the type of event they are playing. For example, headliners of a month-long tour will be paid more than an opening act who appears at only a set number of shows.

Agents and venues will take a small amount of this fee, but most of the money will go directly to the act.

A flat fee guarantees you get something from every show you play. The guarantee often will be a minimum of $500-$800 per show, so bands playing ten shows may receive a flat fee of $5000.

2. Show Guarantees

Guarantees are a deal you can make with the venue to bring in X sales if they cut their cost by Y. If you are an established band, you might get away with this. But for those that are starting, you will need to prove that you can make this mark with your social media presence.

For example, if 8 out of 10 shows sell out, a band might receive an $800 bonus for selling out a set number of venues.

Speaking of social media – if you are signed on with a label, this is an expense that you will not have to cover yourself. Typically, most labels will do all of your promotion and social media marketing for you because this is how they make money off of you. So get them to leverage this as much as they can!

It is easy to see why the term “starving artist” exists with all of this information. The cost to initially go on tour is costly, and there are not a lot of guarantees that you can make money. Many bands will lose money before they start to make money from touring . However, you can make traveling a career with persistence and a keen budgetary eye. ALWAYS make sure you do your research.

These sorts of fees entice bands to hit the road in the first place. And it is how the big bands earn big bucks from sponsors and promoters looking to fill big venues after someone’s profile reaches new heights.

Total minimum income from promoter fees (guarantees and flat payouts): $5000-$8000

3. Ticket Sales & Gate Receipts

The other big income driver is selling the people into the venue itself. And your income from this is easy to work out. The more people at a show, the more money you earn.

Don’t get excited, though, thinking that you are going to 100% of the sales from a sold-out venue. The figure currently sits at around 75-80% of the amount.

After all, promoters, venues, and agents will take their slice of the money before you receive the income from those entering the venue.

So how much might you earn? Well, most average gig venues have a capacity of around 350 people. According to FinanceBuzz, the average price for a ticket sits at $63.54 for shows in the USA. Going by this estimate, a sold-out show would generate a base revenue of $22,239. Removing the fees from agents leaves $16,679 for acts to take.

When dividing these figures amongst the artists playing, a headliner looks to take around 60% of these figures, while support acts may receive 20%.

So going by these figures, headliners would get $10,007 from a sold-out show while two support acts would receive $3335. That is before the money is then split between individual members.

If you play in a four-piece, headlining band members would receive $2,501 per show, and those on the support bill would receive $833 each.

It shows how vital selling out venues is for everyone on the card, regardless if they are a headlining act or first on the support bill.

Total minimum income from sales/show: $800-$2500

4. Merchandise

The other big money generator is by selling merchandise. Merchandising is a big way to boost potential income, mainly if a venue is sold out.

Fans will always want to grab something from a show, and even just having a t-shirt for sale makes a big difference to your worth.

You must know you won’t get all the profits some bands get. Depending on different factors, the venue will look to recoup a decent slice of the sales numbers, which might range from 20-35%.

With that in mind, you need to set prices that are not extortionate but also allow you to recoup what it costs to make them. It’s why most bands set a minimum of $10-$20 for shirts at a stall.

Some merchandising companies will jack prices up higher if they are representing a headliner, and that’s when fees will hit $40-$50 per shirt.

If you can sell shirts to a minimum of 60% of a 350-person venue, you are looking at generally an average minimum of $3,150 in shirt sales per show.

After deducting external fees, you would receive $2,205 to share among band members. This would break down to an average of $551.25 per show for each member of a four-piece band .

It could allow members to earn at least $5510 each if they were to repeat this on a 10-show tour where each show had sold out.

Total minimum income in Merch sales: $5500-22,200

Who Gets The Most Money on Tour? Bands or Everyone Else?

Touring is a relentless beast for any act. However, it’s also a necessity. Playing show after show for weeks on end is a grueling effort, but it is the best way to boost your profile and sales of CDs.

You often see tours touted as the money maker for best-selling artists; to a degree, they aren’t wrong.

According to to live revenue aggregator Pollstar, The Rolling Stones have amassed $2.17bn through touring throughout their career, with U2 having also grossed $2.13bn over past decades.

Surely, musicians should all be touring as much as possible, right? However, that’s not quite the case.

Many major acts who perform at stadiums and arenas will have others funding much of their set. This could be through primary sponsors, promoters, and even record labels.

For bands or musicians touring in a van from town to town, it’s a much different scenario. It’s here where every little item makes a difference to the end figure you receive.

Costs to think about when on tour

When battling profits and losses, everything will impact just what you will make. This all includes:

• Travel & Accommodation
• Overall Attendance
• Third-Party Deals
• Merchandising

It’s a lot to take in, but you need to know how each of these may see you finish making a profit or sucking on a loss.

You will find that the only concrete money that comes into your pocket will be whatever the promoter pays you to complete the tour .

From there, everything else is potentially fluid. Your primary sources of income will come from the gate of each show.

The more people who attend, the better chances of making a profit. It’ll also directly drive how much you make from merch sales.

From there, the costs then start to add up. Logistics aren’t cheap, even if you stay at budget hotels and use a second-hand van for riding show to show.

That doesn’t cover paying for those with you on tour. Costs can include paying crew members for technical support and selling merch for you.

Furthermore, there are also third-party costs that may need to be factored in too. Venues often take some share of merch sales and gate receipts as well. This may not be much, but 10% over several weeks soon adds up.

When considering pure travel or rest days, everything runs closer to the break-even point (where revenue equals costs). So is it all worth it?

The 6 Highest Costs of Touring as a Band You Need To Know

Touring is very much part of the industry. It’s what drives sales and boosts star power. However, to make money, you do genuinely have to spend money.

Spending is what it might feel like your band is doing non-stop when on tour. Everything costs, and it’s not cheap to do even a month’s tour in the current climate.

Let’s take some time to break down just what you might be spending on the road.

1. Travel & Accommodation

It would be best if you worked out everything regarding logistics. Even a domestic tour of the US isn’t going to be cheap.

Just in logistics, you will frequently be spending high amounts of money on:

• Accommodation
• Means of transportation

When it comes to transportation, driving is by far the cheapest method. Yet, it doesn’t make it particularly affordable. You would be lucky to hire a van and trailer for anything less than $10000 for the tour.

Then, just fuel will drive your costs even higher. The EIA showed that the cost per gallon has skyrocketed from $1.50 in 2000 to over $5 in the 2020s.

With fuel prices rising at an average annual rate of 4%, it’s a brutal price to pay just from getting from show to show. This would mean that you may spend a minimum of $5,000-$10,000 on a month’s tour in fuel. These fuel costs significantly impact where bands must tour , so their potential earnings are worth the effort.

Then there’s accommodation. You will need to find somewhere to sleep, and you can’t spend every night sleeping in a van. You will find that most cheap hotels will set you back an average of $50 a night per person. That is a minimum of $300-$500 a night for your traveling party. If you set that back over a month-long tour, it’s another $8000 in expenses.

Total Minimum Logistics Cost: approx. $20000-25000

2. Personnel Costs (Staffing)

Another considerable expense will be paying for having any team members with you on tour. This will be an amount that varies depending on your act as a whole.

If you are a solo artist or a band, you might get away with having a manager with you on tour and a roadie to work lights/sound engineering.

The costs will expand even further for acts with an additional crew, such as merch sellers and extra musicians. But everyone still has to be paid for.

Some acts have been straightforward about these costs. Indie pop duo Pomplamoose revealed in 2014 that for their tour, they paid six tour members $8794 for a week on the road. That included four touring musicians and two sound staff. That equated to over $43,000 during that 5-week tour.

While crew costs may be smaller than what Pomplamoose paid for that tour, you will still need to pay the crew what they are worth for tours. That will be $10,000 for two or three crew members over a month.

Total Minimum Crew Costs:$10,000

3. Insurance

You can’t be on tour without being insured when on stage. This covers both yourself or injury and potential incidents with fans on stage.

You never know when a set piece might spontaneously collapse, or a stage dive might go wrong. Most policies can be split into two areas:

• Annual amount

For those playing intermittently, prices by the event may only hit around $50-$60, but tour-wide policies can stretch into the thousands.

Annual fees can be cheaper; these cover artists year-round regardless of how much they perform. With these policies starting at around $200 per performer, it can work out more affordable for those performing all-year round.

What makes insurance “expensive” is deciding not to pay for it. Getting sued because someone gets injured at your show is a reality.

Total Minimum Insurance Cost: $50-$800

4. Production Cost

Production costs are never going to be cheap. Even though you own all your instruments, you must determine what lighting and sound equipment you may need to rent.

None of this equipment is particularly cheap, especially lighting rigs and other heavy items requiring much power. This, on its own, will likely set you back several thousand to get what you need.

Throw in a couple more thousand for trailers to haul everything along, and you will likely find that production costs will reach a minimum of $5,000-$10,000.

Thankfully, it’s a far cry from what an established tour manager revealed to the English newspaper The Guardian that they spent over $750,000 daily for a significant headlining stadium tour.

Total Minimum Production Cost: $5,000-$10,000

5. Merchandise

Before earning the benefit of merch sales figures, you need to physically create the shirts and hats and make enough of them to sell at the show.

Making merchandise isn’t cheap, and there are plenty of loopholes to negotiate before you can sell it.

You need to think carefully about the average size of your venues and the type of people at those shows. This lets you determine how much you need to create and what kind of items you want to sell.

Production costs will generally start in the hundreds if you sell one t-shirt style for your act, and then it’s just a matter of the quantity.

