Universal Music Group N.V. (UMG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Presentation]

Thank you. Welcome. I'm really delighted to welcome you all to Abbey Road for our Capital Markets Day presentation. We've chosen to hold our event at this remarkable location because Abbey Road, like its parent company, Universal Music Group, has a long and storied past, and continues to make history with every passing day. Originally, this building was purchased in 1929, almost 100 years ago, as a 9 bedroom house. Two years later, it became the world's first recording studio. Since then, it's become legendary as the birthplace of some of the most iconic and enduring recordings in history. Recordings by the Beatles, Ella Fitzgerald, Lady Gaga, Fela Kuti, Amy Winehouse, Sam Smith, and Adele, and countless others were all created right here in these rooms. I have this phrase that when you're in a landmark like this, including our Capital Studios in Hollywood, the music, the culture, the brilliance just sort of pause off the wall. If you look around, these are the same light fittings that Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo, and George Harrison would have looked at. If you look around, this is where a company like us would normally have an event like this. It's a bit tatty. It's called a Patina. We've spent a lot of money keeping it like this. All these things move for sound insulation and recordings of drums and guitars and so on and so on. So we're thrilled to be here. To think that just before we acquired EMI, its former owners actually wanted to turn this building into an apartment block. Thanks to our intervention, ownership and investment, it's here where future masterpieces are waiting to become immortal. Another aspect of Abbey Road's storied past includes groundbreaking advances in technology that first saw the light of day in here in 1939 by oral recordings what we now know today as stereo, and then in the mid-1950s, the first mixing consoles came along, all designed and built once again in this very building. In recent years, Abbey Road Red, our incubator for music tech startups, has lived here. Working with academics and entrepreneurs, Red's R&D team is creating breakthrough applications in AI, virtual reality, spatial audio, and health and wellness, which we really do believe in as a category for the future. As it approaches its centenary, Abbey Road stands as the perfect microcosm of what we are as UMG. Abbey Road is a living example of our unwavering determination to be at the vanguard of developing innovative and exciting ways in which music can be experienced. Four days from now, we'll actually be marking the three-year anniversary of our public listing, making this a fitting time for us to update you on the opportunities we're pursuing and to reintroduce you to our extraordinary management team, a team of executives who collectively possess not only decades of experience, but decades of unparalleled success. These professionals have the privilege of working with the most talented artists and songwriters in the world. And they also share the honor of steering the most beloved catalog of music ever assembled. A catalog that keeps expanding with each new discovery that we make. Another reason UMG is the most successful music company in history is that we foster and promote an entrepreneurial spirit. You'll hear much more of this as the day unfolds. I'll say more about the importance of that, but let me just say now that it's a willingness to take risks that keeps our global organization, with hundreds of business units in over 60 owned countries, nimble and daring and ready to embrace and drive the change. Over the years, our industry has grown and changed in extraordinary ways. People are listening to more music than ever before, and the experience of listening to music is better than ever before. At UMG, we believe we have played a central role in ushering in those changes and working with our artists and partners to bring those about. We've been the essential catalyst for some of the industry's most significant periods of change and growth. Yet even in the midst of change, we also believe that there are facts that shape our business. For the next few minutes, I'd like to briefly share these and describe how they guide us and deepen our conviction in the extraordinary opportunities that we see ahead. It's easy to be confident when you know where you're going. You'll hear in greater detail from a number of our leaders about the creative, technological and investment strategies we'll be implementing to turn those opportunities into realities. And you'll get an inside look at the compelling vision of our label group CEOs and the Universal Music Publishing Group Global Leadership team, a creative and commercial vision they are vividly bringing to life. By the end of the day, I believe you'll come to both understand and share our excitement around the possibilities of our future and why we capitalize on those opportunities and deliver for our artists, their fans, as well as our investors. So what have we learned about the fundamental facts of our business? Fact number one, streaming has resulted in a quantum leap forward in music access and monetization, and streaming will continue to propel many years of industry growth. Fact two, the deep and passionate connection between artists and their fans, super fandom, is a core component of music industry economics. Fact three, music is fundamental to the human experience. It is the most enjoyed and influential form of media in the world, and is driving the growth of the vast array of businesses that feature music as their essential ingredient. Let's dive into one more fact. One, for consumers, the value proposition of streaming is extraordinary. Access to all the music in the world in the palm of your hand, frictionless discovery, personalized, shareable, and always with you everywhere you go. For the music industry and the DSPs, the value creation from streaming is equally extraordinary. And in the next phase of streaming, what I like to call Streaming 2.0, and you'll hear more about Streaming 2.0 later, we believe that the value will grow enormously. Consider that today, hundreds and hundreds of millions of consumers have migrated from a onetime purchase experience to paid subscription with its high level of persistent and recurring monetization. Simply put, the monetization of listening profoundly increases the TAM, the addressable market for our business. Not so long ago, many pundits were saying that 100 million subscribers would constitute the market ceiling. I remember when we started off in the Nordics and we had 7 million subscribers. We repeatedly and correctly insisted that, that view was wrong that the ceiling was 100 million. Not only were they not considering the growth we saw coming from high potential markets, but they were consistently underestimating the headroom in the established markets as well. Today, we're well over 600 million subscribers, and we're nowhere near saturation. The addressable market in both established markets and fast-growing high potential music markets is massive. We expect more than 1 billion subscribers by the end of the decade, and we constantly ask ourselves how long could it take us to get to 2 billion? It would be a mistake to think that we're in business with only a handful of technology partners and DSPs, it's the ones that get the headlines. The reality is that we're a business at the center of an extraordinary ecosystem of technology partners, retailers, DSPs, as well as over 1,000 of our own direct-to-consumer channels. What began as a digital transformation with half a dozen key partners has today grown into a vibrant ecosystem of hundreds of digital partners. In fact, some of our fastest-growing subscription partners such as YouTube are also among the most recent to have launched. And it would be an even bigger mistake to think we are passive beneficiaries of market growth. If there's one thing, we are not, and that is passive. When I say we're working with our partners, I genuinely mean we are working with them. We work closely, innovating with them on multiple fronts, fueling the growth of the ecosystem and increasing monetization for all of us, UMG, the industry, the platforms, and especially our artists, as well as along the way, continuing to deliver and creating great experiences to the fans. You'll hear more later today, but we believe we are nowhere close to achieving the full potential of our business. While streaming has delivered robust growth to UMG for over a decade, Streaming 2.0 will represent a new age of innovation, consumer segmentation, geographic expansion, and greater value through both subscriber and ARPU growth. For example, through our artist-centric strategy, we're already increasing music monetization and seeing meaningful benefits. We're limiting the gaming of the system by protecting against fraud and content saturation. They are 2 very important things to us. And we're creating more engaging and appealing consumer experiences, including specially designed new products and premium tiers for the superfan. I think it's probably a nice segue into fact number two, the deep and passionate connection between artists and their fans. Super fandom is a core component of music industry economics. Like many other consumer businesses, our industry has long been powered by the most passionate fans, those who are most deeply engaged with their favorite artists. From the 1960s through to the 1990s, that passion was evident at midnight on what we used to call release date. The fans waited in long lines outside record stores for the thriller being among the first to buy and listen to the latest music from their artists. We will remember lines and queues outside Michael Jackson album or Shania Twain album, whatever, it was deep fandom. That was then. Later in this journey, in the download era, when the iTunes store accounted for the overwhelmingly majority of the industry's digital sales, 25% of consumers who were superfans drove 75% of the spend at the store. Today, in the streaming era, the passion engagement is still there. We're seeing glimpses of it with the resurgence of vinyl and the growth in music merchandise. But critically, valuable streaming is, it has also leveled the playing field, by which I mean whether it's 5 hours a day or 5 hours a week, the deeply passionate listener pays the same price for the same access as the casual one. We have the opportunity to innovate and develop products and experiences that will tap into and unlock the economic potential of their fandom. And as you will learn, we're doing just that on our own as well as with our partners. We are creating and monetizing new ways to meet the superfans' pent-up demand for products, experiences, and access that brings them closer to the music and to the artists that they love. And now the big picture. Fact three, music is absolutely fundamental to the human experience. It is the most enjoyed and influential form of media and entertainment in the world and is driving the growth of a vast array of businesses featuring music as their essential ingredient. No other medium of creative expression, no form of entertainment is more fundamental to us, all of us as humans than music. It permeates every aspect of our lives at home, on the go, while we work, while we study. And it accompanies all of us when we're alone and binds us together. Music moves culture. It gives a voice to what we feel and to what we believe, and has helped catalyze movements and genres throughout history. Someone said to me years ago that music has been around for 1,000 years and music will be around for the next 5,000 years. You can find people that don't like movies or watch television or read books or read newspapers, but bring me someone that doesn't like music, some form of music, some form of music globally. All other forms of media rise and fall with changing consumer tastes, while the centrality and monetization of music keeps expanding. Here's just one example. Of the top 20 most followed people globally on social media, 10 of them are recording artists and 7 of those 10 are our artists signed to UMG. The core of our success is our unique ability to identify and sign great artists and songwriters. Whatever their country or their language or the genre in which they create, once signed, we amplify their reach. We love amplifying their reach and help them to develop long-term careers, so that their artistry becomes part of global culture. Artists including Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, those two artists actually that were playing earlier when you arrived, and even Olivia Rodrigo. Deep, deep, deep songwriting artistic talent, creators, innovators. Our track record in developing new artists and then turning them into global brands is unmatched, not only in music, but in any other form of entertainment. For example, if you look at the last 5 years of the world's best-selling artists, you'll see that UMG has consistently been the source of the vast majority of global bestsellers, regardless of where they're from and what genre they perform or in what language they sing. I mean, this is unprecedented in any business, any industry, any sector, any product, any entertainment. We're proud that UMG is home to so many of the world's greatest artists. That's been true this decade and the consistent performance of our teams, our strategy and our unique culture underscores our belief that it will continue to be true in the decade to come, and the one after that. As I said earlier, the entrepreneurial spirit at our core makes us risk tolerant and opportunity-seeking. Entrepreneurship that is investing risk capital against unproven talent. Believe me, it's not for the faint hearted or for the inexperienced. Our team makes it look much easier than it is. But that's exactly what this experience team does. And they do it most successfully than anyone else ever has. It's in our DNA. We are, in fact, an organization built by entrepreneurial visionaries. Our businesses and our business units are supportive of each other. Yet, given our entrepreneurial culture, internally, they remain extremely competitive, and I like that. We foster that, and you'll see that in the presentations throughout the rest of the day. And that deep seated spirit is the reason why we are able to partner with so many new entrepreneurs. But we're not resting on our laurels. Our network of entrepreneurs is larger today than it's ever been. And every year, new platforms and experiences are coming to market. We partner with entrepreneurs in different regions around the world, but we don't make them adapt to us. We strive to learn from them. So we are constantly evolving and that's the guiding ethos at the heart of the high potential markets and the Virgin Music Group strategy, which you'll hear a lot more about later as well. Over time, many forces have tried to disrupt our business, but the innovation that arises from our internal competition, our relentless desire to break new ground, not being afraid of change, embracing change has kept us continuously ahead of our established competitors as well as the new entrants. Our success isn't formulaic, it's organic. What we do and how we do it is impossible to duplicate. A vast array of businesses are dependent on what only we can provide at the level that we do. And what we provide is simply great music. But believe me, it's not that simple, as I said. While we work with those businesses to bring innovation to life, it's the ultimate truth that whether anyone can distribute, channels succeed on how you evaluate failure. It's our music that will always be the driving force of any business reliant on music. The social music category didn't exist until we helped launch it in 2017. And I'll give a nod to my friend and colleague, Michael Nash. Today, it's a key component of what the IFPI estimated in 2023. We will be a $5.3 billion ad-supported sector. Didn't exist before. And the financial results of those efforts are clear. Since our listing, our track record has only grown stronger. Let me close by saying that working with entrepreneurial partners as well as with big tech companies, it can be complex. It doesn't always lead to linear progress from one quarter to the next. But the direction of travel is clear. We've achieved a consistent track record of success, and we will continue to build a vibrant music ecosystem that creates extraordinary opportunities for artists and their fans and exceptional returns for our investors. I say this not with arrogance, but with pride. Simply put, UMG is not only the most successful company in the entire history of the music business, but also the company that is the most essential in driving the industry forward. On this yet another historical day here at Abbey Road, you're going to learn about many exciting developments at our company. So let's begin with the presentation by bringing up Boyd Muir, Michael Nash and Gabi Lopes, who will be walking you through our market outlook, digital strategy, and various other aspects of our business. Thank you.

