2025 Year‑End Earnings: Here’s What Every Music Company Made (Updating)
A recap of what every publicly traded music company — from streamers to labels to venues and ticketing platforms — earned in the final quarter of 2025.
While the broader market continues to be mired in uncertainty, early results for major music and live entertainment companies showed consumers’ demand for streaming music, going to shows and buying merch remains resilient.
Spotify’s 10% year-over-year subscriber growth beat its own expectations, while total monthly average users hit an all time high, boosting quarterly revenues to more than $5 billion. Sony Music Group and Warner Music Group both posted double-digit percentage growth in digital and streaming revenues driven by the popularity of major end-of-year releases by artists like Rosalía and sombr. Both companies highlighted strong boosts from global concert revenue and merchandise sales, and Madison Square Garden Entertainment said ticket sales for its Christmas Spectacular show were at a 25-year high.
Results this week from streaming giant Spotify and the destination music venue Sphere were be key in supporting the music industry’s mantra that music companies are uncorrelated to broader economic and stock market trends. U.S. consumer confidence numbers fell to worse-than-10-year lows in the final three months of last year and major U.S. indices experienced dramatic swings over interest rate concerns and a fear of a bubble for the AI stocks.
Live Nation reports earnings on Feb. 19, while Universal Music Group, Deezer and Berlin-based BMG will report earnings in March.
Here’s a running list, in alphabetical order, of the music companies that released earnings results (as of Feb. 13) for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2025.
-
ASCAP
ASCAP announced its 2025 revenue was up 6% to $1.945 billion in revenue from a year earlier as the performance rights organization concluded a decade-long growth plan launched to increase revenue and collections for its membership. ASCAP reported $1.759 billion in available royalty distributions in 2025 was up $63 million, or 3.7%, from 2024, while domestic revenue from U.S.-licensed performances was up $74 million, or 5.3%, to $1.471 billion. Collections from foreign revenue totaled $474 million in 2025, up $36 million, or 8.2%, from 2024.
-
Madison Square Garden Entertainment
Madison Square Garden Entertainment: MSGE reported revenues were up 13% to nearly $460 million for the quarter ending just days after Christmas, thanks to a record-setting run for The Rockette’s Christmas Spectacular show at Radio City Music Hall. The show, now in its 92nd season, sold 1.2 million, the highest number since 2000. Entertainment offerings contributed $360.5 million in revenue, up 13% also from the prior event on higher revenues from the Christmas Spectacular and live and sports events. Revenue from concerts fell $1.2 million due to fewer concerts at The Garden in the quarter. Food, beverage and merch sales rose 8% to $64 million driven mainly by sales at Knicks and Rangers games, of which there were an additional four games in the quarter ending Dec. 31 compared to last year.
-
Reservoir Media
Reservoir Media: Reservoir Media has posted steady third‑quarter gains on the strength of its publishing division and lifted its full‑year outlook, underscoring the company’s bet on copyrights and global collections. Revenue rose 8% to $45.6 million, and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) increased 11% to $19.2 million, for the quarter ended Dec. 31. Net income fell to $2.2 million from $5.3 million a year ago, largely due to swap valuation and interest expense, adding that the dip was “partially offset by an increase in operating income and a decrease in income tax expense.” During the quarter, Reservoir struck a JV with Jamaican publisher Abood Music and producer Cordell “Skatta” Burrell; acquired the catalog of yacht rocker Bertie Higgins (for publishing and recorded music rights).
-
SiriusXM Holdings
SiriusXM Holdings: SiriusXM posted $8.56 billion in revenue in 2025, marking a 2% decline from 2024, as the satellite entertainment home of Howard Stern sought to offset lower subscriber revenue with new podcast content and in-vehicle offerings, like family subscriptions. Executives pointed to green shoots I Sirius’ podcasting ad revenue, which rose 41%, although company-wide advertising held flat at $1.78 billion for the year. Sirius’ pool of 33 million subscribers declined by 300,000 last year, and executives said they expect a similarly slight decline this year. SiriusXM maintained a target of $1.5 billion in free cash flow by 2027.