So if you manufactured one shirt at a base cost of $3, getting 500 for a week’s worth of shows would cost you $150. It would expand to $600 if you did this for a month-long tour.

Should you expand your product line, then that will drive costs higher. For example, creating an embroidered hat would start at $12. The 500 items for a week would cost $6000 to sell alongside a t-shirt.

Thankfully, you can recoup these costs back through sales, but it still needs to be counted up when adding total expenses.

Total Minimum Merchandising Costs: $500-$3000

Food is the energy that gives your team the power to rock. Choose whole-grain sources for sustained energy. Nobody shreds like a guitarist fueled by shredded wheat.

In all seriousness, it doesn’t hurt to prioritize healthy and economical foods when you’re on the road. The temptation for gas station junk food is hard to resist, but they don’t provide the best value in terms of nutrition. A sugar crash halfway through a set isn’t ideal.

Non-perishable staples, including canned goods you can warm up in a hotel microwave, are among the most cost-effective foods for road trips. Ultimately, getting most of your food from a grocery store rather than a drive-through will save your band a great deal. Except to spend about $10 a day (give or take) per person this way.

Also, free hotel breakfasts can come in extraordinarily hand

Total Minimum Food Costs: $300

7. Fees That Come Outside of the Tours and Shows

When working out costs, you also need to consider any cuts external parties may take from overall figures. This is something you should consider a general expense.

First, you need to consider who is taking what shares from the potential income you may receive.

These amounts generally won’t change, and figures will be spread between promoters, third-party agents, and the venue. Those figures include:

• Promoters: 10% of gate receipts
• Booking Agents : 5-10% of playing fee, gate receipts
• Venue: 20-30% Merchandise sales, 20% Gate Receipts

With everyone looking to get a slice of the action, it can genuinely affect how much money bands make on tour. And your overall net income will drop as more people become involved.

Merchandise sales are hotly contested, with many venues slowly looking to get an increased share of what is sold in their venues. For example, venues in the UK increased their take to 30% in 2022 as venues themselves looked to find ways to stay profitable.

Consider carefully what you may lose in add-on figures for an entire tour. You may need to be aware of the cut everyone else is looking to take.

Total Minimum Add-On Costs: 20-30% of all incoming figures

How Much Money Bands Make On Tour – Comparing Expenses and Profits With an Example

There are often fine margins when working out how much money bands make on tour. These margins are often dictated by how many people attend a show.

It’s a big risk to take especially considering how much bands have to fork out to go on the road in the first place. As we can see from the following breakdown:

Final Breakdowns

Total Minimum costs:

• Logistics: $20000-25000
• Crew: $10000-$30000
• Insurance: $200-$8000
• Production: $8000-$10000
• Merchandise: $2400-$21000

Minimum Tour Cost: $40,600

To have to spend $40,600 just for a potential four-week tour is a massive amount for any band to commit to. And it’s a commitment with no guarantee of success.

It’s why acts hope that they can sell out shows and try to bring in as much money as possible. A successful tour can be profitable, though, as our breakdown shows.

Minimum Income (headlining act):

•   Promoter Fees: $5000-$8000
• Ticket Sales: $25000
• Merchandise: $22,000

Total Income: $52,000

For a headlining act, an income of $52,000 from a tour means the band just about comes out profitable, posting a margin of $11,600. Each band member would walk away with $13,000 from a tour.

By this estimate, bands must repeat that cycle for several months to earn a decent annual salary.

With the US Bureau of Statistics averaging the annual average salary at $54,132, bands would need to tour for four months a year for each member to hit that milestone.

That is still dependent on the shows being completely sold out. If attendances are only half or 75% full, bands risk being left in the red.

It’s why touring is not quite as glamorous as it might seem, and a lot of hard work is required to showcase just how much money bands make on tour and make it a successful venture.

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The Mechanics of Touring: How the Live Music Industry Works

By Dmitry Pastukhov

Published April 28, 2019

The Live Music Industry: An Overview

Key players in the touring industry, artists and managers, booking agents, tour managers and technicians, festivals & venues, label & publisher, the touring cycle, 1. finding the talent, 2. building the tour strategy and producing the show, 3. booking the tour, 4. selling the tickets, 5. preparations, 6. the day x, 7. the show, tour simulation, tour gross revenue.

Touring makes up a huge portion of an artist’s life and the lion’s share of the industry’s revenues. At the same time, it is the only part of the music career that remains 99% “physical” in what is otherwise the digital-first industry. While some of the artists can easily reach millions of fans via streaming, putting together an international tour for the same crowd is an extremely complicated process.

Despite the rise of digital streaming platforms, make no mistake, live music is still the cash cow of the industry. Even though streaming revenue is expected to grow to $23 billion by 2022, by that same year the live music industry is projected to reach a whopping $31 billion in global value. Global live music revenue continues to increase (with the substantial portion of this growth attributed to the worldwide explosion of EDM festivals, which we've traced in our analyses of Chinese and Indian markets). At the same time, if we take a look at the well-established music economies, a recent Nielsen study found that 52% of Americans attend live shows at least once a year.

Nevertheless, the touring industry’s decentralized and network-based system remains a complex landscape to navigate: artists often work with dozens of local promoters, booking agents and venues in the course of a single tour. So, let’s start with the basics and identify all of the parties that are usually involved in a mid-sized tour:

Artists and their managers are the crucial elements of the live business. As we’ve laid out in our Mechanics of Management , manager’s role is to build and coordinate the artist’s team on all sides of the music industry, and that, of course, includes the concert business. The artist’s management usually takes part in the initial route planning, helps the artist pick the touring team, and serves as a bridge between the live entertainment and all other sides of the artist’s career.  

The job of the booking agent itself is very easy to define: the agent represents the artist across the live industry. Their goal is to book the tour and sell the shows to the local talent buyers, finding the venue and negotiating the price. The booking deal is usually pretty straightforward: “an artist A, represented by the agent B, commits to play an N-minute show in the venue C on the day X for a $Y. ” A good agent is the one who’s able to get all those As, Bs and Cs right — so that the venue is sold out, but there are no fans left without a ticket; the artist gets paid well, but the promoter doesn’t feel cheated, and so on. While the deal is relatively simple, it’s hard to nail all the details — especially given the fact that the show are usually booked from 8 to 24 months in advance, depending on the scope of the venue.

Promoters are the side of the live business that funds the tour and buys the shows. The landscape of concert promotion is complex, and promoters themselves come in various shapes and sizes. To make it a bit simpler, imagine that promoter is a middle-man, connecting the concert space and the artist to put together a show. You can start building that bridge from either side, however.

Tour promoters set out from the artist side, contracting musicians to perform a series of concerts, paying for rehearsals, audiovisual production, covering the travel expenses and so on. Once the show is ready, tour promoters, working closely with the artist’s booking agent, either rent venues themselves or subcontract (read: sell) the shows to the local promoters (or a mixture of both).

Local promoters, in their turn, embark from a concert space. Affiliated, or at least connected with local venues and performance spaces, they buy gigs from the agents and/or tour promoters to own the ticket sales. An art-director of a small club, a local group of party promoters, a team of the major US festival — all those event promoters of different scope would fall into that category.

In that context, the role of the agent becomes clear. If promoters are the middle-men on the side of an artist or a concert space, the agent is the middle-man between the middle-men, who builds up the network of promoters (on both fronts) and artists, serving as a liaison between all sides.

However, some of the biggest tours today can be put together without the agent’s involvement.  One of the main shifts in the live business is the consolidation of tour and local promoters under the umbrella of entertainment conglomerates, with the most notable examples of Live Nation and AEG .

Essentially, these companies have grown their operation to the point where they can build the bridge from both sides, internalizing all the processes. They both produce the concert tours and own (or, at least, establish partnerships with) a vast network of clubs and arenas, providing venues for the tour. Live Nation, AEG and alike can now create centralized international tours, offering artists 360° deals. However, touring under such exclusive promotion remains reserved for the artists of the top echelon — so most of the shows out there are still put together in collaboration between the tour promoters, booking agents and local partners.

Tour managers that stay on the road with the artist's crew are the oil that makes the wheels of the tour spin. Even a nationwide tour involves extremely complex logistics, and it becomes exponentially harder to manage the travel as the tour passes onto an international level. For the first-tier acts, staying on the road with the artist crew, technicians and 30 trucks worth of equipment can cost up to $750k per day . The goal of the tour manager is to make sure that the money doesn't go down the drain when the artist’s bus breaks down in Nowhere, Oklahoma . Getting the band from point A to point B seems to be a pretty straightforward job, but in fact, the routine of the tour manager is dealing with unexpected and solving a dozen of new problems each day — all while keeping the artists happy and ready to perform. To give you a taste of an international tour route, here's an approximate map of the Lizzo's tour in support of "Cuz I Love You" release, stretching over 64 locations and 74,575 km — and that is just the straight routs, not accounting for the actual roadways.

"Cuz I Love You" tour route, 30.04.2019 — 28.10.2019 (interactive version available here )

Tour managers also run the technician crew, and, while the technical support of the tour is often overlooked, the fact is that behind every show there’s a team that turns the performance into an audiovisual experience that the audience has paid to see. It takes hard work and expertise to assemble the stage, set up the lights and the sound system, etc. The live industry relies on the tech crew to make the show actually happen.

Festivals and venues are at the very core of the live business, providing the space and (usually) the base infrastructure for the show. As we've already mentioned, there’s often a great deal of vested interest between local promoters and performance spaces.  That means that there’s usually a local promoter “attached” to the venue, and same goes for music festivals.