Thank you, Lucian. I'm very excited to have this opportunity today to share with you our insight into the company we're so incredibly proud of. So let me start. You've heard from Lucian about the opportunities we see in the market and the success we have had in pursuing them. Michael, Gabi, and I will now give you a deeper look into those opportunities. We will share with you some of the data we compile across multiple partners and through our own extensive consumer insights work. The data will help you better understand our excitement about the future and the value that we deliver to our artists, their fans and our shareholders. We're now 10 years into the music industry's return to growth. A decade ago, we knew that for the industry to recover, we would have to help streaming scale with a simple, easy-to-understand consumer proposition at a remarkably good value. To that end, we partnered with the DSPs to create a new model based on consumption rather than transactions, and look at where we are now. More than 600 million subscribers across the globe. With that growth, the recorded music industry in absolute terms has now surpassed its historic level back in the late 1990s. However, we have every confidence that there remains significant runway for continued high growth. That's in part because subscription still has a significant subscriber penetration opportunity, which we will get into in a little while. But as you can see on this slide, there's also a considerable monetization opportunity. While streaming has helped monetize hundreds of millions of fans, per capita monetization in developed markets is only 50% of what it once was. As Lucian noted, streaming equalizes the monetization across all fans. Despite the fact that superfans listen to music a few hours every day, and yet casual fans only listen to a few hours every week, we're excited by the opportunities we see both within and beyond streaming to close this spending gap and significantly expand our business. We anticipate continued high rates of industry growth, driven by innovation, improved ARPU, and further subscriber penetration in paid streaming by also engaging with superfans with new products and experiences that unlock their spending potential. And then finally, by continuing to drive growth and monetization, as our music is such an important part of an ever-broadening ecosystem of partners. Subscription has continued to grow at high rates across both established and high potential markets. Paid subscribers have grown at a 19% CAGR over the last 4 years, 15% in established markets and 24% in high potential markets. The industry added more subscribers in 2023 than in 2022, and has maintained a consistently high level of annual subscriber additions. Both established and high potential markets have significant headroom for continued subscriber growth. Subscription penetration is still below 50% even in our most established markets, with most still below 30% penetration. Japan, the second largest music market in the world, has been later to shift to subscription and still has a penetration rate below 25%. High potential markets are in the early stages of subscription adoption and are growing quickly. In addition to the opportunity for continued volume growth, music subscription remains significantly under-monetized and has great potential for ARPU growth. The consumer value proposition is extraordinary. All the music in the world in the palm of your hand at a cost of just $0.20 per hour, which is a fraction of the cost of any other form of entertainment. There is an opportunity to increase ARPU across all platforms and across all markets. That will come from increasing revenue per subscriber in both established and high potential markets and from closing the value gap between paid and free ad-supported streamers. While it's true that ARPU in established markets is greater than in the high potential markets, the gap is perhaps less extreme than some might believe. And that gap is closing. Looking back to 2019, the established market ARPU was about 6x that of the high potential markets on average. However, by 2023, this gap closed to 4x to 5x, largely as a result of ARPU increases in a number of the largest high potential markets. We expect our subscription revenues to grow at a CAGR of 8% to 10% through 2028. It's important to emphasize that this is a CAGR rather than annual guidance. And in some years, the growth could be higher or lower than this range, which I will discuss when we get to the next slide. And Gabi will explain shortly, continued established market growth will be driven by streaming innovation, price optimization, and the migration of consumers from ad-supported streaming to paid subscription. It will also be driven in part by demographic tailwinds. A second wave of penetration amongst older listeners and the aging of a younger demographic who are already committed to streaming as digital natives. High potential market growth will be propelled by the same drivers along with technology adoption and the subsequent embrace of streaming in the same way that we've seen time and time again with the established markets. Collectively, our expectation is that roughly half of the 8% to 10% growth in subscription revenue will be driven by volume and roughly half will be driven by ARPU improvement. But let me say this, UMG is not a passive participant in these developments. As Lucian said, we are actively working with all of our partners to lead innovation, to enhance the value proposition of streaming, and drive both subscriber growth and ARPU expansion. With our exceptional roster and catalog, we will be the major beneficiary of the growth we are driving. We will ensure this by pursuing the adoption of artist-centric, all those principles and the protection of our artist rights, by keeping all of our artists on the leading edge of on-platform fan engagement, and by continuing our forward-thinking deal making that ensures that our artists and our company are rewarded for the value that we bring to the platforms. Subscription revenues have consistently grown, but it's important to understand that there has always been and will continue to be event-driven fluctuations driven by price increases, platform, marketing campaigns and promotions, feature, technology innovation, the opening of new geographies, and the entrance of new competitors. We're not simply riding a penetration curve, we are actively developing the market. We expect periods of acceleration and deceleration along this way. And as a result, we encourage you not to overreact to modest period-to-period fluctuations and as we execute on our multiyear strategic plan. As Lucian explained or described, superfans, the most avid 20% to 30% of all music listeners once drove more than 70% of recorded music spending. Streaming monetizes them, but not nearly as well as in the past. This is an enormous opportunity. We are engaging superfans with new products and experiences that unlock their spending potential. And we are seeing dramatic growth in revenues that are complementary to the spending on streaming. You'll hear more from Michael and from our label teams throughout the day about premium music and merchandise collectibles that are driving this growth and the innovative superfan experiences soon to come. We see an especially exciting opportunity to serve superfans through direct-to-consumer, and we are expanding our capabilities to do so. We will identify and serve superfans across multiple channels, but more and more of this business is and will continue to be direct to consumer. The superfan D2C opportunity is not just a complementary high-growth revenue opportunity, it's also an important competitive advantage that is increasing our appeal to artists and giving us the capability to do more for them than our competitors. Our D2C revenues are growing at a 33% CAGR across over 1,300 online stores and has enabled us to build our own audience to over 100 million fans. So I would now like to hand over to Gabi, who will take you through the next part of this three-pronged presentation.

