Sony's Music Revenue Hits a Quarterly High of $3.15 Billion

Sony's music businesses brought in US$3.15 billion in the three months to the end of September 2026, the highest quarterly total the company has reported. Music Business Worldwide published the figures on 5 November 2026.

That is 8.9% more than the US$2.89 billion Sony booked in the same quarter of 2025. The comparison uses consistent currency, which strips out the effect of exchange-rate moves, so the rise reflects the underlying business rather than a weaker or stronger dollar.

The total combines two halves. Recorded music covers making, releasing and selling records. Music publishing collects royalties when songs are performed, streamed or used in films and adverts, and pays the songwriters who wrote them.

Recorded music alone reached US$2.41 billion, up 10.5% from US$2.18 billion a year earlier. Streaming, the largest single part of that, brought in US$1.52 billion, up 7.4% from US$1.42 billion. Sony credited higher streaming revenue in both recorded music and publishing in its own results.

Physical sales, which include CDs and vinyl, came to US$199.4 million, up 7.8%. Sony's "Other" category, a catch-all for income outside streaming and physical sales, rose 21.2% to US$641.2 million.

This is the fourth quarter in a row that Sony's combined music revenue has topped US$3 billion. The first quarter of 2026 was the second in that run, and this latest figure is the strongest of the four.

Sony is also reporting its wider group results for the July to September period. The company scheduled that announcement for 16:30 Japan time on 5 November 2026, which is 07:30 GMT, with a live webcast of slides and a spoken presentation. The music figures are one part of that wider set of numbers.

Behind a figure this size are people with much smaller numbers attached. A streaming payment is often a fraction of a penny, and it only adds up when millions of people press play. Physical sales keep pressing plants, shops and distributors busy. Publishing income reaches the songwriters and their families, who may never appear in a headline. When a company's revenue climbs, those are the lines that move.

For anyone who streams music, the rise in streaming income is the part that touches daily life most directly. For the wider industry, the quarter shows how much of the money now arrives through subscriptions and playlists rather than shelves. Sony's next quarterly figures will show whether that pattern holds.