Outdoor events are a distinct part of the live performance landscape. Operated by promotion groups, prominent festivals can introduce artists to new audiences, both in terms of fans and music industry executives — all while offering a fat pay-check. A major festival performance puts the artist on the map, and the promotional effect of the show itself has to be considered. It can become even more important than the immediate monetary gain — especially for independent, up-and-coming artists. That’s why the tour routing will often be structured around a couple of big music festivals — and then filled up with solo concerts along the way. A good example is Coachella: as the event takes place over two separate weekends, most of the Coachella artists also book “side-gigs” around the area during the in-between week.

Although recording and publishing industries are not directly engaged in the live business, we have to remember that the music industry is built on collaboration . By convention, most music tours follow the release of an album, and each artist has to report his set after the show to PROs so that the proper songwriters get paid. The music industry is made up of separate companies and people working on the different parts of the artist career — and, while not completely aligned, they are always interconnected.

The six key parties described above work together to bring the live show to the concert-goers. However, it’s important to mention that they won’t always be represented by separate entities. Often some of the roles will be internalized by the different sides of the touring chain: independent artists and their management might produce the tour themselves, internalizing the job of the tour promoter; conglomerate promoters, as we’ve mentioned, can now offer exclusive touring deals; and so on. That said, in the next section we will go through the tour cycle step by step to showcase how all these players interact to create the tour. As it usually is in the music industry, it all starts with the artist.

On the first step, agents and tour promoters find and sign the performer. This process is not much different from the scouting of recording or publishing A&Rs, although the criteria might differ. For some types of artists (like DJs, for example) touring can be relatively huge, while the recording revenues might stay almost non-existent. Agents and A&Rs look for different things in the artist, but the essence of scouting remains the same across the board — identify and sign the promising acts before anyone else does.

There’s another twist to talent hunting in the live industry that is probably worth mentioning. As an average show has to be booked 9-10 months in advance, tour deals are usually signed around a year prior to the actual performance. At the same time, the vast majority of concert tours follow the recording releases to build up the momentum and ride the promotion wave. That has one unavoidable implication: tour promoters and agents sign the artist to perform the material which is not written yet, which can be quite risky.

That is especially true when it comes to the debut artists, that might not even have a 40-minute set or any solid live performance skills when they get their first touring deal. There is a lot of gut feeling that goes into scouting on the live industry side — more than in the recording business at least, where licensing deals allowed labels to mediate the risks of the creative stage.

Once the artist is on board, it’s time to produce the show and define the tour strategy and routing. At this step, the tour promoter starts the preparations: building the light show and live visual materials, booking rehearsal sessions to perfect the live performance, and so on. Meanwhile, the artist, manager, agent and tour promoter work out a general timeframe and draft an approximate route of the future tour. The initial tour planning is usually done around priority shows, like major city performances or music festivals, while the rest of the route is defined in broad strokes. Unless we’re talking about the top-tier, established artists, the tour will always follow a recording release. Once the initial planning is over, the tour strategy will be defined in terms of “The artist will play a priority city/music festival in a specific area N weeks after the release”.

Ones the initial route is set out, the agent goes on to book the tour, pitching the show to local promoters and festivals. Starting with the priority shows and then filling in the details, the tour route gradually takes its final form. The agent negotiates with local promoters to pick out an optimal venue (in terms of volume, style, conditions, etc.) to host the show. As Tom Windish, a senior executive of Paradigm Talent Agency mentioned in our recent interview , picking the right venue is perhaps the hardest part of booking a tour: the material is not out yet, and there’s no way to predict the reception of the release that’s almost a year ahead. Go for a small but safe venue — and you risk losing potential ticket sales and disappointing the fans; go big, and you might end up in a half-empty room, losing on the investment and leaving every side of the deal disappointed. The agent has to make risky decisions in a situation of uncertainty, and given the venue landscape in some of the regions, sometimes that means choosing between a venue capacity of 500 and 2000 for what is reasonably a 1000-ticket show.

As for the conditions and splits of the booking contract, generally local promoters, tour promoters, and artists will split the net profits of the show. Artists might also get a flat fee to ensure they'll make some money even if all other parties do their job poorly. Usually, the more the flat fee, the less the artist’s share of the net profits (and vice versa). In that sense, the structure of the contract splits often reflects the artist's risk appetite: some artists self-produce the tour, sacrifice the flat fees and end up getting almost 100% of the net. Others might ask for a higher "safety" fee, lowering both the profits of the tour and their own stake in it.   Booking agents, in their turn, earn a flat percentage on the revenues ‘on top’ (though they might put their share back in the pot if the tour doesn’t turn out a profit). That might be a lot to take in, but don't worry, we will get back to the splits and give you a clear example with a tour simulation you can find below .

Once the tour is booked, it’s the time to promote it and sell the tickets. On paper, the ball is in the promoter’s court here, but in reality the marketing of the tour is carried out in close collaboration between all the sides — from managers and booking agents to the artists' record labels. Concert marketing is a topic worthy of a separate article, but if we were to simplify things, it could be separated into two main parts.

First is the overarching tour marketing, implemented by the tour promoter and synchronized with the record release. The tour marketing campaign utilizes wide communication channels to promote the tour in general rather than a particular show. Second is the regional marketing owned by the local promoters, which aims to boost the sales of a specific show, focusing on narrow communication channels, like radio, OOH and locally targeted digital advertising.

As far as the actual ticketing strategy is concerned, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, so most teams go through long and numerous meetings to define tit There's a lot of decisions to be made when settling the details of the ticketing strategy — especially as technology has put new tools into the hands of promoters — but generally accepted sales process follows an “announcement → pre-sale → general sale” pattern. First, the tour is announced through the label- or artist-owned channels. That announcement is both a chance to communicate the tour to the wide audience and build up the artist’s CRM-base by nudging fans to leave their contacts to get notified when tickets go on sale. On the live event market, the buying intent might not realize itself on the first day — so having direct contact with fans and growing the artist's CRM-base is a key tool in the hands of the industry.

Then, the pre-sale takes place: first, reaching out directly to fans in the CRM database — after all, artist-fan relationships are one of the most important assets of an artist, and a fan pre-sale ensures that engaged followers will be able to get tickets to the show. Pre-sale strategy might also involve sales through “preferred partners”, focusing on direct sales through systems like American Express PreSales in the U.S., or even Spotify, that allows to reach the artist’s fans and followers across the tour route based on their listening habits and geo-location. Finally, to complete the pre-sale, local promoters can also use the local communication channels, like CRM-base of the venue and local airplay.

All the pre-sale strategies have two primary objectives. Firstly, based on the pre-sale figures (and historical concert attendance data), the promoter can roughly tell how the show is going to sell in general — and adjust the marketing campaign accordingly. Secondly, pre-sale through reasonably closed off channels can help to mediate the problem of the secondary ticket market. In fact, most of the ticketing strategies aim to sell as many seats as possible before putting the show on the general sale. Ticketing platforms like Songkick, BandsinTown or Seated allow promoters to reach the widest audience but they also puts the show at risk of selling out to the scalper bots in a matter of hours. This is especially true for the biggest artists out there — the more the demand for the show, the more attention it's going to get from the scalpers.

At this point, the tickets are on sale and the date is coming up, but there are still a lot of details to cover to make the show actually happen. Carrying out a 100-show tour means getting the artist and his tour team to a hundred different locations across the globe — all while staying on a tight budget and an even tighter schedule. Then, you have to make sure that every step of the way the artist has the infrastructure to do the actual show. Big tours are extremely complicated logistics, that require a lot of planning (usually carried out by the tour manager, affiliated with the tour promoters). Plane tickets, car rental, backline equipment shipping — this is just a fraction of what needs to be taken care of before reaching the venue.

The venue is (hopefully) sold out, the material is well-rehearsed, the equipment is delivered to the club — but the show is still to be done. Someone has to set up the sound, check tickets at the door, take care of the security, prepare the guest list and set up the bar. This routine can seem insignificant at times, but in fact, a solid on-site setup is a must if you want the audience to enjoy the performance. Surely all of us can remember that one concert with that hour-long queue, delayed performance and warm beer at the bar — a poor concert organization can ruin even the best of shows. Making sure that the concert goes smoothly is a group effort of the tour crew and the local promoter's team, from tour managers and technicians to local sound engineers and the venue stuff.

Finally, one year, tens of thousands of kilometers and thousands of man-hours later, the artist will go on stage. Then, the team will get back on the road to repeat steps 5 through 7 over and over again, until the final row of the tour announcement is crossed out. The artist will eventually get back in the studio and start working on the new material, while tour promoters and agents will begin planning the next tour. That’s the tour life .

To conclude the Mechanics of Touring, we want to share with you an example of how the tour budget and profits are structured. Below, you will find a somewhat simplified (yet accurate at its core) budget simulation of an averaged tour. While the actual “business plan” will be much more detailed, the data below should give you a good idea of who pays for the tour and who ends up making money on it.

Total Fixed and Variable Costs

So, the tour has fixed costs of 70,000€, which have to be covered regardless of the tour length, and variable costs of 7,000€, per show. Such costs structure means that (and this is true for practically every tour) we will enjoy the scale effect , as total costs per show (calculated as (FC+ VC*N)/N, where FC is Fixed Costs, VC — Variable Costs and N is the Number of shows in the tour) will go down as the tour grows, due to the depreciation of the fixed costs.