Thank you, Boyd. I'm Gabi Lopes, and I have been leading the Global Insight team at UMG for the past 10 years. I'm based in L.A., with a team in London, New York and L.A., guiding the entire global business with research, analytics and strategy. I will briefly introduce UMG's global insight capabilities and dive into some of the exciting opportunities coming from our research. UMG has built the most extensive in-house global research program in the music industry, giving us unique detail in the evolution of streaming. We've been tracking consumer behavior in the music and entertainment sectors for the last 8 years. Our research is comprehensive. It covers 23 markets across 5 continents, representing 91% of the streaming market. Overall, we're speaking to over 100,000 online consumers every year. And here are some of the ways this research is being leveraged. Our deep understanding of audiences guide our investments in growth genres and geographies to ensure that we are leaders in the most valuable market segments. This body of research also informs our core strategic tenets. Our understanding of fandom behaviors and how our artists drive acquisition and retention across platforms has been central to the development of our artist-centric strategy. We have also been focused in unlocking the immense value that we see in super serving the most active music consumers, the superfans. Knowing their motivations and attitudes can guide the evolution of current offerings. In sum, we can see how consumers engage with each and every platform in the ecosystem, and we can anticipate their future actions. This puts UMG in a unique position. A core pillar of our research is to identify and measure the opportunity for subscription growth globally. We track actual paid subscription adoption and constantly test consumer awareness, perceptions, satisfaction, appeal, and willingness to pay for music subscriptions. We have a deep understanding of who's yet to subscribe and can segment those primed to convert in the near and medium term. We also have a deep understanding of how new features impact consumer appeal across the landscape and price elasticity. We see substantial headroom for subscriber penetration around the globe, and I will talk through some of our key research illustrating why. Our research indicates that there are around 220 million additional subscribers globally already in the consideration set across the 23 markets that we research. Let me explain what we mean by the consideration set. These are consumers that, number one, understand what a paid subscription service is; number two, say that they are interested; and number three, say that they are willing to pay at least the current price that is the $10.99 or local currency equivalent. Another way to think of this number is, there are around 220 million consumers today globally primed to subscribe. You may have heard us quote a figure of 180 million. Since then, we have expanded the number of countries in our research and refreshed it to 2024. But don't look at this figure as a ceiling. Our years of experience tracking the size of the opportunity shows that the consideration set is constantly growing alongside subscriber penetration. Consider that over time, new service features have been introduced. New devices have launched. And there is the continued growth in Internet and smartphone penetration. Even though most consumers in today's consideration sets are in high potential markets, such as China, Brazil and Mexico, over 1/3 is expected to come from higher ARPU markets such as the U.S., Germany or Japan. We remain confident that there's growth opportunity globally. Even when we look at the U.S., an established market, we can see significant headroom for growth. The U.S. paid subscriber penetration is only 42%. When we look at the remainder 58% of nonsubscribers, about half of them have already shifted from legacy formats. As streaming adoption grows, the path to a paid subscription shortens. We see at least 3 meaningful pockets of opportunity. First, there is a significant cohort of consumers, 23%, already in ad-funded streaming environment. We can convert these users into a better paid music experience over time. Second, there are consumers who are paying for programmed music via satellite radio, who can be migrated to services with both programmed and on-demand streaming. These users tend to be in higher-income households, they listen to music frequently, and already display a willingness to pay. Thirdly, the subscription funnel is not restricted to the music ecosystem. There are many routes for us to attract new subscribers, for example, audiobook listeners. Our research indicates that as many as 61% of U.S. weekly audiobook listeners currently don't hold a music subscription. These are consumers already in the audio streaming environment, and for them to complete their experience with music is not a huge leap. The good news is that this opportunity is healthy across all demographics. While younger consumers are already streaming and in the funnel, older listeners are still shifting from the traditional listening behaviors. Growth will continue to come from the youth as well as older consumers. Another key dynamic often overlooked is the effect of demographic tailwinds on subscriber growth. This sits on top of the consideration set as an additional growth driver. Our research estimates that there are 13 million under 13-year-olds entering the subscription ecosystem in the next 5 years. And that's in the U.S. alone. There is a constant inflow of new subscribers as kids turn into the subscription age. In parallel, as subscribers age up and carry on their behaviors, the penetration of each demographic cohort increases. This gives us continued conviction that even in the established markets, subscription penetration will continue to rise. So aside from the headroom in subscriber growth, there is a significant opportunity in segmenting the existing premium user base. Our research shows that around 20% of existing U.S. subscribers are interested in enhanced features and willing to pay more for it on top of the standard price. We found that there is a variety of levers triggering interest. The ones demonstrating the highest appeal included fandom-centric features such as early access to new music, priority access to deluxe editions, fan community element, and direct-to-fan interactions. We also saw that functional enhancements such as high-res audio hold value. This mix of levers can generate wide demand for a super-premium tier, pulling different consumer groups, ensuring retention and value add. We haven't even scratched the surface of this opportunity. Watch the space. The best is yet to come. And with that, I'll hand over to Michael Nash.

