Halfway through the year, it’s still an Encanto world, but it wouldn’t be a summer without Bad Bunny, whose Un Verano Sin Tí (Rimas, distributed by The Orchard) is the biggest album released in 2022 so far and No. 2 overall, and helped lead the charge as Sony Music Entertainment grew its market share at the midpoint of 2022 with the three biggest albums of the second quarter: Un Verano Sin Tí, Harry Styles’ Harry’s House (Columbia) and Future’s I Never Liked You (Epic).
Those albums helped boost Sony’s market share to 26.34% halfway through 2022, up 0.66% over where it was at 2021’s halfway point and up from the 25.76% mark it posted in the first quarter of this year, propelled by a 2.90% increase in current market share (albums released within the past 18 months) over midyear 2021.
Compared to the halfway mark of last year, Warner Music Group (up 0.08% to 16.26%) and the indie sector collectively (up 0.56%, to 20.15%) also grew thanks to significant gains in current market share, while Universal Music Group is down 1.29% at midyear 2022 compared to midyear 2021, almost entirely due to a 5.81% decline in current market share, from 38.99% in the first half of 2021 to 33.18% in the first half of 2022.
But UMG remains the dominant force in the market, with its 37.25% share still a full 10 percentage points above Sony’s. It was the only label group to increase its share of the catalog music market (albums older than 18 months), gaining 0.3% to 38.66% over midyear 2021. And halfway through 2022, UMG’s Interscope Geffen A&M is the top label in the market once again, carrying on its same ranking from the first quarter as well.
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In fact, the top four frontline labels all remain in the same positions, though the gap between them has narrowed. Interscope (which includes Verve) still leads the way at the mid-year mark, despite its market share dropping from a whopping 10.40% in the first half of 2021 (when it had a current market share of 11.80%) to 9.80% at midyear 2022, while Atlantic (which includes 300 Entertainment and Elektra) remains at No. 2, jumping up to 9.30% at the mid-year mark this year from 9.24% at this point last year. Republic (which encompasses Island, Mercury, Big Loud, Imperial and Young Money and Cash Money) maintains its position at No. 3, despite falling from 8.29% at midyear 2021 to 7.93% at midyear in 2022 — a drop that could be attributable to 2021’s 10.47% midyear current market share, which dipped to 8.92% this year — while Columbia (which includes some labels from indie distributor RED) rounds out the top four again, growing to 6.97% from last year’s 6.83% at the halfway mark. That means the gap between the first and fourth labels at the halfway mark shrunk from 3.57% in 2021 to 2.83% this year.
Warner Records overtook Capitol Music Group for the No. 5 spot, despite each ceding market share: Warner (which includes catalog label Rhino, Warner Latin and the bulk of Warner Nashville) dropped from 6.36% halfway through 2021 to 6.23% midway through 2022; Capitol, which includes indie label distributor Virgin, as well as Motown/Quality Control, Astralwerks and Blue Note, dropped from 6.83% last year to 6.06% this year. The next three spots remained the same: RCA in seventh, at 4.92%, up from 4.90% midway through 2021; Epic in eighth, at 2.61%, up from 2.51% at the same marker last year; and Def Jam in ninth, at 2.19%, down slightly from last year’s 2.27%. Coming in 10th, Sony Nashville knocked Sony’s catalog division, Legacy, from the spot it held last year, with a 2.03% market share, a slight bump from last year’s 2.01%, when it ranked 12th.
UMG Nashville retained its 11th place spot from Q2 2022, despite dipping from 2.09% last year to 1.82% this year, while Disney’s Encanto-fueled hot start to the year — the soundtrack, released in November 2021, is still the biggest album of 2022 so far, though Un Verano Sin Tí is gaining fast — puts its music group at No. 12, down from the No. 8 spot in Q1 2022 but up from No. 14 at midyear 2021, growing in market share from last year’s 1.44% to this year’s 1.76%. Concord (1.66%, up from 1.60%) and Universal Music Latin (1.45%, up from 1.31%) landed at Nos. 13 and 14, while BMG leapfrogged Sony Music Latin into 15th place at the midyear mark, despite a marginal decline to 1.06% from last year’s 1.08%.
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In terms of current market share, Atlantic surges into the top spot, up to 9.92% from 9.04% at the midpoint last year, when it ranked third behind huge numbers from Interscope (11.80%) and Republic (10.47%). That was buoyed by gains by labels under its umbrella — 300 and Elektra, recently combined into 300 Elektra Entertainment, both grew from last year, the former up from 1.58% to 1.69% this year and the latter up from 0.71% to 0.81% this year — as well as its own big albums this year from Jack Harlow and Kodak Black and the continued success of Ed Sheeran’s 2021 release =.
Interscope (9.36%) and Republic (8.92%) shifted down to second and third, respectively, while Columbia jumped from fifth to fourth, improving from 5.84% at the midpoint of last year to 6.65% this year, as Harry Styles and continued momentum from Adele boosted the label. Warner Records improved from sixth to fifth place despite dipping from 4.74% to 4.63% this year, while Capitol fell from fourth place midway through last year to sixth this year, dropping from 5.93% down to 4.31%, in a virtual tie with RCA, which grew from 4.19% last year to 4.31% this year on the strength of a big second quarter. Epic maintained its position at No. 8, with a boost from Future’s I Never Liked You, despite dropping from 2.35% in 2021 to 2.24% this year.
Disney, still buoyed by the Encanto soundtrack, came in at No. 9 with 1.87% current share, a huge jump from the same time last year, when its current share of 0.57% put it at No. 19. Sony Nashville also had a big first half with new releases, as its current share jumped from 1.49% last year to 1.72% this year, boosting it from 12th to 10th. Alamo — with a big boost from Lil Durk’s album 7220, among the top five biggest albums released in 2022 so far — came in at No. 11 with 1.69% current share, a drop from last year’s 2.20% at mid-year, but significant as it’s a standalone Sony frontline label in 2022, whereas at the midpoint of last year it was still a Universal label under the Interscope umbrella. Def Jam dropped from ninth last year (2.27%) to 12th this year (1.46%), while BMG maintained its position at No. 13 and held steady with its market share at 1.30%. Universal Nashville (1.23%) and Sony Music Latin (1.22%) rounded out the top 15.
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As with Q1, catalog market share essentially lined up with the rankings for overall market share, with the top 15 all the same labels, and all ranked in the same order except Disney and Concord, which flipped spots, Disney taking No. 12 and Concord No. 13. Meanwhile, almost every one of the top 15 labels saw their Q2 market share grow over Q1 except for Atlantic and Disney, two labels that burst out of the gate early this year with big albums from Gunna (via 300) and Encanto, respectively.