Total costs per show, for 10-150 concerts in a tour.

To go forward with the simulation, we will assume that the shows of the tour are all booked at the same price (which is never the case due to the difference in the local ticket prices, venue and market capacity, and other specifics). However, to simplify things, we will use the following revenue structure:        

Guarantee per show = 8,000€

Bonus if sold out = 2,000€

If we plotted the tour’s total profits as a function of the number of shows, P/L = (Revenue per show * N) - (FC+VC*N), we would get the following:

Tour P&L (overall profit/loss before splits)

As the total costs per show go down against a constant revenue, the tour turns a profit, breaking even at the 24th and 70th show for “Sold Out” and “Not Sold Out” scenarios accordingly.

Then the time comes to divvy up the profits. First of all, the agent takes a share of all revenues “on top”. In this simulation, we will use a 15% split for the agent. So, if the tour is made up of 100 sold out shows, the agent would get (10,000*100)*15% = €150,000 in fees. However, it’s not customary in the music industry for one side of the deal to make money while the rest are losing. So, usually, the agent won’t take their share if the tour doesn’t turn a profit. But what if the tour makes a bit of money, but not enough to cover the agent’s 15% “on top”?

There are a couple of roads the agent might take in that case, cutting their share down to 5% or taking a percentage of the profits, rather than revenue, but for purposes of this simulation, we will assume that the agent will take their part of the share, but won’t put the promoter back in the red. So, if the tour has made €5K in NET profits by selling out 25 shows, the agent will take €5,000 instead of agreed upon (25*10,000)*15% = €37,500.

Tour promoter will take a share of the NET profits (Total Revenue — Agent’s Share — Costs). That would mean that, although the tour itself will break even on a 24th show in the Song Out scenario, the tour promoter will start making money only after the 47th show (once the agent is fully compensated). If we assume the tour promoter’s share at 20%, on a 100-show, sold out tour they will make ((10,000*100*0,85) - (70,000 + 7,000*100)) * 0,2 = €16,000 . It might seem that the promoters get the short end of the stick here, but in fact, they will often make quite a bit of money in the venue itself on things like bar and parking. This can be a substantial or even primary revenue stream for the promoter, but we’ll have to leave it out of the scope of the simulation for the sake of simplicity.

As for the artist , they will earn a flat fee (in this simulation €1,000 per show) as well as the remaining 80% of the tour’s NET. This sum will make up the artist gross, which in its turn will be divided between the artist and the management (an average manager’s share is around 15% ). So, for a 100-show tour the artist gross will be: (100*1,000) + ((10,000*100*0,85) - (70,000 + 7,000*100)) * 0,8 = €164,000 , which would then be split 85:15 between the artist ( €139,400 ) and the manager ( €24,600 ).

Tour profits distribution, by party

Of course, the actual tour will be much more complicated than in the simulation above. However, it should give you a good idea of how the tour is structured and budgeted. That’s it for this episode of Mechanics, but don’t worry — we’ll keep working to bring you insights on other parts of the music industry. If you liked this article, take a look at our Mechanics of the Music Industry to get the overview of the topics we covered so far — and the ones we plan to cover in the future.

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Dmitry Pastukhov

Content creator for Soundcharts. Deciphering the music business so you don't have to.

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Tour de France 2024 prize money: How much does the yellow jersey win?

Tadej pogacar is set to claim a third yellow jersey and a sizeable winners’ cheque, article bookmarked.

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The 2024 Tour de France is coming to an end and Tadej Pogacar is poised to win a third yellow jersey after staving off competition from Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel – and the Slovenian will be well rewarded.

Riders secure bonuses from their teams for their exploits on the bike during the Tour, but there is plenty of prize money on offer from race organisers ASO too.

Pogacar will take home a healthy winners’ cheque for his efforts, along with plenty more for stage wins, combativity awards and his King of the Mountains points.

Tour de France prize money

The total prize pot of the 2024 Tour de France is €2.5m and the overall winner of the general classification receives 20% of that figure, taking home €500,000.

Every other finisher receives €1,000 in Paris.

Individual stage prize money

Winning a stage of the Tour nets €11,000.

Green & polka dot jersey prize money

The winner of the points classification for the best sprinter takes home €25,000, as does the King of the Mountains.

White jersey prize money

The best young rider at the end of the Tour (aged 25 and under) takes away €20,000.

There are other prizes to be won throughout the Tour de France. The daily combativity award comes with a €2,000 purse, and the overall combativity award earns the winner €20,000.

There is €800 for the first rider over the top of each hors categorie climb , €600 for category one , €400 for category two , €300 for category three and €200 for category four ascents.

The leader of each classification receives €300 per day, except for the general classification who receives €500.

The winner of the Souvenir Henri Desgrange – the first rider over the top of the highest point of the race – earns €5,000. This year that was Pogacar, who also went on to win the stage, collecting a healthy pay day.

The winner of the team classification , which is decided by the cumulative time of each team’s three fastest finishers, is awarded €50,000, with the fastest team on each day also earning €2,800. This money is traditionally shared around the team.

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Bruno Mars Net Worth 2024: How Much Money Does He Make?

By Vritti Johar

Bruno Mars ‘ net worth in 2024 continues to captivate fans and financial analysts eager to assess the pop sensation’s financial standing. Known for his chart-topping hits and electrifying performances, Mars has made significant money over the years.

Let’s explore the different sources of income that add to Bruno Mars’ net worth and uncover the strategies he has used to establish his financial success.

What is Bruno Mars’ net worth in 2024?

Bruno Mars has an estimated net worth of $175 million in 2024.

Mars’ net worth in 2024 consists of earnings from his Las Vegas residency, world tours, music sales, endorsement deals, and investments.

Bruno Mars is famous for his hits like 24K Magic and Leave the Door Open. He is known for his dynamic stage performances and collaborations with artists like Anderson .Paak in their duo, Silk Sonic.

What does Bruno Mars do for a living?

Bruno Mars is a singer, songwriter, and record producer.

Most recently, Mars has been performing in a Las Vegas residency, which has been a major source of his income. He also continues to release music, collaborate with other artists, and perform in concerts worldwide. His latest project includes the successful partnership with Anderson .Paak in the duo Silk Sonic, which has earned critical acclaim and multiple awards.

Bruno Mars’ earnings explained — how does he make money?

Bruno earns money from a variety of professional pursuits, including:

Las Vegas Residency: Bruno Mars earns a significant portion of his income from his Las Vegas residency. Performing at the Park Theater in the Monte Carlo Resort and Casino, Mars has been a mainstay in Las Vegas for years. Reports indicate that he makes around $1.5 million per night from his residency shows, contributing substantially to his net worth.

World Tours: Mars has conducted multiple world tours, which have been incredibly lucrative. For instance, his 24K Magic Tour (2017-2018) grossed over $367 million. These tours, featuring his energetic performances and numerous hits, draw large audiences globally, ensuring high ticket sales and substantial earnings.

Music Sales: As one of the best-selling music artists of all time, Bruno Mars has sold over 130 million albums and 200 million singles worldwide. His albums, such as Doo-Wops & Hooligans and 24K Magic, have been commercial successes. These sales contribute significantly to his revenue from music sales and digital downloads.

Endorsements and Investments: Mars also makes money from endorsement deals and investments. He has partnered with brands like NJOY, a privately owned electronic cigarette company. He also collaborates with Fender, where he has his signature Stratocaster guitar. Additionally, he co-owns SelvaRey Rum, a U.S.-based rum company. These ventures add a diversified income stream to his earnings.

YouTube and Streaming: With nearly 35 million subscribers on YouTube and billions of views, Mars earns a significant amount from ad revenue on the platform. His music is also widely streamed on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, further increasing his income through streaming royalties.

Vritti Johar currently holds the position of an SEO Content Writer at ComingSoon.net, where she combines her passion for cinema with her skills in content creation. Outside of her professional endeavors, Vritti enjoys delving into the realms of art and photography, further nurturing her creative spirit.

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Universal Music Group N.V. (UMGNF) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Universal Music Group N.V. ( OTCPK:UMGNF ) Q2 2024 Results Conference Call July 24, 2024 12:15 PM ET

Company Participants

Lucian Grainge - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Boyd Muir - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & President of Operations Michael Nash - Executive Vice President & Chief Digital Officer

Conference Call Participants

Adrien de Saint Hilaire - Bank of America Merrill Lynch Adam Berlin - UBS Omar Mejias - Wells Fargo William Packer - BNP Paribas Julien Roch - Barclays

Good evening, and welcome to Universal Music Group's Second Quarter and First Half Earnings Call for the period ended June 30, 2024. My name is Nadia, and I will be your conference operator today.

Your speakers for today's call will be Sir Lucian Grainge, Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group; and Boyd Muir, Executive Vice President; CFO and President of Operations. They will be joined, during Q&A, by Michael Nash, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer.

All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded.

Please also let me remind you that, management's commentary and responses to questions on today's call may include forward-looking statements, which, by their nature, are uncertain and outside of the Company's control. Although these forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, actual results may vary in a material way.

For a discussion of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ from expected results, please see the Risk Factors section of UMG's 2023 annual report, which is available on the Investor Relations page of UMG's website at universalmusic.com.

Management's commentary will also refer to non-IFRS measures on today's call. Reconciliations are available in interim financial view and unaudited and consolidated interim financial statements for the six month period ended June 30, 2024, on the Investor Relations page of UMG's website.

Thank you. Sir Lucian, you may begin your conference.

