2025 Year‑End Earnings: Here’s What Every Music Company Made (Updating)
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, seeing shows and buying merch remains resilient.
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.
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Results this week from streaming giant Spotify and the destination music venue Sphere will be key in determining if this is another quarter when 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.
Spotify has begun to roll out another round of subscription price increases, and its executives are expected to share more about how that has impacted its churn rates and when it will show up in the bottom line.
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. 6) for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2025.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
