Sony Music generated $1.39 billion from recorded music in the second quarter of 2021, a 48.2% year-on-year rise, or a massive USD $451 million versus the same period in 2020. Sony generated $996.4 million from streaming alone – an all-time high, and brushing the magic billion dollar mark for the first time, Music Business Worldwide reports. This recorded music streaming revenue haul was up by a whopping 50.2% year-on-year, versus the $663.4 million the firm posted in calendar Q2 2020. Sony's biggest revenue-generating projects were by Harry Styles, Lil Nas X, and Polo G.

Music Business Worldwide goes into the reasoning around the precedent business move by Sony Music, as the big publisher has announced it is disregarding unrecouped balances for heritage catalog artists. "This would see modern-day royalty earnings of these acts get paid into their pockets, rather than being swallowed by a record label with whom they may have ended dealings decades ago". MBW argues that's a "small reduction in Sony Music’s margin today is worthwhile if it means that his company establishes a long-term reputation amongst the artist community – where power keeps growing – for generosity and fair dealing. (Quick math: if there’s, say, 2,500 legacy Sony artists who will benefit, and they’re paid through an average of $5,000 to $10,000 each per year that they weren’t getting before, the move will cost Sony Music $12.5m to $25m per annum)".

Sony Music acquired Kobalt’s indie distributor AWAL and its rights business for $430 million, continuing a trend of major labels acquiring the companies built to disrupt them (AWAL, ironically, stands for Artists Without A Label). Music analyst Bob Lefsetz says "this is a bad sign for artists. The more power major labels get, the worse it is for them... But now the people who left major label distribution to go to AWAL…are back where they started, and there’s no viable alternative. Never ever forget that distribution is king". Billboard naturally approves the acquisition.

Sony’s recorded music and music publishing operations grew 13% to 187.11 billion yen in the company’s fiscal third quarter, which ended December 31, from 165.66 billion yen in the year-earlier period, Billboard reports. Additionally, Visual Media/Platform grew by 54.8% to 74.62 billion yen from 48.21 billion yen, thanks to the 'Demon Slayer' movie. The company posted 59.69 billion yen in operating income, a whopping 64.7% increase over the prior year’s total of 36.25 billion yen.

Over the past several months, Sony Music has been investing aggressively in podcasts business, with those investments including at least five different partnerships and joint ventures with third-party podcast production companies - Somethin’ Else (U.K.), Broccoli Content (U.K.), The Onion (U.S.), Three Uncanny Four (U.S.) and Neon Hum (U.S.) - spanning topics including daily news commentary, investigative features, comedy/satire, politics and even family and parenting issues. Patreon sees a simple and obvious explanation for it: Sony Music’s foray into podcasting is a direct - and in many ways competitive - response to Spotify.