Lucian Grainge

Thank you, and hello to everyone, and big greetings live from us in Hilversum.

I'm pleased to share with you UMG's results for the second quarter of 2024. We have once again achieved solid growth with revenue up 10% and adjusted EBITDA up 11%. More telling is that, it was the 12th consecutive quarter of at least high single-digit revenue growth for us, since the initial listing on the EURONEXT almost three years ago. This was also our seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit increase in adjusted EBITDA.

Our ability to deliver sustainable growth like this quarter-after-quarter is a product of how we've designed UMG. Simply put, we are a multifaceted music entertainment company. We have a wide ranging variety of revenue streams across both traditional and non-traditional businesses and including both established and emerging ones. The creative and commercial efforts of these businesses are as varied and exciting as the countries and the regions in which they are located and from where they operate.

Today, I'm going to focus on these three areas: first, how the diversity of our revenue streams propels us towards continued sustainable growth. Second, the undeniably stellar recent achievements of our artists, both new and established and third, how we are approaching both the challenges and the opportunities presented by the rapid advance of AI.

So to begin, how the diversity of our revenue streams propels our growth. This management team has decades of experience growing UMG into the most successful, diversified and profitable music company in history. Throughout this journey of long-term growth, we know that quarterly fluctuations in one source of revenue or another are to be expected.

So while we report results quarterly, we manage the business for long-term success. We think in multi-year cycles and anticipate and embrace variations in certain business lines.

For example, our second quarter results reflect the varied performances of our diverse portfolio of DSP partners. Their performances, some more positive than others, vary as a consequence as they're having different strategies for growth, different consumer engagement dynamics, different regional strengths and their own unique product roadmaps for their subscription and ad supported offerings.

Boyd will discuss this further later, but overall, our optimism about our DSP partners' near and long-term prospects as well as the continued headroom for growth in established markets is fortified by a number of factors.

Our proactive approach to working together in driving both subscription and ad supported revenues, the development in the pipeline of new products and offerings, the growth we anticipate from continued technology trends driving consumer adoption and powering the geographic expansion of all that we do.

The escalating positive results of our artist-centric initiative, which is still in its early stages. And our deep long-term relationships and networks within the tech community and with the DSPs where we've demonstrated our ability to create win-win solutions for everybody.

Further, while our increasing array of DSP partners represents an important source of growing revenue streams, other important sources of revenues are continuing to grow as well. Product innovation is not limited to what is offered on DSPs.

For example, in the U. S., according to Luminate's 2024 midyear report, the top 10 physical albums of 2024 carried as many as 13 physical product variants. Of those top 10 albums, 8 were by UMG artists, of whom had fan stores operated by UMG's direct-to-consumer division.

This important strategy to us enables us not only to offer Superfans's high-quality products at varying price points, but also to accelerate our initiatives through efforts such as our recently announced partnerships with Network and Complex to build our direct-to-fan relationships, providing a powerful commercial opportunity for us and our artists.

Putting our artist’s front and center in everything that we do has been and always will be the core of our success, and this year is no exception. We not only represent the most successful artists in the world and consistently break new artists, we also have the expertise, talent and resources to support artists throughout their careers. It's no secret that UMG has the most popular catalog in the world, for good reason. Every day our artists are creating what will be the most listened to, recorded and music publishing catalogs of the future.

I'd like to tell you about some of our artists' extraordinary successes so far this year. This part, as you know, always gives me great pleasure and joy. It demonstrates that UMG is once again responsible for the industry's biggest global artist development stories. I'll have more to say about artists such as Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Noah Kahan and Gracie Abrams in just a moment, but what's particularly gratifying is that, these artist development successes follow the strategic realignment of our recent U.S. label structure.

Through these processes, we are achieving significant efficiencies, even more importantly through this process. We are essentially drafting the blueprints for the labels of the future. These labels will provide aspiring global superstars, with even more powerful and effective support for their talents.

For example, let's start with Sabrina. The UMG recording artist and songwriter, who is also assigned to our Music Publishing division. This year, Sabrina exploded. She became the first artist to top the Billboard Global 200 and Global X U.S. charts simultaneously with two songs, Espresso and Please Please Please. These tracks also hit number 1 and number 2 on the UK chart, respectively.

Please Please Please became her first number one in the U. S. on the Billboard Hot 100 by opening for Taylor Swift during Taylor's tour in Latin America, Asian and Australia, Sabrina massively built on our international profile. All of this helped set up her new album, Short n' Sweet, which is coming out next month. In brief, we could not possibly be more excited and proud about the amazing career ahead for Sabrina.

Then there's Chappell Roan. Chappell released a couple of singles independently before choosing to sign with Ireland Records under the labels recently appointed CEOs, [Justin Ishak] and [Imraad Majeed]. Her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, which I urge you to listen to if you haven't, was released in 2023 to major critical acclaim.

The buzz continued as she opened for Interscope artist Olivia Rodrigo for several months of her tour. The album climbed up the Billboard 200, reaching number 5 by mid-July. The exceptional first Single - Good Luck, Babe! is in the top 10 of Billboards chart and is steadily growing across Australia, Canada and all of Europe, where she sold out -- completely sold out a tour this fall.

Next, Noah Kahan is another brilliant artist for whom we've helped to build a huge following. With years of consistent work and fan building around the world, he's now achieved platinum sales of stick season in more than 15 countries throughout North America, Asia, Africa and again, the whole of Europe.

Or how about Gracie Abrams? After signing to Interscope in 2019, yes, that's five years ago when she was 20, Gracie is also signed to us for Music Publishing, released her first EP in 2020, followed by a second in 2021. She then toured the U. S, Australia and Europe before opening on Olivia Rodrigo's first tour, and then she also opened for a number of the Taylor Swift U. S. Tour dates.

After being nominated as best new artist at this year's Grammy Awards, her second album, The Secret of Us, was released last month with incredible chart debuts, including number one in the UK, Australia and the Netherlands, number two in the U.S. And in the top five in Germany, Canada, Ireland, Belgium, New Zealand as well as Switzerland. A long-term phenomenal artist development, belief, success, teamwork, global teamwork.

We're, of course, justifiably proud of all that we do to help new artists like these breakthrough, and then go on to develop long lasting careers. But we're equally proud of the support we're able to give established artists. Ones we've been working with for years to help them reach new milestones in their careers. I'll give you a few examples of just how super some of the superstars have been doing this year.

First, of course, is Taylor. What can I say, a phenomenon, unique, extraordinary. Her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, achieved the biggest album debut of her career. It was her 14th number one and broke records for the highest number of first week streams for an album in history, not a single, not a song, not a track, an album. Internationally, the album hit number one in 19 countries around the world, and on Spotify, it became the fastest album ever to surpass 1 billion global streams.

Next, Billie, Billie Eilish. A new album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, gave Billie her best sales week ever in the U. S. as well as her best ever vinyl sales week. The album amassed over 500 million global streams that first week and has reached number one in the official charts of 25 countries, and we're still counting. With over 65 million followers, Billie is now the most followed solo artist on TikTok. She too will start a global tour this fall. And again, if you can go and see her, I would.

We're also thrilled about recent releases from Post Malone and Eminem. Post Malone's collaboration with Taylor Swift on the massive single, Fortnight, propelled him back to the top of the charts. That was followed by I Had Some Help featuring Morgan Wallen, which spent 7 weeks at number one on the Hot 100 and became the longest running number one of 2024.

And then came his single, Pour Me A Drink, which features Blake Shelton. Post Malone's sixth studio album, F-1 Trillion, will be out in August, and we've inevitably got very, very high hopes for it.

Eminem’s The Death of Slim Shady is already a massive hit. The first single, Houdini, debuted at number one as well as throughout all of the Global X U.S. charts. In short, if you take a quick look at the charts around the world, for the first half of this year, you get a real sense of how truly spectacularly well our artists are doing.

Let me talk about the three largest music markets, the U.S, Japan and the UK. In the U.S., we had 11 out of the top 15 albums in the first half, including all of the top three, albums from Taylor Swift, Morgan Wallen, and Noah Kahan. Off the 15 different songs to hit number 1 on the Billboard 100 so far this year, Universal Music Publishing Group had songwriters on 13 of them, an extraordinary achievement.

In Japan, we had three of the top five artists with Mrs. Green Apple at number 1 as well as Back Number and Ado. We also had six of the top 10 albums. Additionally, A Group was the top selling new artist. Don't forget that Japan is the second biggest market in the world by value. These successes are very, very significant. In the UK, we had eight of the top 10 albums, including those from Noah Kahan, Olivia Rodrigo, Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish and four from Taylor. UMG office held the number one spot for 18 weeks of the first half of the year.

I'll now turn to the final subject of my remarks for today, our recent initiatives in AI. I'm sure you can understand that given the enormous value of our artists' drive in the market and with their increasingly significant cultural impact. Protecting their rights and advancing their interests is absolutely essential, essential to them, essential to us.

This is especially true when it comes to AI, an area in which we take a carefully orchestrated approach, we call, carrots-and-sticks. We recognize potential threats early and defend against them. We've been doing this for quite a long time. I suppose it's akin to carrying a stick, when we consistently take industry-leading action to advance our artist interests and create new creative and commercial opportunities, and then his response to the carrot.

Our carrot-and-sticks mindset is working to secure a future in which human creativity is respected and rewarded while technology innovation is enabled and accelerated. It's a two part strategy. We accomplished these goals through a wide variety of tactics.

