AI, US Stock Listing & More

On Thursday (March 6), Universal Music Group (UMG) reported that 2025 revenue and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and appreciation (EBITDA) grew by nearly 9%, thanks to big releases from Taylor Swift, Morgan Wallen, Lady Gaga, Sabrina Carpenter and the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack.

The music giant reported revenue of 12.5 billion euros ($14.7 billion), an increase of 8.7% for the full year ending Dec. 31 compared to 2024, as recorded music revenue rose 9.3% to 9.456 billion euros ($11.1 billion) and music publishing revenue grew by 9.3% to 2.26 billion euros ($2.6 billion).

“Last year was a very good year,” CEO and chairman Lucian Grainge said on the company’s earnings call.

Below, find some of the business strategy highlights that were mentioned on the call with UMG’s top executives on Thursday.

On the Now-Greenlit Downtown Acquisition

Grainge made his first public comments since UMG received the European Union’s regulatory greenlight for its acquisition of Downtown Music.

Grainge described UMG’s services to independent labels, entrepreneurs and artists, offered through Virgin Music Group, as critical and fast-growing and said the tie-up with Downtown will be as transformational for UMG as its acquisition of EMI in 2012.

“It creates a scalable and profitable engine of growth that also elevates UMG’s core label publishing and super fan businesses, enabling us to better cover the entire music industry,” Grainge said.

UMG’s Board Shelves Plans for U.S. Listing

UMG CFO Matt Ellis said the company is shelving plans for a dual U.S. stock market listing for now, as recent market uncertainty has contributed to several companies’ share prices trading below their perceived value.

“Our board does not see this as the right time to move ahead with the listing,” Ellis said. “Should that change, we will update the market.”

UMG, which is traded on the Euronext exchange in Amsterdam, was pushed late in 2024 to launch a dual listing in the U.S. by Pershing Square Holdings chief Bill Ackman, a former UMG board director whose hedge fund is among UMG’s largest shareholders. Last July, UMG submitted preliminary filings for a U.S. offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and said it was working to “launch an underwritten offering for the sale of certain shares owned by Pershing by September 15, 2025.”

UMG’s Direct-to-Consumer Business

The Downtown acquisition brings in more than 5,000 business clients and 4 million creators in 145 countries to UMG, presenting new opportunities to expand its direct-to-consumer business globally. Executives noted that UMG’s D2C business is already generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from 1,600 stores annually.

Grainge was vague on how UMG plans to expand its D2C offerings, but he called out new partnerships with Stationhead, which allows fans to host listening parties, and direct-to-fan commerce and release platform EVEN as two tools crucial to this strategy.

“AI Music Engagement By Consumers Is Minimal”

UMG chief digital officer Michael Nash said on the call that consumers are “rejecting AI slop” and, because of that, the company is seeing no material impact to its royalty revenue from AI music.

“Despite the huge volume of AI uploads, the aggregate organic consumption of AI content by actual consumers is less than half of 1% based on the best available data,” Nash said, calling AI music an “insignificant and comprehensively mitigated risk” to UMG’s revenue model.

Nash said the tech presents opportunities particularly for “elevating [music] discovery [and] recommendation,” citing a survey of some 28,000 global consumers in which a significant percentage of respondents said they used AI for music-related search queries.

More than two-thirds of those consumers said they want the option to “block purely AI-generated music entirely,” and yet they are open to AI being used to customize their music playlists, restore remixes and other things, he said.

“What consumers are rejecting and what they want to embrace will define the business landscape of significant opportunity for UMG moving forward with AI innovation,” Nash added.