Thank you, Gabi. Hi, I'm Michael Nash. By way of introduction, I've been a Senior Digital Media Executive for nearly 3 decades and have led digital strategy at UMG since 2015. As you can tell, one of the things I'm worst at is talking about my background. But one of the things I'm most excited about is talking about innovation in the context of our vision for growth for UMG. UMG is a hub of innovation that drives the music industry forward by developing breakthrough technologies, entrepreneurial partnerships, and new business models. Our strategic partnerships with YouTube, Apple and Amazon have been instrumental in transforming the digital landscape of music through introduction of new products and services. We collaborated with Dolby to help revolutionize artistic creativity through Atmos. We inaugurated music monetization with Facebook, as Lucian well described, establishing the social category for the industry. We've been at the forefront, harnessing AI as an exciting new creative frontier, signified by our groundbreaking work with Google DeepMind and YouTube. Whether it's empowering artists through new formats like live streaming, adding creative and commercial opportunities, advancing them in the Metaverse, or forging new applications for music on the bleeding edge of medical science, UMG has led the charge. In recognition of our leadership role, we were honored to be named this year by Fast Company as one of the world's 50 Most Innovative Companies and #1 in music. In what we described as a multiyear journey when we embarked on this initiative last year, UMG has been deeply engaged in strategic dialogue, research, and business development with our partners to update the subscription model. The problem is well understood. Volume of tracks has been prioritized over the value of great music, incentivizing fraud and gaming. Our central philosophy is to promote realignment around high-value artist-fan relationships, attack fraud, noise and clutter. We seek to do this through model innovations that reward real artistry and authentic fan engagement. Our goal is to ensure the future health and vitality of the ecosystem, while delivering new opportunities to grow revenue for artists through product innovations. In collaboration with Spotify and Deezer, we've initiated fundamental artist-centric changes to the industry's core commercial model. We call this artist-centric phase I. Deezer rolled out their new multifaceted model in the fourth quarter of last year, and with other labels and much of the indie community on board, we've already seen significant progress towards their publicly stated goal of shifting 10% of the royalty pool from irrelevant long-tail volume to qualified artists. Spotify started implementing their artist-centric measures in the second quarter of this year. While still early in the implementation process, we're encouraged about their efforts to deliver on their publicly stated objective to see $1 billion in incremental revenue generated for the music industry's artists over the next 5 years. Advancing our artist-centric philosophy, we're moving this dialogue forward with a number of our key partners. We're supporting entrepreneurial antifraud efforts, embracing royalty model rewards for higher-quality artist music, and more broadly applying these principles to protect human artistry from irresponsible AI proliferation. In all these ways, UMG will continue to lead in reorienting the ecosystem around artists and music that truly matter. As Boyd and Gabi described, we believe there is enormous room for future growth in paid streaming. UMG will continue to move the market forward by building innovative new product offerings with our partners that differentially reward real artists and the fans that support them. We call this process of growing revenue by harnessing high-value fan engagement, artist-centric phase II. Spotify has also been an important partner in this work. We're partnering with them the development of a super-premium subscription tier. We're working closely on the development of a compelling set of new features that will elevate the listener experience and further deepen artist-fan engagement. Tencent Music's super VIP tier, which has been rolled out in a strategically significant China market, is another exciting example of how product innovation can significantly enhance customer value. It's priced at 5x the standard tier. Adoption has already been strong, and we believe it has broken into a double-digit percentage of the subscriber base. We expect super premium tiers to be deployed by most streaming platforms, enhancing the subscriber experience, bringing fans closer to the artists they love, and significantly increasing subscription revenue. Amplifying Boyd and Gabi's points on music under-monetization. Our confidence in the music ecosystem's expansion is also supported by comparison to SVOD, and I'm going to drill down into this. We think this serves as a great reference point to illustrate how music streaming can continue to innovate and grow. SVOD has already surpassed 1 billion individual paid subscribers. That's not subscription plans by SVOD subscribers, that's 1 billion individual paid subscribers. It's projected to continue growth through the end of this decade at a pace that will maintain its lead over music subscription. However, SVOD relies on exactly the same tech foundation, the same fundamental infrastructure as music subscription, actually requiring a bit more in network capacity and device capability. In terms of time spent, engagement levels are very similar for both types of subscription. So we have every reason to expect that we can achieve the levels of adoption enjoyed by SVOD. And yet, the average U.S. household spends over 4x more on SVOD than they spend on music subscription, which suggests we have considerable headroom for better monetizing the music consumer moving forward. SVOD's evolution also demonstrates some areas of innovation potential for music streaming. For example, Netflix uses three paid tiers to segment the market and capture more of consumers' willingness to pay, while effectively addressing account sharing to significantly grow their subscriber base. And as we move to the next slide, I'm going to take advantage of the break in the action to have a sip of water. Our ad-supported revenues have achieved significant scale and are highly complementary to the subscription streaming model. Though they're more variable than subscription due to the mix of partnership types and monetization models and volatility of the ad sector macro economy, UMG ad-supported revenues have consistently tracked to about a 1 to 3 ratio of subscription revenue since fiscal 2020, when UMG first publicly disclosed this information. UMG's ad-supported revenues are propelled by social and video segments, which have contributed roughly 2/3 of category revenue each year since 2021. Going forward, industry ad-support revenues, which as Lucian mentioned, hit $5.3 billion last year, will benefit from the secular migration of advertising spending from analog to digital, significant ad-supported user growth, better monetization of ad-supported formats, and increased engagement on social and video platforms. The best way to characterize our vision of Streaming's transformation through innovation is to frame the evolution of the market from Streaming 1.0 to Streaming 2.0. Charting the transformation of our business over the past decade, it was essential to drive market evolution by focusing on a simple and appealing value proposition for subscription streaming. And you will hear this description over and over again this afternoon. All the world's music for one low monthly price on any device, anywhere, any time. With services effectively marketing this clear and compelling 1.0 product, often with rich free tiers to initiate consumer engagement, market adoption has scaled dramatically. We're now well down the path to 1 billion subscribers with a successful initial focus on developed markets. However, the simplicity of this model with all streams being equal has precipitated problems with volume prioritized over value, which I just mentioned. Successful enterprises have always adapted their models to embrace change, and this is precisely how we intend to approach the next phase of streaming growth. As we elevate our focus on maximizing customer value alongside growing the subscriber base, customer segmentation, driven by product innovation, is critical. We must optimize how free tiers acquire customers, while refining their economics. We must realign the subscription model around core value driver of our authentic artist-fan relationships, while capturing higher customer value through super premium tiers of service. And our orientation must be truly global as digital transformation accelerates in fast-growing developing geographies. Subscriptions and ad-funded streaming have been the primary growth drivers of our business over the past 10 years. They will continue to be engines of growth going forward, but growth in the years ahead will also be driven by targeting the superfan opportunity and through our partnerships with a broad array of businesses fueled by music. This is how we further address our goal of broadening and deepening monetization in the era of Streaming 2.0. As Lucian and Boyd mentioned, we are especially excited about our growing superfan business. We are developing more and more products and experiences for our most passionate and engaged fans. You see a few examples highlighted here, physical product collectibles, high-end merch collabs, Billie Eilish's Arena Listening Party, Olivia Rodrigo's House Party on Roblox, to name just a few. We are increasingly monetizing superfans through our own channels, delivering more personalized and deeper fan experiences at higher UMG margins. We are especially excited about these D2C opportunities and are building capabilities to fully address the potential of this increasingly important category. And just one of many examples of innovation in this sector to turn e-commerce into a dynamic fan experience, we launched a fully immersive 360-degree virtual Rolling Stones store, which replicates the band's iconic flagship store on Carnaby Street in London. Earlier this month, Grammy Award-winning Zedd made his Roblox debut, taking over UMG's persistent music environment of Beat Galaxy for the launch of his new album. Beat Galaxy is an innovative space in the Metaverse for fans to engage with their favorite UMG artists, such as Young Blood, Mae Stephens, and Kid Cudi. UMG has also executed some of Roblox's most popular and successful stand-alone music activations, featuring artists such as TWICE, Imagine Dragons, Post Malone, and Nicki Minaj. These are just a few of the many ways we are expanding our TAM, our total addressable market. We are aggressively pursuing a broad number of new initiatives across a vast ecosystem animated by music. We are innovating with the leading social media enterprises, health and wellness entrepreneurs, and rapidly scaling gaming platforms to create engaging new consumer experiences. Our work with the leading social media platforms is amplifying our artist reach across the globe, while we are defending their rights and advancing the principles of fair compensation. To call out a few important successes in 2024, we recently renewed our partnership with Meta to continue the work we pioneered together in 2017. For the first time, we are expanding our agreement to incorporate WhatsApp. This deal also advances our artist-centric principles through implementation of generative AI safeguards. A focus on AI principles was a critical aspect of our recent agreement with TikTok among the industry-leading benefits we secured in a multidimensional agreement. This new deal enables us to further empower our artists to engage their fans in compelling new ways, including by leveraging TikTok's sophisticated artist marketing tools and programs and emerging e-commerce capabilities. Most recently, we completed an expanded global agreement with Snap Inc. Our new deal will amplify the impact of reach of UMG artists and record labels on Snapchat through innovative activations and enhanced fan experiences, while delivering improved commercial opportunities and protecting their art. As mentioned earlier, UMG helped launch the social sector in 2017. And I was honored by Lucian's kind words, but the deal that we did with Facebook is something that could have only happened under the leadership of Sir Lucian Grainge. And so I can only share the credit humbly for that moment in time when we opened up the category for monetization. We've been instrumental in promoting the continuing growth of that category into what is broadly defined as a $3.1 billion revenue segment for the industry. And we're working with these and other partners to continue driving growth through new product innovations. We've also established targeted initiatives with leading entrepreneurs in AI, including major platforms and numerous early-stage companies. We're excited by the potential of innovation in AI to ethically advance musical creativity and capability to implement new business models. We're collaborating with important new partners such as BandLab, Endel, Roland, SoundLab, ProRata, Clay and others. And we've developed inventive ways to effectively deploy AI in-house with 3 patented technologies aimed at predicting virality and reaching new audiences not identifiable through conventional marketing practices. We've seen incredible success already, transforming the way that artists connect with new fans. Invention is a core part of our DNA. We are developing new technologies across many other aspects of our business. We have, for example, been granted patents for digital distribution systems and STEM-based audio formats, and we have a pending patent for health and wellness products. In summary, there is tremendous growth opportunity for the music industry and UMG is playing a central role in the innovation that will accelerate it. We are driving 5 big shifts. We are shifting from Streaming 1.0, where we achieved scale, to Streaming 2.0, where we will maximize customer value. From traditional merchandise for fans to innovative superfan collectibles and experiences. From establishing our D2C infrastructure to scaling and monetizing our D2C channel. From engaging fans on other platforms to building direct personalized relationships with fans. And lastly, from partnering with fellow entrepreneurs who built out the music-enabled ecosystem, to expanding and monetizing that ecosystem. I'll now hand it back to Lucian to take us into the rest of the day.

Thank you, Boyd, Gabi, and Michael. I'm not going to be up here for long. I just wanted to say it's now my pleasure to introduce some of our inspiring leaders, each one of them the best in his or her field. First up will be Jody Gerson. She and her team are going to give you a creative and commercial overview of our worldwide music publishing business. After Jody, you'll be hearing from Monte Lipman and John Janick. Each of them, along with the members of their teams, will present their unique and innovative strategies, which I'm proud to say, have consistently led them year after year to the top positions in the U.S. By the way, their biggest competitor in the competition for the #1 spot each year is each other. Frank Briegmann will then come up and give you a somewhat surprising picture of what is one of the most diverse and compelling collections of music markets in the industry, Central Europe, comprising 33 countries. Frank will be followed by Adam Granite, our EVP of Market Development, along with some of his team's regional leaders, who will describe the ways in which we are seizing the many opportunities arising in high-potential music markets. And finally, Nat Pastor and J.T. Myers, the leaders of our Virgin Music Group, they'll be laying out our global independent music and label services strategy. So let's begin then with Jody. Jody, please come up. Thank you.

Thank you, Lucian. Joining me today is Marc Semino, our COO; and JW Beekman, our CFO. I have been in the music business, the entirety of my career. I joined Universal Music Publishing after working for years at the other majors. And I can say, without a doubt, what we've built at Universal Music Publishing is absolutely the best. So I'm delighted to be here today. As Jen Knopf, our Head of ANR, mentioned in the video, it all starts with a song. You'll hear me say this phrase repeatedly today. It is music publishing. It all starts with the song. But what does that mean? A song is the creative blend of melody and lyrics to produce a unique composite, musical composition. That song will be proactively licensed, monetized and protected globally by UMPG. We will make sure that any use of that song will be licensed and paid for. Every single music recording that you listened to could not exist without that underlying unique work of art, the song. Universal Music Publishing Group has approximately 5 million copyrighted songs that we control. Across every genre of music, our frontline hits, classic evergreens, iconic catalogs, movie and TV themes and everything in between. We are a global company with 48 offices in 40 countries and more than 850 employees. To give you a sense of our global presence and success, UMPG had 9 of the top 10 global albums on Spotify in 2023. We had 3 of the top 5 Billboard Hot 100 songwriters also in 2023. 11 of the top 15 Spotify artists are UMPG song writers. We love those frontline hits for our company and for our writers, but we're not dependent on the success of those current songs because our portfolio is broad and it is deep. We work to turn today's hits into enduring songs that are tomorrow's evergreens and iconic classics. Throughout our history, UMPG has taken the hit songs of the day and work to make them iconic and evergreen. Here is just a small fraction of the globally known songs in our portfolio. Bill Withers Ain't No Sunshine; Sting, Every Breath You Take; Mariah Carey, All I Want For Christmas Is You; Jack White, Seven Nation Army; and Neil Diamond, Sweet Caroline. All of these UMPG songs and countless more were hit songs in the chart, 10, 20, 30 years ago or more. Over the decade and thanks to many users throughout our popular culture, these songs have become iconic. That's what we do. We create opportunities for songs to become truly iconic. Let me show you music publishing in practice by taking a deep dive into just one of our 5 million copyrights and show you how a song becomes iconic and generates revenue decades after its first release. I think all of you know Tiny Dancer written by one of the greatest songwriting teams in the history of music, Elton John and Bernie Taupin. This video will demonstrate how this great song continues to have presence in our culture and generate income for UMPG, Elton and Bernie, more than 50 years after they sat down to write it. [Presentation]

Fascinating, right? I mean this feeling doesn't go away. Remember, it all starts with a song, but the ability to collect revenue on that song lasts decades through income streams that evolve and grow on the life of the songwriter.

