June 5 2025
ICMP, the global trade body for the music publishing industry, issued the headline revenue findings of the first ever economic report on the size and nature of key international music publishing markets.
The ICMP Music Publishing Markets Analysis 2025 discloses the findings of a detailed survey carried out among two types of respondents:
ICMP’s Board companies – Sony Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, BMG, Concord Music Publishing, Reservoir Media, Kobalt and peermusic.
Collective Management Organisations around the world – including in the USA, UK, France, Germany, Brazil, Austrailia and many others.
This is the first time these music companies have reported their worldwide revenue data.
The publicly disclosed data also includes the collective licensing distributions from across 16 key music markets, spanning 5 continents.
The findings disclose revenue totals (per market and aggregate), revenue per type of rights, unprecedented insights to distributions to publishers and songwriters, evidence the work done by music publishing companies for songwriters and spotlight the value of the most crucial part of music’s value chain – the song.
The aggregate amount for the 16 sleected markets is more than $11 billion dollars.
This number comprises direct revenue by music publishing companies and distributions by CMOs (as opposed to collections) for selected markets, thereby providing unprecedented clarity.
The survey has been carried out by PMP Strategy and the exclusive sponsors are GC Partners, international financial transaction specialists.