For example, in May, we entered into an agreement with TikTok that had several successful outcomes, including both creative and protective provisions. These protections didn't just benefit UMG and its artists, it benefited the entire music sector. Likewise, the major music companies recently filed copyright infringement cases against two AI music generation services, Suno and Udio.

These cases are based on the mass infringement of copyrighted sound recordings, which have been copied and exploited without anyone's permission, no one's permission. And these cases follow the lawsuit filed late last year against Anthropic by several music publishers, including Universal Music Publishing Group. Those categories fall into the category of ensuring the continued value of our rights.

What we're even more excited about are the opportunities to harness responsibly developed and deployed AI. These opportunities are where AI can help drive our business. UMG has long recognized and embraced the potential of AI to enhance and amplify human creativity and to advance musical innovation and to expand the realms of audio production as well as sound technology with responsible and ethical applications that respect copyright and intellectual property.

I suppose it's what we -- as a management team, we call, as everybody gets used to soccer analogies, defense and offense, attack and defense. To that end, we've been working with agronomist of partners to provide our artists with its cutting edge creative tools, but in a way that respects continues to respect their rights.

For example, we recently announced an exciting partnership with SoundLabs the company that places powerful mutual at an artist fingertips while maintaining a deep respect for the artists and intellectual property. The company's ethos mirrors our own strategy of employing AI technology in the service of artistry.

Our partnership will enable UMG's artists and producers to use SoundLab's MicDrop. MicDrop is a cutting-edge AI vocal plug in that generates ultrahigh fidelity vocal models for artists using an artist's own voice data for AI training to enable creative utilization by the artists themselves. They'll be able to sing in languages they don't speak, restore imperfect vocal recordings, and more.

The ability to be able to sing in their own voices in languages that they don't speak opens up enormous potential and enormous opportunity for us to sell market, move culture and create demand for songs and products and back catalog that would have been completely unimaginable, very exciting.

In addition, UMG recently joined with Roland, the leading electronic music instrument maker, to publish the principles for music creation with AI. The principles are a series of clarifying statements relating to the responsible use of it in music creation and advocating for their adoption across the creative community. They highlight the opportunity for innovation with AI in music production, fascinatingly for me composition and songwriting whilst underscoring the need for transparency, equity and creative community involvement in the AI development.

More than 60 prominent music companies, associations and institutions globally have now added their support to these principles, whose goal is both simple and profound, to protect the very essence of music, that is, the expression of the human spirit by human, not artificial intelligence, of its authenticity, brilliance and genuineness.

With so much positive change of foot in the industry, we look forward to sharing a much deeper and broader view of both the industry and our strategy at our upcoming Capital Markets Day, which will be held in London on September 17 at our Legendary Abbey Road Studios. We love that building, we love owning it. And we're really looking forward to being there and talking about our company and sharing what we believe in and our long-term ambitions, hopes.

Information on how to register for the live stream will be available shortly on the Investor Relations section, apparently on our website.

We look forward to giving you the opportunity to hear from members of our management team, exactly what we're doing and we're looking forward to sharing with you, as I said, our vision for the future of UMG and the industry as well as for the enormous potential of growth that we're so confident in and what we see for the future.

With that, I can see you, Boyd, I'd like to hand over to you. Go for it.

Thanks, Lucian.

The second quarter shows once again that, the diversity of our revenue composition supports our conviction about our ability to deliver consistent high single-digit revenue growth. As Lucian mentioned, we have delivered or indeed exceeded, that growth level in all 12 quarters since our public listing. There will always be variability quarter-to-quarter, so we continue to encourage you to view the business over a longer time horizon.

Internally, we do not manage the business on a quarterly basis and are, therefore, not overly concerned, when we see variation in our quarterly results. We have a diversified business model which accommodates quarterly variations, while still delivering solid growth at the group level. When we host our Capital Markets Day, we look forward to providing you with a more detailed update on our strategic plan and expectations for the company over the mid-term. But for now, let me walk you through our results this quarter.

Even with streaming and subscription growth slower-than-expected, which I will get to momentarily, revenue grew by 10% and adjusted EBITDA grew by 11% in constant currency, driving 20 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin expansion to 22.1%.

While margin benefited from operating leverage and some initial cost savings related to our strategic organizational redesign, the margin expansion was constrained by the greater proportion of lower margin physical and merchandising sales, which I'll come to when we look at the performance by business segment.

In terms of the difference between EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA, we had EUR69 million in non-cash, share-based compensation expense for the quarter compared to EUR85 million in the prior year quarter. For the half year, revenue was up 9% and adjusted EBITDA grew 13%, driving margin expansion of 0.8 percentage points to 22.4%.

Total adjusted EBITDA margin reflects strong 1.2 percentage point margin expansion in recorded music, partially offset by margin contraction in music publishing and in merchandising. The first half of the year had a total of EUR171 million in non-cash, share-based compensation expense, which includes EUR80 million for the final impact of onetime transition grants and front loaded accounting recognition. The EUR170 million compares to EUR345 million in expense during the first half of 2023. We currently expect about EUR280 million in non-cash share based compensation expense this year.

Earnings per share for the first half of 2024 grew to EUR0.50 up from EUR0.34 and adjusted earnings per share grew to EUR0.44 up from EUR0.42 in the first half of 2023. Recorded music revenue grew 7% for the quarter and 6% for the half year. This revenue growth drove adjusted EBITDA up 12% for the first half and adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 1.2 percentage points to 25.4% for the half year.

The margin expansion is largely the result of operating leverage but was also helped by modest incremental cash compensation savings associated with our equity plan rollout and the start of initial cost savings associated with Phase 1 of our strategic organizational redesign program, which we discussed last quarter.

Looking at recorded music, subscription revenue saw a deceleration in growth, up by 7% this quarter. It's worth noting that our comp against 2023 was 3 points more difficult in Q2 than it was in Q1 partially due to the timing of price increases. The other factor impacting our subscription revenue growth this quarter is the slowdown in subscriber growth at certain platforms, which is occurring while the overall subscription marketplace continues to experience significant growth in subscribers globally.

While Spotify, YouTube and many regional and local platforms have continued to exhibit healthy growth in subscribers, other large partners who have been less successful in driving global adoption have seen a slowdown in new subscriber additions. We are engaged with all our key partners in an in-depth dialogue regarding product innovation to target high value customers and drive future revenue growth.

One indication of these discussions was highlighted in Spotify's comments yesterday around the super-premium offering. Our research and analysis indicate that as many as 20% of the current subscriber base could upgrade to a super-premium tier at a meaningfully higher price point for a compelling product configuration, one which offers enhanced features and exclusive access to content.

In addition, we're stepping up our artist centric initiatives to combat fraud and together with the platforms, improve the user experience with a focus on premium and innovative new products. We take a long-term view in our efforts to promote innovation in the product portfolios offered by our digital service partners with our industry leading roster and catalog at the center of these offerings.

We see this as key to deepening the artist-fan relationship and growing the industry. Together, we are confident that, we'll see healthy growth across our portfolio of platform partnerships, and we look forward to discussing this progress in more detail at our upcoming Capital Markets Day on September 17th.

Moving on to the ad-supported business. Ad-supported streaming revenue declined 4% in the quarter. As we cautioned last quarter, when our ad-supported performance was significantly better, we need to see broad-based improvement across multiple partners and geographies over a longer timeframe before we're ready to adopt a less cautious view. Our ad-supported revenue comp against 2023 was seven points more difficult in Q2 than it was in Q1. In addition, this quarter's ad revenue reflects a blend of platform-specific and continued macro pressures.

In terms of platform specific pressure, we have a change in our licensing agreement with Meta. Meta had previously offered premium music videos on Facebook. This product offering was less popular with Facebook's user base than other music products and as a result, Meta is no longer licensing premium music videos from us as of May this year.

Meta is now focusing instead on other areas, involving music content and we are working together to expand these areas as part of a multifaceted renewal. Excluding this impact as well as the lost months of TikTok revenue in the quarter, while we were out of license with them, ad supported streaming revenue grew year-over-year.

The remainder of the slowdown in growth compared to first quarter was largely driven by slowdowns in ad revenue growth at Spotify and YouTube as they both reported yesterday. While the coming quarters may remain somewhat variable, we and our partners are laser focused on improving the monetization for the growing audience engagement on the platforms.

Over a longer time horizon as we continue to see the secular migration of the ad economy to digital formats, and as the opportunities for music content monetization continue to broaden into new avenues like gaming and health and wellness, we remain confident in the growth of our digital revenue.

Moving now to physical. Physical revenue grew 14% in the second quarter with strong releases from Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish more than offsetting a difficult comp against a strong prior year quarter in Japan.

While this category will necessarily be more release driven and therefore more volatile quarter-to-quarter, the growth we are seeing in physical revenue also reflects the emerging opportunity around Super Fandom as a significant portion of sales reflect demand for physical products as collectibles rather than for consumption purposes and as we fulfill more of these sales directly through our own D2C capabilities.

Licensing and other revenue grew 18% in the quarter, driven by improvements in licensing and synchronization income as well as higher direct-to-consumer income and greater live and audiovisual revenues.

In the first half of the year, Latin America saw the strongest growth and North America and Europe benefited from the strength in vinyl. Revenue in Asia declined solely as a result of the difficult physical comp in Japan against last year's enormous success of King & Prince. Top sellers for the first half of 2024 include Taylor Swift, Morgan Wallen, Noah Kahn, Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande.

