LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess) — Bertelsmann, the corporate parent of BMG, announced that the music company recorded its best-ever results for the first half year of 2021, with recorded music revenue up by 29.4% compared with the same period last year.
BMG’s recorded music revenue was bolstered in H1 by new releases from AJR and Parmalee & Blanco Brown in the US, by No Angels and Kontra K in Germany, and by KSI and Gary Numan in the UK. BMG increased its sales of albums in the UK by 10 percent during the reporting period, a rate many times greater than the market growth. Key signings included Louis Tomlinson, No Angels and Duran Duran.
BMG’s total revenue for H1 increased by 5.2 percent to €296 million while operating EBITDA reached €50 million (H1 2020: €49 million), up 3.1 percent.
According to Bertelsmann, company’s performance was driven primarily by streaming, which saw double digit growth during the first half of the year. In all, BMG’s digital business share of overall revenue increased to 62% for the first half of the year, up from 59 percent during the same period in 2020.
Streaming revenue grew by 31.6% for recorded music and 13.3% in music publishing, the company said.
However, despite the push from streaming, revenue for BMG’s music publishing segment remained flat, which the company attributed to the lassitude of COVID-19 and its impact on the touring industry.
Bertelsmann also reported that vinyl sales topped CD sales for the first time in decades.