-
SM Entertainment
South Korea-based SM Entertainment reported record-high quarter revenue of 319 billion Korean won ($219.8 million), up nearly 17% from last year, driven by global touring revenue and merch sales for acts like aespa, NCT DREAM, RIIZE and NCT WISH. The company said operating profit of 54.6 billion KRW ($37.6 million), was up 62.2% from the year-ago quarter, and its operating margin expanded to 17.1%, an improvement of 4.8 percentage points. SM reversed a net profit loss from a year ago to report 27.4 billion KRW ($18.8 million) in net income for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2025.
-
Sony Music Group
Sony Music Group: Sony Music Group reported double-digit quarterly revenue growth as the streaming success of new music from Rosalía and Peso Pluma. Sony Music generated 524.4 billion yen ($3.47 billion) in the final quarter of the 2025, with recorded music revenue contributing 355 billion yen ($2.27 billion). Optimism about upcoming releases from Harry Styles and Luke Combs and a new album from A$AP Rocky led the Japan-based parent company Sony to raise its growth forecast by 4% for total revenue and 16% for operating income.
-
Sphere
The Sphere Entertainment Company reported this week ticket sales for its showing of “The Wizard of Oz” topped $290 million last year, helping the company chart its first profitable year launching the Las Vegas venue in 2023. More than 2.2 million tickets were sold to see the Sphere’s version of the 1939 classic Judy Garland film, which has been remastered and enhanced for the Sphere’s one-of-kind visual and sound system. The company reported sales of tickets to “Oz” and residencies by acts including Dead & Company, Eagles, Anyma, Kenny Chesney and Backstreet Boys helped boost gross revenue 8% to $1.2 billion and reverse a loss in 2024 to generate a profit of $33.4 million for 2025. Sphere CEO James Dolan said they took another step toward accomplishing a vision for a global network of Sphere venues with the announcement last month that a second U.S. Sphere will be open outside of Washington, D.C. by 2030. The mini Sphere will have 6,000 seats–compared to the Las Vegas Sphere’s 20,000 seats–and it is expected to cost around $1 billion to build. The company said its development partners in Abu Dhabi are close to finalizing a location for the large Sphere being planned there.
-
Spotify
Spotify reported strong fourth quarter results that beat internal guidance for subscriber and monthly active user growth. Subscribers rose 10% to 290 million, while monthly active users r in total subscribers drove revenue up 13% to 4.5 billion euros ($5.3 billion). Revenue rose 13% to 4.5 billion euros ($5.3 billion), operating income increased to 701 million euros ($825 million), and the streaming giant’s profit margin expanded 83 basis points to 33.1%, better than previously forecast. Spotify’s stock, which touched an all-time high of more than $772 last June, has been down recently on investor fears it could be supplanted by artificial intelligence. On a call to discuss earnings, Spotify Co-CEO Gustav Söderström highlighted an internal AI tool called Honk that Spotify engineers use to fix and update their app, and he called on music industry rightsholders to strike licensing deals so Spotify can release new AI tools that let fans interact with artists’ music. “We thought fourth quarter was a solid print, and we came away feeling incrementally confident on [Spotify’s] competitive position in AI,” Cantor analyst Deepak Mathivanan wrote in a note to clients.
-
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group: Warner Music Group reported quarterly earnings of $1.84 billion, up 10% from a year earlier on broad-based growth across its recorded music, publishing and digital revenue. The company is at the tail-end of a yearslong cost-cutting and restructuring effort that CEO Robert Kyncl helped accelerate growth and efficiency. During an investor presentation, executives talked about Warner’s new tech infrastructure, incorporating AI into artist discovery, marketing and its relationships with the big streaming partners, and catalog and business acquisitions they hope to do with their new, now-$1.65 billion joint venture with Bain Capital.
Leave a Comment