So that video showed you this great song, Tiny Dancer by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. It was released on Elton's 1971 album Madman Across The Water, which was a hit album around the world. 20 years later, 1991, it was earning a modest amount of income, mostly from continuing sales of the Madman album as well as some performance income. Those were the primary ways a music publisher monetized the song through its release on an album and through radio airplay. In 2001, 30 years after Tiny Dancer was written, it was well established as a classic song. Its income had grown by some 350% since 1991. As you can see, a healthy slice of this income was due to meaningful synchronization income, the licensing of that song through film and television projects. Fast forward to 2023. It's a new era in the music industry and for Elton as well. He was introduced to new audiences through films such as Almost Famous, the animated Romio and Juliet, his recent biopic, Rocketman, and so many other users throughout popular culture. All the new fans alike embraced the many ways now available to consume music. Numerous audio and video streaming services, social media and fitness platforms, an enduring presence on terrestrial and satellite radio and of course, consistent licensing of Elton and Bernie songs in film, TV and advertising. As a result, revenue for Tiny Dancer exploded to 3,500% of its 1991 level.

Every time you listen to your favorite song, album or playlist on any streaming service, whenever you put on a vinyl album or a CD, believe it or not, that still happens more often than you might imagine. Any hour that you're playing your favorite music station on the radio, when you hear a song in a movie or TV shows or a video game, whenever you hear a song performed in concert, or in a restaurant, a shopping center, a sporting event, an elevator or even your dentist office, as I like to tell my dentist, every time you hear UMPG song anywhere around the world, we are getting paid for that use, and so are our songwriters. We make sure that our copyrights are protected and valued. This map shows you the location of our offices and our #1 current and catalog songs in many of our territories around the world. This doesn't just happen automatically. Every single person in each of our 48 offices in 40 countries around the world plays an important role in generating that revenue. Our creative executives in local offices around the world sign and develop our songwriters and create opportunities for their songs to be recorded by today's top artists. Members of our team develop and nurture relationships that enable our songs and songwriters to be associated with the top films, shows, advertisements and video games. Our global administration team makes sure that each and every penny due to our company and our songwriters is identified, collected and paid. Those pennies add up. Our incredibly dedicated employees around the world are there to enhance, amplify and protect our writers and their songs.

The concept of synergy between divisions of a company is often scoffed at, but I'm here to tell you that within UMG around the world, it is very real and very successful. Often we'll turn UMG labels onto a new artist or a songwriter that we've signed. Sometimes they alert us to one of their signings. Whichever way it happens, the results speak for themselves. Take a look at this slide. Taylor Swift, Post Malone, The Weekend, Sabrina Carpenter, Kendrick Lamar and Justin Bieber. All of these artists are signed to both UMPG and a UMG label. But as a leader in music publishing, we work with every label in the business around the world. You see we get to be Switzerland. Here, you see Harry Styles, Adel, Coldplay, CISA, Luke Combs and Elvis Presley. These are just some of the countless songwriters who are signed to UMPG for publishing and a label outside of Universal for their recordings. We are so fortunate to have an abundance of the top recording artists signed as songwriters to UMPG. In the rare event that an artist is not signed to our company, we are able to get another proverbial bite at the apple through a third category, songwriter producers. This array of talent operates behind the scenes to collaborate with the world's top artists and create huge global hits. These names might not be immediately recognizable to you, but you can certainly sing along to their work. Mark Ronson, who is behind the music from the hit film, Barbie; Steve Mac, who is Ed Sheron's producer collaborator; Melanie Fontana, who is one of the biggest writers in KPop, including for BTS and many others; and Nicholas Britell, the composer behind the score for the TV show Succession. At UMPG we were well ahead of the curve in structuring our ANR with a global approach that would meet the demand, challenges and opportunities of the global music economy. If you are a major songwriter and artist in Latin America, we work hard and creatively to find ways for your talent to transcend geographical borders and find outlets in other countries. For example, we recently held a song rating camp in Mexico, bringing together country artists with those who write regional Mexican music in Spanish. We recently held a song writing camp in New York during which our top K-pop songwriters from the U.S., the U.K., Sweden, Denmark and Korea came together over a 3-day period to right hit songs. We collaborated with She Is The Music, a nonprofit foundation, which works to provide opportunities for women in all facets of the music business by hosting an all-female song writing camp in China.

Everything we've discussed today brings focus to our overriding mission, which is to bring value to our songwriters and their work. We treasure our deep industry relationships that include creative partnerships throughout the global music community. We forged our own direct relationships with social media companies, brands and DSPs, all of which we negotiate with directly. By doing so, we ensure that our songwriters and their work are properly valued and held in the same regard as recordings. This is a crucial responsibility that we take very seriously. Our best-in-class services include the premier creative think and administration teams around the world and the enforcement of intellectual property rights. Our Administer technology is second to none, which is why the biggest film studios in the world trust us to administer their catalogs. Warner Bros., NBC, Disney and Amazon, to name only a few. Thanks to our innovative technology, we provide transparent real-time earnings, royalty and copyright data. If you are a UMPG songwriter, you can log in to our royalty portal or our mobile app and see your earnings accurately in real-time 24 hours a day. And the developments in AI will enable us to better identify and secure opportunities for our songs and songwriters.

When you have iconic catalogs such as those of Alicia Keys, The BGs, Bob Dylan, Beach Boys, Pearl Jam, to name a few. It is incumbent upon us to bring real and lasting value to those songs and to create opportunities to endear them to future generations. You can't make a film about Bob Dylan without Bob Dylan songs. You can't make a documentary about the Beach Boys without including their iconic classics. Here is a small example of the ways in which UMPG has expanded our IP by amplifying songs in our portfolio and monetizing them beyond the traditional means of music publishing. We make investments in theater. We are producers of award-winning documentaries. As caretakers of the Bob Dylan catalog, we are working with Disney and Sony Music to ensure that generations come to learn the importance of our modern day Shakespeare. In December, the highly anticipated Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, which stars Timothee Chalamet, the star of Wanka and Dune will introduce the indelible works of Dylan to new audiences around the world.

So how does this translate into earnings? As you can see here, we've created very significant growth in both top and bottom line, with revenue growing at a CAGR of 21%. And thanks to operating leverage and economies of scale, adjusted EBITDA grew at an even higher CAGR of 24%. UMPG is a diversified portfolio of verticals such as music from artists, our film and TV clients, production music and classical music. And our numerous income streams mean that we participate when industries that use our content experience growth. And of course, we benefit new platforms emerge and become popular, such as the recent growth in SVOD services.

Controlling copyrights and utilizing our relationships, expertise and technology to create value makes a very healthy business, and UMPG is uniquely positioned to capitalize on any existing and future opportunities. Thank you. We're now about to take a short break. [Break]

Okay. In case you missed it, we are brothers. We started this company in 1995 with USD 800. And I'm here to tell you what we're guilty of is making it look easy. That's not easy. So the key ingredient of Republic's success has been our ability to operate with the [indiscernible] of independence and entrepreneurial spirit. Our unwavering support, focus and determination has earned the trust and respect from the artist community, which serves as the foundation of our long-standing partnerships. As the founder of Republic, we're always asked if our dream was to build a premier music company, and we always have to explain. The true motivation of launching Republic was created from a place of angst, frustration, and with the drive to write our own playbook. By aligning the small company, we started on our kitchen table, with UMG, we were able to tap into vast resources, infrastructure and institutional knowledge that gave us an opportunity to compete at the highest level. Lucian Grainge became our boss in 2010. This was a pivotal moment as we embarked on a historic run that continues to this day. His leadership style of allowing senior management to take ownership of both their P&L strategies and market dynamics has proven to be incredibly effective. In the same way solution energized [indiscernible] by trusting our instincts and allowing us to operate as we see fit, we recognized the importance of empowering our executive team with similar qualities while always playing to their strengths. My brother, Avery.

Hi, everyone. 400 of those dollars came from me, by the way. I'm here to talk about our core business. Simply put, we find them, we sign them, we break them. Our job is to successfully identify, develop and launch global superstars that endure over time. Let's start with how we find them. We spent a lot of time focused on talent acquisition and have dedicated teams who look for new opportunities from every platform where music can be felt and heard. Our approach is definitely not one size fits all. Every act has a unique set of considerations based on a variety of factors, commercial and cultural relevance, industry trends, genre, geographic location and many others. And in addition to applying human instinct and our long-standing relationships, we also use automated and proprietary machine resources, which makes our approach a true blend of art and science. As far as the process of signing artists, it has evolved over time. But what hasn't changed and remains paramount is instilling the confidence in the mind of artists that we have the ability to achieve their creative and commercial goals. From helping them unlock their voice and create a vision, to effectively spreading their narrative to the marketplace, our team has a unique skill set and proof of concept in every facet of their journey. With the changes, disruptions and innovations swirling all around us, we remain structured, resourced and flexible with this core function in line. Lastly, if we do our job right, it fuels our ecosystem, streaming, physical sales, virtual experiences, licensing, direct-to-consumer business and whatever opportunities that will come next. And now I'm going to hand it over to Jim Roppo to talk a little bit more about some real-time examples.