Turning now to Music Publishing. Revenue grew 10% in the quarter with strong 17% growth in digital revenue driven by continued global growth in streaming and subscription. We also saw growth in performance and synchronization revenue while mechanical revenue declined as a result of the broader industry shift to digital formats. For the half year, music publishing revenue grew 14% and music publishing adjusted EBITDA grew 12% as margin declined 0.4 percentage points as a result of revenue and repertoire mix.

Turning now to merchandising. Merchandising revenue grew 44% in the quarter, driven by growth in both direct-to-consumer and in touring sales. Merchandising revenue grew 30% for the half year, but adjusted EBITDA declined 10% and margin contracted 2.3 percentage points due primarily to artist mix. Touring merch grew strongly thanks to tourists from Olivia Rodrigo, The Rolling Stones, Nicki Minaj, 21 Savage, and Morgan Wallen.

Net profit for the first half of 2024 amounted to EUR914 million compared to EUR625 million in the first half of 2023, resulting in earnings per share of EUR0.50 compared to EUR0.34 in the first half of 2023. The increase in net profit in the first half of 2024 includes a EUR566 million increase in the valuation of investments in listed companies compared to an increase of EUR313 million in the first half of 2023. This was partially offset by restructuring costs of EUR113 million in the first half of 2024, as we began the implementation of our strategic organizational design.

Net profit also reflects the EUR171 million equity plan expense in the first half of 2024 compared to EUR345 million in the first half of 2023. Adjusted net profit, which adjusts for the revaluation of investments as well as the equity expense and restructuring costs, amongst other items, grew 6% to EUR809 million in the first half of 2024, resulting in adjusted earnings per share of EUR0.44 compared to EUR0.42 in the first half of 2023. In line with our commitment to pay a dividend of at least 50% of our net profits, the interim dividend for 2024 will be EUR439 million or EUR0.24 per share.

I'd like to now turn to cash flow. Our net cash provided by operating activities, before income taxes paid for the first half of 2024 was EUR436 million, a 38% decline year-over-year. This decline is driven by an increase in net royalty advance payments, which amounted to EUR315 million, up from EUR95 million in the first half of 2023 due to the timing of certain major artist deal renewals and extensions, partly offset by an increase in recruitment. While sometimes major artists approach us to extend deals early, we currently expect royalty advances to step down materially in the back half of the year.

In addition, net cash provided by operating activities was negatively impacted by the EUR67 million in cash restructuring related to the organizational redesign in the first half of 2024. Similar to last year, net cash provided by operating activities also included the EUR194 million, we paid to settle employee tax liabilities arising from equity plan grants and associated obligations.

You'll recall that, we opted to fund the taxes with cash, rather than issue shares, which reduces the dilutive impact of the grants. Even with the increase in royalty advances and the taxes paid to cover employee tax obligations, free cash flow before investing activities was a positive EUR155 million in the first half of 2024.

Let me remind you, the second half of the year is a consistently stronger cash-generating period for our business. We also continued our long-term strategic investment in the business, much of which we have discussed on prior earnings calls.

On our fourth quarter 2023 earnings call, we noted that, the acquisition of Mavin Records, the investment in Complex Network and the investment in Chord would collectively represent approximately EUR450 million of investment spending in the first half of 2024. These transactions account for much of the EUR519 million invested in the first half of the year.

On last year's first half earnings call, we noted that, we had a EUR75 million cash in escrow for a catalog acquisition, which we transfer out of other investment activities and into catalog investment in 2024.

This transfer occurred in the first half of 2024, which accounted for much of the EUR96 million in catalog acquisitions. While free cash flow in the first half was an outflow of EUR460 million, we encourage you to look at cash generation on a full year basis, rather than for a half year, as working capital movements and the timing of investments can vary considerably during a shorter timeframe.

Let me close by saying that, we remain excited by and confident in the growth that lies ahead for the business. Music has never been more vital to an ever increasing number of partners and UMG is best positioned to capitalize on these industry prospects. We look forward to updating you on our outlook for the business at our Capital Markets Day on September 17.

And with that, Lucian, Michael Nash and I will now take your questions. So operator, please open the line for Q&A.

Question-and-Answer Session

[Operator Instructions] Our first question goes to Adrien de Saint Hilaire of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Adrien de Saint Hilaire

Yeah. Thank you very much. So a couple of questions, please. On the paid streaming side of things. First, could you tell us like you alluded, Boyd, to the growth of Spotify and YouTube? Would your growth rate with Spotify, for example, would that be somewhat identical to the number that they've reported? That would be the first question.

And secondly, all the initiatives that you've talked about working with partners to get them to reengage on subscriber growth, et cetera, I would imagine that this is going to take probably a couple of quarters. So is it fair to assume that from here, paid streaming growth further decelerates into the second half?

Adrian, thank you. I mean, broadly speaking, I would say that our growth rates are consistent with our view. Our Spotify growth rates are consistent or broadly consistent with what Spotify reported yesterday.

And I think you're right. What we're doing with partners in terms of product innovation, it does take time. It's a kind of you can see it as a continuous progression anyway. So it will take a little bit of time, but we would be hopeful to see some of these initiatives happening towards the end of this year so you can see something quite tangible.

The next question goes to Adam Berlin of UBS.

Adam Berlin

Yeah. Hi, good evening. Two questions again on paid streaming. The first question is, what's your estimate for how fast you think the market is growing paid subscribers at the moment? Obviously, there seems to be some deceleration since Q1, but do you have a market view from all the platforms you work with?

And related to that, do you expect that growth rate to improve? Or are we just going to have to operate in an environment with slower subscriber growth from that one? That's the first question. Sorry for the two parts.

And the second question is, can you comment on Spotify's new audiobooks tier? The way they seem to enact that was to kind of raise everyone's price and then only later introduce the option to trade down to a basic tier. In your view, is that fundamentally just a price increase and you should get the same pay away as you would do for any other price increase? Or do you accept their argument that this is a different kind of bundle and that, therefore, you should be paid less for that extra dollar?

Michael Nash

Adam, thank you for your questions. Michael Nash here. Let me first address the question about growth outlook. Let me hit a couple of data points to put our perspective in context. The IFPI, which is the Global Trade Organization in the music industry, their global report that was released earlier this year indicated that the industry hit about 670 million subscribers last year.

That reflected an increase over 2022 of 78 million subscribers and that exceeded the prior year increase of 66 million subscribers as growth actually accelerated in 2023. Both U.S. and UK markets reported higher subscription revenue growth rates in 2023 than 2022, so some acceleration there. Media reported that 5 of the top 10 global subscriber markets added more subscribers in 2023 than 2022. We're seeing sustained or accelerated subscription growth across multiple markets.

In terms of expansion and the addressable market, our consumer research assesses the scale of the consideration set in the top 19 territories. We've identified an addressable market of over 180 million consumers that will form the next wave of subscription adoption and that research was conducted, assuming price increases. About half of that total addressable market will be in the 13 developed market and we expect to see a lot of growth in emerging markets.

It's important to keep in mind that technology innovation, digital infrastructure penetration, emerging consumer trends, all these things have been consistently growing the total addressable market for subscription over the last decade. Forecast of TAM is not a ceiling for growth, but it's really about the scope of the next wave of growth. Very interesting recent data point, the Luminate Midyear 2024 Report indexes global on-demand streaming growth at over 15% and the majority of that is premium paid. We remain confident about the overall growth trajectory of the marketplace.

I think it's important again to keep in mind that, the perspective about the evolution of the market is something that doesn't necessarily on a quarter by quarter basis always track linearly, but we are confident about the overall trajectory of the market viewed in the longer-term.

Thanks, Michael. Adam, just turning to your second question, which was specifically about Spotify and the audiobook bundle. What I would need to say is that, we don't actually disclose the terms of our agreements with any partners. But let me say that, we always negotiate licensing models and terms to ensure that, we fully and fairly participate in the value our content brings to all product configurations, including bundled products.

We've been deeply engaged with Spotify in discussions about the overall scope of their product portfolio roadmap, and we're confident our revenue participation reflects the value our artists and our music is bringing to their platform.

The only other point that I would make is that, we take a long-term view in all of these efforts to promote innovation, and we see the evolution of product portfolios offered by our digital service partners. With our industry-leading roster and catalog right at the center, we see that product innovation, as key to deepening the artist-fan relationship and expanding the future.

I'd like to add there that, we are at the beginning of the next phase, Part 2 phase of streaming and subscription. It's a whole suite of products, the Superfan, the technology developments, as we discussed earlier in AI and what that will allow both of us. All the platforms and the DSPs to innovate products, the genres, the regions, the local cultures, the scenes, the ability to use AI to convert or allow our artists to sing their own music in different languages.

We like it when we're able to encourage our partners into win-win positions where we can experiment. We're in a cycle of experimentation. And that's again one of the reasons why we can't do -- it's in our blood. We can't do anything than think in multiyear cycles and in the long-term. And whilst quarterly earnings is a great temperature check, and it allows us to actually reflect on what we're doing and so on and so on.

The long-term strategy in terms of how we are working to provide more Superfans, more access, more engagement and that the critical nature of the product of what we do. We just reel these names off, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Noah Kahan, Taylor Swift. They're absolutely fundamental. They're the protein in everything that we do. Our entire mentality is to grow the pie.

And the next question goes to Omar Mejias of Wells Fargo.

Omar Mejias

Thank you for taking my question. Maybe as a follow-up to the prior question regarding recorded music subscription growth. Are you guys seeing a structural slowdown globally on subscriber additions? Or is this, location specific? And are there any other factors at play with the slowdown of some of these large DSPs?

