Sony Music posts record second-quarter profit of ¥122.8 billion as streaming and Michael Jackson lift catalog

Sony's music division booked record second-quarter operating income of ¥122.8 billion ($775 million) for the three months to September 30, and the group raised its full-year forecast on the strength of streaming. Segment sales rose 10.3% to ¥598.4 billion ($3.78 billion), while operating income grew 6.4%, according to the results Sony published on November 5.

Recorded music revenue climbed 19.5% to ¥383 billion ($2.42 billion). Music publishing added 12.2% to ¥119 billion ($751 million). Sony credited higher streaming, merchandising and live income, and said profit held up even though the year-earlier quarter had been lifted by the theatrical release of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.

Where the ¥598.4 billion came from

Adjusted OIBDA, the cash-profit measure Sony also reports, rose 10.6% to ¥154.6 billion ($975 million). Physical sales grew 16.5% to ¥32 billion ($202 million). The music segment's operating income was about a fifth of the ¥622.3 billion Sony earned across the whole group, where operating income rose 45% and net income rose 44% to ¥449.6 billion.

By revenue, the biggest project of the quarter was ATEEZ's Golden Hour: Part.5, followed by Michael Jackson's Thriller and Ella Langley's Dandelion. Sony's list of top sellers also named Bad Bunny, SZA, Shakira, Beyoncé and Future.

Streaming in yen and in dollars

Recorded-music streaming brought in ¥242.2 billion, up from ¥208.6 billion a year earlier, a rise of about 16% in yen. Publishing streaming reached ¥74.4 billion from ¥65.1 billion, about 14% more. Sony's own comparison is in dollars, and there the growth is smaller: just over 7% for recorded music and nearly 6% for publishing. The gap is currency translation, since the yen figures are converted at about ¥159 to the dollar.

Streaming now accounts for roughly 63% of recorded-music revenue and about 62% of publishing revenue at Sony. The company did not split that income between paid subscriptions and ad-supported listening, and Chief Financial Officer Lin Tao did not discuss price increases on the earnings call. No analyst asked a music question.

Thirty times the streams: the Jackson effect

The clearest single driver was a film. After the Michael Jackson biopic, his catalog generated more than 3 billion streams in Spotify's Global Top 200 in the nine months since January, against about 100 million in calendar 2025. Lin Tao said Gen Z listeners made up about half of the increase and described it as an example of how visual storytelling can bring catalog music to new audiences.

Catalog was a broader theme. Lin Tao told analysts that songs more than 18 months old made up over half of Spotify's Global Top 200 streams through September. Ella Langley's "Choosin' Texas", which Sony said has passed 1.8 billion global streams, spent 26 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, a record for that chart that passed Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You".

On artificial intelligence, Lin Tao said only that evergreen catalogs remain assets that keep generating value "in the age of AI". Sony gave no figures for AI licensing income.

What the raised forecast assumes

For the full financial year Sony now expects music sales of about ¥2.3 trillion, up 5%, and operating income of about ¥445 billion, up 6%. Hits Daily Double reports adjusted OIBDA guidance lifted to ¥570 billion from ¥540 billion. Music.co.uk says the upgrade reflects expected growth in recorded-music and publishing streaming plus more live and merchandise revenue.

We reported on Saturday that Sony Music is renewing its licensing deal with NetEase Cloud Music in China. Together with this quarter, it shows a label group leaning on streaming income from several markets at once rather than on one platform. Sony's next quarterly numbers will cover October to December.