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| Statement |
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| Our amazing roster of artists and songwriters, combined with our strategy to stay several steps ahead of our fast-evolving industry, will enable us to thrive |
| So I'm very confident about our continued performance and I have great belief in the team that's here with me, so thank you very much, and we'll talk to you in the quarter |
| But the overriding benefit of this is to add confidence and flexibility to our long-term goals for healthy top line and margin expansion on a consistent basis |
| I'm happy to report that the momentum we saw in the second half of 2023 has not only continued, but accelerated into Q1 with both our recorded music and music publishing segments generating record high quarterly revenue |
| And I'm very, very confident that what I set out to do is already happening |
| Recorded music revenue accelerated to 15% and on a normalized basis revenue grew 9%, streaming grew 11% and subscription streaming increased 12% |
| These results reflect solid new release and catalog performance, which were supported by DSP price increases |
| Music publishing continued to deliver impressive results, with revenue growth of 20%, driven by streaming growth of 30% |
| So, yes, very confident |
| I am thrilled with the momentum we're building with recorded music, driven by our ability to deliver great hits across multiple labels and geographies |
| So, what we're doing is, we're creating a flywheel that starts with efficiency and operating leverage that's helping us grow efficiently and free up more money all along the way |
| And as you know, there's a lot that goes into that, but certainly price increases contributed, and I think we called that out, but also the stronger slate, particularly year-over-year, came out of Q4 with momentum, some launches in Q1, and as we sit here today, as Robert alluded to, the slate is strong coming into Q2 and we're excited about the back half of the year |
| In music publishing, our strong performance and momentum continued with the fifth consecutive quarter of accelerating year-on-year growth |
| Both the strategic actions we're taking, as well as our stronger release slate will position us favorably to deliver on these objectives in 2024 as well as for the long term |
| And all of this is truly underpinned by having the right leadership team that gels together really well and amazing teams that we've been in investing into all around or delivering results seeing us having success on the charts with great talent that we signed just a few years ago |
| In closing, our goal remains to deliver healthy top-line growth, margin expansion, and strong cash flow conversion on a consistent basis |
| Well, what I'd like to say is that, being a year on the job, I feel we're in a very strong position |
| Music publishing continues to deliver strong results with revenue growth of 20%, driven by strength in streaming and performance |
| On the ad-supported, again, there, YouTube, Spotify continuing to see favorable trends there in core ad supported |
| Ad-supported revenue increased by 10%, reflecting sequential improvement from traditional formats as well as the impact of the TikTok renewal, which went into effect last quarter |
| Additionally, streaming revenue grew 11.4% on a normalized basis, an improvement from the 9% we reported last quarter |
| WMG is a thriving company in a unique and growing industry |
| This favorably impacted recorded music streaming revenue |
| So clearly encouraging trends |
| On the publishing side, publishing is an incredible business |
| That every year from all of these initiatives, we just drive incremental improvement and just stay and forever |
| In Q1, we returned a healthy double-digit growth on a recorded and normalized basis, that was underpinned by strength across both recorded music and music publishing |
| Resetting samples of successful catalog projects include 30th anniversary of Green Day's, Dookie and the 40th anniversary of [Darking] (ph) had stopped making sense, which drove 33% jump in annual revenue across the band's entire catalog |
| It's like -- when you see it from the [indiscernible] outside, when you see it from the inside, it's truly an incredible business and it's really -- it's -- obviously there's the creative component of it, which we do incredibly well |
| The music ecosystem is healthy and growing, and we're excited about the industry's continued progress in realizing the true value of music |
| Statement |
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| I think it was very difficult, too |
| What I can tell you is that, I thought it was going to be a lot harder than it has been for us |
| Artist services and expanded-rights revenue decreased 4% due to lower merchandising revenue, partially offset by higher concert promotion revenue in France and Japan |
| And - so none of this should be interpreted as we want to increase pricing dramatically, but then slow down the growth at the same time which is what happened to some other companies |
| It's harder than ever for anyone artist to break through the clutter |
| But it's really difficult to do that manually across such large volume of content |
| There's a very high profile dispute in the market with one of your peers having taken their content off of the service and not reaching an agreement |
| And essentially not -- there's obviously the obvious problem of third-party AI content from outside of things like TikTok being put onto TikTok |
| Obviously, I haven't been on the other side, and having gone through these types of disputes where we have -- where content has come down |
| For 2024, you should expect the impacts to be fairly muted |
| And I think generally people speak about -- people from the music industry unfairly in this regard because everybody wants technology to help them |
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