Good afternoon. I'm Jim Roppo, and I'm proud to say I've been in the Universal Music Group over 25 years, including the last 12-plus at Republic. And Republic is like a fine swiss watch. It's a sophisticated machine with hundreds of intricate moving parts, all working in precise unison built for a singular purpose, to create iconic superstars that define culture across generations. And much like the best time pieces, we consistently deliver unparalleled value. Our artists placed their hopes, dreams and ambitions in our hands. They only have one shot and literally no plan B. While artists today have more choices than ever, none of our competitors offer the vast global resources and proven track record of consistent success that we do. We deliver and we will continue to deliver for them and for you. Here are a few examples of our global artist development prowess. Singer-Songwriter Noah Kahan was only 18 years old when he skipped college and signed with Mercury and Republic Records in 2015. Together, we work with Noah to develop his trademark sound, created innovative short-form content that showcased his personality and enhanced fan engagement alongside his relentless touring. Noah's major breakthrough came in 2022 with his multi-platinum project Stick Season. The album has been a fixture in the Top 10 for over a year around the world and earned him prestigious Grammy and Brit award nods. His live shows have exploded from small clubs, to sold out stadiums around the globe. This year alone, he sold over 1 million concert tickets. Nearly a decade ago, Sabrina Carpenter captured hearts on the Disney Channel. Cut to today, she is the biggest breakout star of the year. Her journey took a major upturn in 2021 when she signed with Island Records. The team at Island focused on the creative process, elevating her music, including linking her with UMPG's Grammy-winning Producer of the Year, Jack Antonoff. Powered by back-to-back global smashes, Sabrina's album debuted #1 around the world, selling 20x her prior release and became the third biggest debut of the year only behind Taylor Swift and Beyonce. With the full support of Fame House and Bravado, Sabrina's e-commerce and merchandising efforts have shattered our expectations. Now, Sabrina will embark on her first global arena tour. It's safe to say [indiscernible] launched another global superstar. 12 years ago, Republic formed an exclusive partnership with the Weekend and Exo Records. Together, we helped shape the career of one of the most iconic artists of this generation. Last week, we launched the next chapter in the Weekend Story with loud activations through the NFL, YouTube and Apple, generating billions of impressions around the world. As a marketer, I always love working with Abel, The Weekend. He's such a unique artist and we strive to match his creative vision with innovative marketing strategies. This Apple commercial is a prime example, featuring the Weekends groundbreaking music video shot entirely on the new iPhone. Let's take a look. [Presentation]

Okay. You've seen a small glimpse of the Republic Collective. And I will tell you this much, our greatest weakness is our greatest strength. We are never satisfied. And that's the way we go at it each and every day. Our appetite for success is insatiable. Our competitive spirit is off the charts. Growth, profitability and most importantly, our support of the creative community will always be at the top of the agenda. And while competition fuels us, it's collaboration that propels us forward. As we look ahead to the next chapter, our commitment to creativity, innovation and global expansion has never been stronger. Together with our partners within every UMG territory, we will continue to push boundaries and create culture and leave a historic mark on the music industry for years to come. So I now have the privilege of inviting our next guest speaker. And Lucian alluded to this earlier today about the competition in our business. And we go into every initiative, and we truly believe we're the best, but I promise you, when I get that call and I find out this other companies in it, it sends a shudder through us. So I say that with the absolute utmost respect, we would never do anything to hurt each other, but you better believe we try to beat each other every day. So I want to introduce the incredible ICL team and John Janick . Come on up.

Thank you, Monte. Hello. I'm John Janick. I'm excited to be here with you and share how Interscope Capital Labels Group, like Republic, is helping UMG deliver great music and great returns. Republic runs a great company. And while we sometimes find ourselves competing for opportunities, we're always collaborating and learning from each other, which means UMG benefits. Today, I look forward to showing you how we do? What we do? How we have developed unique capabilities and a consistent proven approach? What we think of as our unique flywheel that helps us initiate, grow and deepen the worlds we build for our artists? I hope after my time with you, you'll better understand our overall strategy and our specific unique tactics and approach that sets us apart in the industry. And a little bit, I'll be joined by 2 of my colleagues, who will talk through 2 artist case studies. One who's a more recent artist and another who is a foundational artist we signed in the first decade of Interscope. But before we get into the specifics, I thought you'd like to get a feel for who we are. [Presentation]

As you can see in here, we have our finger on the pulse of what moves the music industry. What really separates us is our relentless focus on serving our artists and helping them in their potential. This focus has been with me since I started my career at the age of 17. As an entrepreneur and someone who care deeply for the artists I worked with, I never [indiscernible] there is a ceiling for the artist, which is why I always tried to partner with a major label. I wanted to be the best partner to an artist, helping them in every aspect of their career. I brought my early learnings and vision to Interscope when I joined in 2012. The reality of our industry today is that it's easier than ever for anyone to create and release music, but it's harder than ever to break through, reach global audiences at scale and build a long-term career with deep catalog. What sets us apart is that we can dream big and implement big things because we have the resources, relationships and reputation. Our vision, values and expertise have led us to create a flywheel that not only helps artists realize their vision, but generates new opportunities and deepen existing ones. We partner with extraordinary artists with the talent, vision and drive to break through the noise and move culture. At our core, we have to sign and help develop the next superstar artists while continuing to help elevate artists throughout their career. This is every label's goal. Where we are different is that we go further. We help an artist move culture, and we partner with them to build their global brand in every aspect of their career. In other words, we help artists world build. Great music that is timeless, is always at the center of what we do. And we have built a company that nimbly, creatively and assertively offers best-in-class services for their merchandise, films, catalog, brand partnerships and marketing in every facet of their career. If done properly, each is a revenue source. And if tied together, they can all work to help elevate each vertical, increasing the overall value for the label and artists. This is not how typical record labels work. Most labels are not set up to support an artist's career this way. We can do it because we signed great artists, we think differently, have an amazing team who drives the vision, and we benefit from UMG's long-term investment and trust. We created a video for IGA to show our employees how our flywheel works. We extracted the essential elements of it for you today. Let's take a look. [Presentation]

Eight months ago, I started to oversee Capital Music Group in addition to IGA to form Interscope Capital Labels Group. The label group structure enables us to maintain the unique culture and identities of each label while leveraging the best resources we have across the company. I firmly believe that no other company can help an artist build global brand, provide them with the services in almost every facet of their career and move culture like we do. To give you an idea of how this works, I'm going to have two colleagues have come up and show the flywheel in action for two of our artists. Olivia Rodrigo and Eminem. I'd like to introduce you to Michelle An, who's President of Interscope Geffen A&M, been at IGA for 18 years and has been involved in everything Olivier Rodrigo with her team since we signed Olivia at the age of 16. And Steve Berman, who is the Vice Chairman of Interscope Capitals Labels Group is one of the company's first employees and has been involved in all Eminem marketing from day 1, including some entertaining album and video skits. With that, I'd like to introduce you to Michelle An to talk about our work with Olivia Rodrigo.

You guys, I'm 4' 11", so they gave me a stool. As John said, our flywheel is what allows us to world build and super serve our audiences. I'm here today to break down the flywheel a bit further using Olivia Rodrigo as an example. Olivia's music videos have been viewed over 5 billion times. Her music has been streamed over 30 billion times. Yet Olivia has only released 2 albums, Sour and Guts, both which went #1 on the Billboard 200 their first week. Olivia's Sour album is the most streamed album by any female artist on Spotify. Yet, as a label, chart success is just table stakes for us. Our business and our flywheel is built around real artists, world building and tapping into superfans. I remember when Olivia first signed to Interscope, she said she connected with John Janick because he respected her as a songwriter. Here's the quote Olivia shared with Music Week that emphasizes step one of our flywheel, sign and elevate great artists. Olivia is an artist who knows her aesthetic and is clear on her vision. She also has incredible managers at Lighthouse Management and Media, and we all partnered together to World Build. Let me say it again, World Build, that crucial next step in the flywheel. Olivia's music represents feelings of angst, growing up and sonically has a more alternative pop feel. It's so important to us to make these specific distinctions in order for Olivia to carve her own lane and feel unique. Olivia's favorite color is purple. As you can see here on both our album covers. We use purple consistently across all our iconography, which includes the butterfly, and we highlight her lyrics wherever possible. What may seem overly simple, the color purple, the butterfly actually creates a multimillion dollar business for us and Olivia. In fact, after Olivia's Sour album came out, Very Peri followed as the Pantone color of [indiscernible]. We made sure Olivia's purple was seen everywhere. As Olivia continuously builds her visual world, it's important that fans feel like they're a part of it. This is turned three of our flywheel, and how do we reach the fans? Well, sometimes Olivia writes handwritten notes, but we have also grown Olivia's CRM list to be one of the largest across all of UMG. We are diligent in ensuring data is collected at every point of sale. And through her list, we give fans unique content, early access and ways to feel connected to Olivia. This has delivered millions in incremental revenue and makes the fans feel valued. And when it comes to shopping for merch, our label team not only works with Olivia to design her merch, but we shoot images of her wearing her merch, and we present it all on her web store in a fresh and useful way. The result is a passionate fan base known as the Libbey's, who have even been profiled by the New York Times and Teen Vogue. Now once you have the fans, you have the brands. This is where we're going to turn four of our flywheel, diversify revenue streams. Our in-house brands team brought in Amex to partner with Olivia across our store, kicking off with a unique card member event that the label was entrusted to produce. They also sponsored fan pop-ups around the world, and sponsored a GUTS bus, we put together the followed her tour. We also put together an Olivia Stanley collab based on Olivia's love for her own Stanley Tumbler. Our team codesigned the tumbler and even created the content around it. Check this out. [Presentation]

Similar to brands, we work with streaming partners and retail partners in a different way. We collaborate with them so they can exist in Olivia's world. For example, we work to target not just to put CDs on shelves, but to build an actual Olivia shop within a target shop. This was the first of its kind. At turn 5 of the flywheel, John mentioned Interscope films. We've already produced 1 film with Olivia that streams on Disney+. And more details will follow on a second film soon. We love seeing Olivia being honored and recognized for her craft. This is point 6 of our flywheel. Olivia is a 13x Grammy nominee and a 3-time Grammy winner. She has been named Time Magazine's Entertainer of the Year, along with many other accolades. But we never forget why we work with Olivia in the first place. It's that belief that she is a generational classic songwriter who will continue to make culture-defining music. And from the brand we have built with Olivia, we can always keep her flywell spinning. Steve?

Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. As John mentioned, I've been with Interscope since the beginning of the company. As I stand on this stage, I reflect on the past, and I feel responsibility to every artist and employee to live up to the principles of the flywheel. One of the foundations of the flywheel is the relationships we have forged over the years. I can't help but think about sitting with Steve Jobs and the team at Apple when they ushered in the legal digital age of distribution. The Apple relationship continues today. And many artists on the label have benefited from global Apple marketing campaigns. I think of our long-standing relationship with the NFL and Rock Nation and the pride in this week's announcement and Kendrick Lamar will headline the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show, February 9 in New Orleans. Clearly, the flywheel is effective when executed and I'm now going to explain how the flywheel applies to Eminem, one of the most important artist in the Interscope family. Eminem has been with Interscope for 25 years. He has released 11 studio albums, multiple compilations and soundtracks that account for hundreds of copyrights worked by Interscope and UMG globally. With over 90 billion streams and almost 200 million albums sold worldwide, we have the honor of working with one of the most successful artists of all times. As consumer habits have changed and as John's vision of the flywheel has come into focus, we have adapted our strategies for marketing Eminem. The story of Eminem latest album, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) at Super Bowl 56. As mentioned earlier, Interscope's relationship with the NFL and Rock Nation was key to bringing Dr. Dre to the stage to headline along with Eminem, Snoop Dog, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent and Kendrick Lamar. All of these artists have most, if not all, of their catalog within the Interscope family. We set up comprehensive campaigns in support of this historic show. Eminem's catalog alone rose over 25% as a result of the performance. Our next Tempo moment formed through a partnership with Epic Games, the owner and developer of the global phenomenon on Fortnite. Eminem's performance, which headline Fortnite's relaunch in December of 2023 introduced them to an entirely new generation of fans. The event led to a 32% lift of Eminem's catalog and a 47% increase in first-time listeners of Eminem music. This new platform expanded the artist world and created new fans. Around this time, we met with Eminem and its manager in Detroit, where Eminem laid out the vision for his new album. The campaign kicked off in April 2024 once again with our partners with the NFL, where millions of people were focused on the draft taking place in Detroit. Eminem joined Commissioner, Roger Goodell on stage, and we use that moment to begin telling the story and teasing the new release. The album's first single Houdini was released with a groundbreaking AI generated music video that brought together the current day Eminem with his iconic alter ego, Slim Shady which was supported by a variety of content and media. In partnership with Fame House, UMG is company focused on e-commerce, we collaborated with Eminem's team to create a robust offering of merchandise and direct-to-consumer products. In partnership with Complex, a company that UMG has made an investment in, we co-produced an AI-generated interview where Eminem squares off against Slim Shady. Here's a quick clip. [Presentation]

Eminem also appeared on the cover Complex Magazine sponsored by Chrysler Dodge, who we have proudly collaborated with for decades. Finally, we brought the campaign to life by hosting in-person pop-ups in London and L.A. featuring unique and exclusive merchandise products. All of these efforts culminated in one of the most successful album launches of Eminem's career, reaching #1 in multiple countries in around the world. We boosted overall engagement of this catalog ushered in a new generation of fans and unlock new revenue streams, all while staying true to the essence of the Eminem brand. I've had the privilege of working at Interscope with Eminem and many other groundbreaking superstars from my entire career. As technology evolves and trends come and go, the flywheel enables us to adapt and innovate and build global artists and super serve their fans. John, back to you.

Olivia and Eminem are great examples of our flywheel working at every turn, and there are many more artists in various stages of their own flywheels. We're building worlds day in and day out. Our investments in our artists today are creating the global brands and their catalogs of tomorrow that will be consistent revenue every year for decades. We've been doing this for over 30 years and have built an industry-leading roster and an incredible catalog. We work closely with Universal Publishing, Virgin, Bravado, and all divisions of the company to unlock more value and create the best experience for artists at all stages of their careers. There are endless opportunities for monetization of music and discovery of catalog, special physical products, experiential, new technologies, gaming and continued growth of streaming globally to name a few. The world building our flywheel create is great for our artists, and it creates growth and opportunity for UMG and all of us. I'd like to now introduce my friend and great colleague, Frank Briegmann. Thank you for your time.

Wow, thank you, John. It's a privilege to follow you. It's really great. My name is Frank Briegmann. I've been at our Central European division for just about 2 decades now, and it's been a privilege to manage its remarkable development. Central Europe, what's that? That is the second largest division and region for Universal after the U.S. But even more important, as its size, Central Europe is a region of incredible diversity. From Vienna's classical routes to Berlin's underground scene from Sweden's Pop music culture to Italy's Rap and Hip pop. One thing has remained constant over the last years of steep growth, we have remained the #1 and UMG is the leading recorded music company across that region. Now that's especially important as 85% of the top -- of the Spotify top 100 are represented by the majors. And that's despite the many DYI offerings and the aggregator offerings. So I think the number makes it very, very clear. If you want to be a successful artist in Central Europe, Universal is clearly the company to choose. And even more so in a region where consumption is increasing in local repertoire, meaning artists signed within the local market. Now we take pride in the success that our team has achieved together with our local artists. 35% of UMG's Central European revenue comes from local revenues, the artist we signed locally. Now that figure is even higher in key markets, Italy, roughly 40%; Germany, Sweden, even almost at 50%. Now Central Europe is the sum of 33 countries, Luciano mentioned that already with their own culture, with their own language, with their own individual preferences, shaping their music consumption. So through this diversity, we play to our strengths. Every country requires a bespoke strategy. But we have scaled in a way that equips us to do that exceptionally well. That way we have managed to break and maintain top talent everywhere in the region. We use our scale to our advantage to profit from regional synergies. On the operational side, our cross-regional teams are centralized and spread across to increase efficiency and reduce costs, may it be in finance, may it be in data analytics, supply chain and other parts of the business. On the creative side, our teams benefit from sharing best practices and most importantly, help boost our local artists successes across the region. For instance, through marketing campaigns and cross roster collaborations, maybe to share one example. Germany's biggest artist, Luciano and Italy's rap Superstar Sfera Ebbasta, to create -- we made them to create music together. And when they release that music in both markets, we gave them reach to each individual new geography. But not every market leans towards local [ artists ]. We see 2 flavors of markets in Central Europe. Those leaning towards local consumption and those who mostly consume music coming in from other countries. Now while the former is more common with our biggest countries, Germany, Italy, Sweden, strongly leaning towards local music. We managed to excel in both scenarios, take 2 examples, the neighbors, Germany and Switzerland. We hold the leading position in both, but upon a glance, you'll see that they're incredibly different. Germany is a strongly local first market with over 50% local artists in the top 100. In these countries, our setups are local-centric with strong A&R and marketing teams, which are specialized in catering to domestic crowds and building fan bases. Artists like Shirin David, [ Seago ], Helen Fisher and Luciano have broken records with their #1 singers and albums in the top 100 in 2023 once again. But we also hold the leading position in Switzerland, which is strongly driven by international music. So here, we take a different approach with a much, much leaner operation that adapts marketing and promotional efforts to the local fan and consumer culture, while leveraging the synergies of the region. Now here, we have broken international artists to great successes. No matter if it's Eminem, The Stones, Billie Eilish and so many more, all of them have reached the top of the charts over and over again. So across the different markets, we succeed at working with 3 main types of artists based on their audience. We have Global Super Stars, who we managed to take to the charts locally. Take Billie Eilish, signed by John and his team at Interscope, who we pushed to #1 album at almost every Central European market through a mix of activations like Fannie Vance, CRM create a campaign that much more. We leased a special case, and I will deep dive in a second. On the other side, we have local artists with a strong home base. One example thereof is Sfera from Italy. It's a very, very prolific Italian wrapper, and he's amassing hundreds of certifications. Most recently, his latest went platinum in week 1, I mean, in week 1, he went platinum and he was the most streamed album ever on day 1 in Italy. And then last but not least, we have local artists that we take global. While that task is obviously not that easy because of the language barriers, but -- we've been incredibly successful at doing it with dance and electronic exports like DJs, Felix Jaehn, Topic, Medusa or others, and we have seen huge success abroad. Now to illustrate how we break and develop artists locally, I want to come back to Billie. We first introduced her to local tastemakers in Germany in a multi-artist showcase, and she was only 17 years old. And a bit later in 2019, when she released her debut album, we put up a billboard in Berlin, 10 meters high and 4 meters wide. And when we showed it to her, I mean, you can imagine a young artist like that, she saw it and she almost burst into tears. And she shared that moment online with all her fans. Now ever since thousands of German fans have come to sign the stairway, where that happened, take selfies, leave little notes and so on. And we were able to continually activate around that on social media. Now when we brought her -- we bought back earlier this year, to introduce her latest album "Hit Me Hard and Soft" we activated the idea again and put up a huge banner with her current outlook at the same spot, showing her -- showing it to her. And that again led to significant fan engagement and media attention with all the German media inviting her to interviews and all the fans shared it exceptionally intensely again. So why am I saying this? I think this example shows to you that our job is not just to put out music somewhere in the world. We also must break it -- in order to sustain Superstar success, we need to adapt to the local cultures and fan communities, especially to build superfan communities. We're opportunistic and calculated about each market's individualized growth strategy. And our teams in every country are very entrepreneurial in leading innovation and adapting to their markets evolving landscape. Now one other example how we innovate and find new superfans and open up paths as to monetization is our year-long partnership with Abba in Sweden. One of UMG's most legendary artists, Abba has been a pivotal part of music and culture for decades. And we wanted to appear to the existing fan base as well as grow new fans. Now after 40 years of not performing and not creating new music, the Abba Bjorn album was released in 2021, reuniting the group. This activation was also the first step to a very successful new venture, ABBA Voyage, that's a cutting-edge virtual concert in London, like nothing ever seen before. So we integrated the global marketing launch of the Album and the communication to the show. And both became enormous successful. Until today, we saw 2.5 million albums -- and at the London show, they surpassed 2.5 million tickets and visitors. So maybe let me show you a little video. [Presentation]

