PARIS, France (CelebrityAccess) –Vivendi subsidiary UMG posted full-year revenue of €6 billion ($7.2 billion) for the fiscal year of 2018. This represents a 10% increase over 2017 at constant currency.
According to a financial report by Vivendi, UMG’s 2018 EBITA (earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization) for 2018 came in at €902 million ($1.1 billion), an improvement of 22.1% over the previous year.
Drilling down into the numbers revealed that recorded music grew by 9.8% to €4.8 billion with streaming driving the lion’s share of the improvement, up by 37.3% to €2.6 billion ($3.1 billion), year-over-year.
At the same time, digital sales, primarily downloads, fell by 26.6% from 2017 to €479 million and physical sales dropped by 16.1% to €949 million ($1.1 billion) in 2018.
UMG’s music publishing and licensing operations reported growth, with publishing up by 14.5% to €941 million ($1.1 billion) and licensing improving by 10.7% to €804 million ($908 million).
North America represented 2.2bn of UMG’s overall recorded music revenue, up by 11.5% from the previous year, while Europe generated revenue of €1.6 billion ($1.8 billion), up b 5.5%.
Asia accounted for €618 million ($698 million) and Latin America contributed €153 million ($173 million).
