According to Mark Mulligan, Managing Director of MIDiA Research, global music publishing revenues will grow over 60% between 2023 and 2031 — an eight-year span of uninterrupted, incremental upticks.
And the ticks are sizable. The music publishing industry garnered 10.1 billion dollars last year, and the sector will grow income to $16.8 billion in 2031.
As represented in the graphic below, that growth is steady, and uninterrupted in a year-over-year view.
When Mulligan surveys the entire streaming era, he sees the publishing sector in the shadow of streaming royalties. That agenda was set by labels and streaming music platforms — “a state of affairs reflected in the comparably small share of revenues allocated to publishing royalties,” Mulligan says.
In a newer era, publishing rights have “found their voice,” and now garner a larger share of the streaming economy.
Newer platforms on which music recordings are performed — e.g. TikTok, Meta, Snap — also help build the publishing revenue growth seen above.
Mark Mulligan breaks out a few revenue specifics for music publishers: “Warner Chappell had the strongest growing revenues in 2023, up 16.6% on 2022 to reach $1.1 billion, while Sony Music Publishing remained the largest publisher, though Universal Music Group made up ground, growing 10.5% to reach $2.1 billion. Independents meanwhile grew 12.7%.”
Continued growth expectations? Mulligan observes that publishers have “different levers to pull” than labels — notably live performance (especially post-Covid) and subscription video on demand (SVOD).
