Streaming growth drives spike in annual revenue at Sony Music

Sony has reported its earnings for its fiscal year ending March 31, and streaming helped bolster growth for the company’s music division. Overall, Sony Music saw a 12% increase in revenue to $4.03 billion. Streaming revenue spiked more than 37% on-year to $1.8 billion, making it more than 44% of the music division’s total revenue.

Physical sales also rose for the company, reaching a total of $1.2 billion. Sony’s home country of Japan is still a hot market for CDs, but the company did not break down specifics of where the growth for physical format revenue happened. Download revenue for Sony followed the current international trends; it declined 18% to about $450 million.