Investment house Goldman Sachs released a research note predicting the fortunes of the global music industry, from concerts to streaming. It’s a bad-news / good news sort of thing.
First, the obvious bad: Concert revenue is, and will be, disrupted by Covid-19. Big crowds, etc.. “Severely impacted” is the phrase used, as a rather violent metaphor. That reduction is estimated as a 75% percent reduction of the concert segment of music. That catastrophic drop would exist in the entire market as a 25% reduction in overall music revenue for 2020.
But then, the rebound. Goldman expects demand to rise, along with concert income, streaming, new licensing types, and even beneficial new regulations. With all that, the goldman analysts figure a near doubling of global music revenue, from 2019’s total of $77-billion to $142-billion by end of the 2020s. (To be clear, that dramatic revenue rise would be stretched over a decade.
Another farsighted prediction from Goldman Sachs is the number of streaming music subscribers — the projection is 1.2-billion users by 2030. That would be a 4x rise according to Goldman.
Bringing the note back to actionable investment advice, Goldman Sachs mentions Universal Music Group and Sony Music as the main beneficiaries. On the streaming side, the note advises: “We prefer leading, scaled players such as Spotify and Tencent Music.”