And my second question, just and I appreciate, Michael, some of the higher level trends on just the growth that you guys are seeing and the outlook for streaming growth. But just, we are seeing continued subscription streaming, both volume growth decelerating to 3Q. So just curious, how should we think about growth in the back half of this year, and just some of the trends that you guys are seeing given some of the issues?

Thank you for your questions, Omar. So let me double-click, as you've asked us to do in terms of following up on some of the points that we've made. In general, just keep in mind, subscription revenue growth, it's a reflection of subscriber growth, pricing, our market share streams, and that's across a really broad range of global regional streaming partners, vastly different growth dynamics in ARPUs.

So at the high level, you're seeing the topsoil and the root structure or everything gets growing on top of the soil, much more complex interplay. And forgive me if that was like a weak horticultural analogy there. A couple of things to keep in mind, because you've asked me to look really specifically at what's happening right now.

As Boyd noted, our comp against 2023, in the second quarter was three points more difficult than it was in the first quarter. That's largely due to the timing of pricing increases. In the second quarter of this year, we fully annualized the Apple and Amazon price increases. So when you're looking at variations of a few points, there's a lot of things that potentially build into that. In this case, the comp difference of three points is something to keep in mind.

The remainder of the deceleration to emphasize what Boyd articulated largely due to subscriber growth at certain platforms. Spotify and YouTube public statements make it very clear they continue to exhibit healthy growth in subscribers and there's been some significant growth with the regional and local players.

Other larger partners have been less successful at driving global adoption and there's been some slowdown in terms of subscriber additions there. One point of analysis that you might find interesting from our consumer research, it's not that, there's an increase in switching, it's really more about the competition for new subscribers. The services that are growing faster, doing a better job of enlisting new subscribers.

I think with respect to what we expect to do in reigniting growth, we've been in very deep dialogue with our partners about product and platform innovation. There are a lot of opportunities to do that. We are particularly excited about the prospects of a super-premium tier. Daniel Ek on the Spotify earnings call yesterday, talked about what they saw as significant potential there and hinted at some of their plans and confirmed that, they do intend to launch a super-premium tier.

That's one example of the kind of product innovation effort that could result in acceleration of growth. Hopefully that gives you a little bit more of a particularized view of what we're seeing in the near-term that maps against the broader perspective that I articulated earlier.

I think you're hearing, Omar, I think you're hearing, a repeating theme, product development in terms of our attitude and our view with regard to what those products could and should look like, same obviously with our DSP partners, the degree of experimentation, customer fan feedback, more access, more engagement, and the fact that different partners are focusing on different aspects of their business according to what they see with their audiences and with their consumers.

The amount of work, win-win dialogue, creative discussions that are going on between us is really extremely exciting. Some of these things in some of the platforms between operating systems and engineers and multitude of things can occasionally take time to implement. We're on that implementation now.

The next question goes to William Packer of BNP Paribas.

William Packer

Hi there. Many thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, within the, ad streaming, there's a lot of noise with the TikTok spats, changes to the Meta deal, et cetera. Could you help us think through the exit rate in ad streaming once the TikTok deal has been resigned?

And then secondly, just coming back on the subscription streaming trends, could you confirm, for example, mix of price and volume and any factors that should specifically drive an acceleration in Q3. I know we've kind of covered some of the longer term potential factors. But if we take the Spotify, UK and U. S. price increases, could that help or does the bundling mean that that won't be a contributor? Thank you.

Thank you for your questions, William. First of all, with respect to putting the TikTok revenue piece into context. Boyd talked about Meta switching away from premium music videos in the past quarter. The focus there is on higher growth products and formats moving forward.

If you take that piece and the fact that we missed one month of TikTok revenue in the quarter, excluding those impacts, ad supported stream revenue actually grew for us in the second quarter. So I hope that that gives you some perspective about the dynamics within the quarter, and where ad streaming would net out taking those into consideration.

And then on your second question, what I'm getting and unpacking the question is how are we seeing growth with respect to price and subscriber growth and those dynamics. We still see subscriber growth as fundamentally most important in terms of growing subscription revenues. We have talked before about how powerful the value proposition of subscription streaming is relative to other forms of digital entertainment, video and gaming, underpriced perhaps to be extended by 20% of the cost per hour of entertainment of other formats.

And we repeatedly hear, including on Spotify's earnings call yesterday, service is talking about price increases and not experiencing any churn. So we see a lot of opportunity there. More importantly for us is how we see innovation with new product potentially driving the opportunity. And there was, in the comments that Spotify made, the suggestion of a price point perhaps at 17 or 18 for a new product configuration, which wasn't fully articulated, but that's giving you some sense of what might be possible.

And as we have previously articulated and on this call have talked about, maybe a target of 20% of the subscriber base that's potentially, the opportunity for adoption of higher priced tier among existing subscribers. So that's how we're looking at the formulation of the equation of growth made up of those multiple components.

I'd just like to add one last thing. You mentioned TikTok. The value which won't appear in a percentage today, the value in the new TikTok deal, the new arrangement with them is in the protections, is in the value of us working with them on responsible AI, on e-commerce and the value in having a new spirit of partnership with them and the dialogue and the zeitgeist that, that gives in terms of the entire spirit of how we work and how we are as an organization and as a culture for us as well as our artists.

And the final question goes to Julien Roch of Barclays.

Julien Roch

Yes. Good evening. Thank you, for letting me ask a question. The first one is for well, actually, probably the two for Boyd. EUR315 million in terms of net content investment in the first half versus EUR95 million last year. You say it would step down materially in the second half, but is it stepping down from the EUR315 million, so the total for the full year will be above EUR315 million? Or is it going negative and the full year number will be lower than EUR315 million if we could get some form of guidance there? That's my first question.

In the last 12-months, you bought more companies than usual. You bought in H2 last year and then you spent EUR450 million in the first half this year. Could we get the constant FX contribution in first half revenue of all the M&A you've done in the last 12-months, please?

Julian, thank you. Not in a position to give guidance with regard to the content investment. Clearly, the EUR300 million plus in the first half of the year was an elevated level. As you pointed out, it's not overly difficult to come down from that very elevated number. We refer to the prior half, which was EUR95 million. There's quite a significant swing half-by-half, quarter-to-quarter.

If it's helpful, we can probably say now that with the course of time over the last few years is, that it seems to be over the last three years, we seem to be in a range of the kind of EUR150 million to EUR250 million of net advance investment kind of year-over-year. I wouldn't envisage that we would be negative in the second half of the year, but I don't want go into it much more than, I already have done.

There are also investments for the future. We're building a marketplace with network and complex. And our emerging market strategy, our export strategy within them. Everything is future focused.

Julian, just the second part of your question, which was about the investments that we've made in Chord and Mavin and in Complex Network. At this point in time, these are investments with a long time horizon. There's nothing meaningful in terms of our financials so far. There are topics that will be on the agenda for Capital Markets Day.

Thank you. That's all the questions that we have time for today. This now concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

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Universal Music Shares Plunged 24% After Quarterly Earnings Revealed Subscription Growth Slowdown

Investors reacted to the company's overall streaming revenue growth of just 4.1%, which was down from 11% a year earlier, and a sharp slowdown in subscription growth.

• By Glenn Peoples

Glenn Peoples

Slowing growth in subscription streaming sent Universal Music Group’s share price down 23.5% following the company’s second-quarter earnings report on Wednesday (July 24). 

On Thursday (July 25), UMG shares dropped as far as 19.93 euros ($21.61), 29.8% below Wednesday’s closing price, before closing at 21.70 euros ($23.53) – a 23.5% decline that erased 12.2 billion euros ($13.25 billion) from UMG’s market capitalization.  

What You Should Know About UMG’s Q2 Earnings: Uneven Streaming Growth, Facebook Licensing…

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Analysts had expected far better. Barclays, for example, forecasted overall streaming growth of 10.5% and subscription growth of 11.0%. Guggenheim had forecast subscription growth of 11.3%.  

During Wednesday’s earnings call, Boyd Muir , UMG’s executive vp of digital strategy, singled out Spotify, YouTube and “local and regional” platforms for continuing to add subscribers. Apple Music and Amazon Music were conspicuously not mentioned, leading some analysts to believe those platforms are struggling to add new subscribers. “Other larger partners have been less successful at driving global adoption,” said Muir, “and there’s been some slowdown in terms of subscriber additions there.” 

Despite the streaming slowdown, UMG managed to improve both top-line revenue and margins. Overall revenue grew 8.7% to 2.93 billion euros ($3.16 billion). As a percentage of revenue, adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) improved to 22.1% from 21.9% in the prior-year period. Physical music sales grew 14.4% and merchandise sales jumped 43.7%. Analysts were far more concerned about the change in streaming, however, and seemed less concerned about improvements in lower-margin physical and merchandising that tend to naturally fluctuate based on new release and touring activity.  

Many analysts lowered their price targets following Wednesday’s results, albeit by smaller margins than investors dropped the share price on Thursday. Guggenheim dropped UMG by 14% to 27.50 euros ($29.82). Barclays lowered its price target by 12% to 26.00 euros ($28.20). Citi lowered UMG by 7.8% to 29.50 euros ($28.20). And Kepler Cheuvreux reduced its price target 3.5% to 27.00 euros ($29.28). 

UPDATE (July 25 at 6:25 p.m. ET): A previous version of this story misattributed a quote about slowing subscriber growth at some digital platforms. The person who said it was Boyd Muir, not Michael Nash.

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