Very proud of our partnership actually. But it was not the success only of the ABBA show, ABBA Voyage was remarkably successful at unlocking the ABBA catalog potential as well. While it already showed an impressive growth from 1 million average daily streams in '18 when rumors about the reunification started to over 2 million in 2021. The Voyage activation campaigns double that growth, leading to over 4 million streams daily and have now grown from here to almost 6 million daily streams. So when we double-click to see where this growth comes from, we see that we have presented Abba to a whole new group of fans with 64% of the listeners below the age of 34 and if we do a further deep dive and look into super friends, we see that the majority comes now from the age group 18 to 27, who were not even born when Abba was active. This in turn, also translated then into growth in social media platforms, super fan revenue in Abba experiences and D2C products. As you can see, the superfan revenue grew by over 500%. So like with the ABBA super fans, we are working on addressing super fans in every part of the region. For instance, in Germany, we have a strong CRM and D2C operation with a goal to identify and bind super fans and find experience and products that they are interested in. We created own branded channels and social media to grow the artist brand. We create dynamic playlists that are very helpful for hip breakthroughs. With 6.5 million fans and followers, we actually created a bigger audience than, for example, Germany's biggest tabloid, the build cycle. We counted over 1.5 billion views in our own channels, and that's a significant number. We also doubled down on CRM where we ran 2,000 campaigns uniquely for our artists with also very successful KPIs in terms of opening rates and others. So we use both of these activities to create a direct connection to fans to understand them better. And with that, we improve our selling proposition to the artists as well because we can offer them more services and additional monetization. So to close, Central Europe is spread across a diverse set of markets and has been incredibly successful in all of them, with actually expected continued growth. We are the leaders in Central Europe with a clear focus on signing, winning and building local artists with expert A&R marketing teams across our company. And at the same time, we excel the career of our international artists by identifying the nuances of the local preferences and cultures in every country. We are also cutting edge in finding the new experiences and products for our fans, we're working together with our artists and partners to identify and grow the super fan community across the globe. And now from this part of the globe, to another part of the universal globe. I hand over to my colleague, Adam Granite, who will discuss high potential markets with you. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon. My name is Adam Granite, and I'm here to talk about the very exciting opportunities we see in high potential markets. I joined the music industry almost 30 years ago, right out of school. And I spent my career working across the U.S., Europe and now with a particular focus on Asia, the Middle East and Africa. What is so exciting about these markets, first and foremost, is our potential for scale. Almost 85% of the world's population is here, and it's exciting to consider that these high potential markets only represent 50% of the global subscribers today, about $350 million in total. It is not surprising then that these markets significantly outperformed the more established markets in terms of revenue CAGR for the past 4 years. 25% versus the overall market at 11%. And the 2 largest countries in the world in terms of population are unsurprisingly driving a lot of this growth. China is now the #2 digital market and not only leads the world in terms of subscriber count, but is also the fastest-growing market for new subscribers in the top 10 digital markets. In India at only the #12 largest digital market represents a considerable opportunity for growth ahead. Let's explore China in more depth. And to do that today, we've invited our CEO for Greater China, Tim Xu, to join us.

Thank you, Adam. Timothy Xu, Chairman and CEO for Universal Music Greater China, overseeing the operations in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. I'm delighted to be here to speak to you about recent development in China. Before I start, a little about myself. I have over 3 decades of experience in the music industry, learning, contributing and witnessing firsthand developed and evolution of pop music in China. I saw how Chinese music market went from next to nothing 30 years ago to enter top 10 back in 2017 and now in the top 5 IFPI global music market. With more than 180 million subscribers, China's music market has surpassed the U.S. and Brazil to become the world's largest paid subscriber market, reflecting its rapid expansion and growing influence. This growth is closely tied to China's broader pan entertainment ecosystem. -- which including massive sectors like live, film, TV and gaming, all contribute to a healthy environment, especially digital content that fuels music consumption. Given its market side, China still has significant room for growth. With a subscriber penetration of just 13%, China is behind other mature markets, indicating vast untapped potential. These low penetration suggest that millions of users are yet to be paying subscribers, providing ample opportunities for further expansion. We have witnessed a CAGR of 25% over the past 5 years. This surge is driven by consumption of local content resonating deeply with Chinese audience, who are increasingly embracing home growth artists and music styles, they reflect their own culture. In parallel with the subscriber growth, there has been a sustained growth in ARPU, driven by strategic enhancement in platform service that promote user experience. Major streaming platform have used content payroll, offering exclusive access and premium music live concerts and artist interactions, that cater to different levels of user demand. This types into a willingness of super fans to pay more enhanced experience and drive revenue upwards. User demand segmentation has played a very crucial role with platform creating tailored experience that appeared super fans with the exclusive content early access and virtual goods. Additionally, product innovation such as hi-fi audio personalized playlist and the interactive features has significant enriched users' engagement making pace of subscription more attractive. This advancement has paved a role for the successful introduction of price subscription tiers. Such as TMEs SVIP -- super VIP tier price like around EUR 5. This is 5x more than expensive than standard tier. Adoption of SVIP tier has been strong, we believe already approaching a double-digit percentage on their flagship [ QQ ] service. By continuously refining their offering, China's music platform are not only boosting ARPU, but also setting the new standards in the global market. showing that there is a growing appetite for value-added service among music consumers. In closing, I would like just to say we are more than confident about outlook of China music market. Thank you.

Now let's hear from another one of our executives. As we turn the focus onto India. Please welcome Devraj Sanyal, our CEO for India and South Asia.

Thanks, Adam. Good evening. My name is Devraj Sanyal, and I'm the Chairman and CEO of Universal Music, India and South Asia, and I've been leading all of his businesses in the region for the past 13 years. I actually started out in the industry on the creative side, as a front man of India's most well-known heavy metal band called Brahma. So Internet doesn't lie, but truly my real calling was to help other artists fulfill their dreams. According to S&P Global, India is poised and well on its way to become the world's third largest economy by 2030 with an annualized growth rate, existing 7% year-on-year. And as the world's most populous country, with 2/3 under the age of 35, it means that we have the ability to drive consumption at a scale that's truly enormous. To give you some context, our youth cohort alone aged 15 to 24 is a staggering 250 million people. Additionally, India's digital transformation is underpinned by the aadhar program, which is a unique identification system that is the foundation of India's digital infrastructure. This has unlocked access to cashless digital payments and online commerce to our incredibly large mobile and Internet user base, which we believe will soon fuel a massive surge in digital transactions and e-commerce. The year 2024 made India, the second largest streaming market in the world by crossing the 1 trillion stream mark. But what's more exciting is the streams have grown at a CAGR of 23% and for the period 2019 to '23 compared to the global figure of 11%. Additionally, streaming revenues grew at 29% over the same period versus the global figure of 16%. So monetization is starting to improve, and we are just getting started. India has been a long time -- a film music market with a singer, compose producer hidden out of site behind actors, lipsync -- we at UMG chose 7 years ago to instead solely focus on real A&R and talent development, helping bring the artists into the forefront and the mainstream where they should always be. That being said, we do continue to examine potential strategic partners in the full space. And definitely, we'll have some updates for you soon. But in the last 7 years, we have released over 3,500 that 3,500 songs across 9 labels in genres, including POP, Hip Hop and Rock. And in that time, we have more than doubled our market share. At UMI we also have within our portfolio of companies, TMV the leading artist management and talent booking company in the region. Here, we represent artists like Arjit Singh, who, by the way, is the most followed artist on Spotify in the world, and a host of India stopped selling film singers as well as independent artists. The biggest and the highest grossing Indian artist tours in the world are done by our company, TMV. Artist Management is a great vertical for UMG as we can not only work close with some of our own roster, but also at times work with their external management clients as well. So we are now at the beginning of unlocking a subscription business in this market. with phenomenal amount of growth yet to come in the years ahead. And as we target that very specific 200 million strong middle class first, we expect to see paid adoption ramp up rapidly in the next few years. Lastly, with our office-driven strategy and partners like TMV with us, we expect to continue to grow our share of this growing market. Thank you. Back to you, Adam.

Thanks, Devraj. Growing in high potential markets is nothing new for UMG. For decades, we've been investing where there have been opportunities and have a track record for having the ability to scale and compete regardless of the local. Take Japan, a market that was once dominated by local companies, but today, UMG is the market leader. We deployed 3 basic strategies consistently for growth. First, we find the right local leaders for our business. These are individuals who are meshed in local culture. This is incredibly important because we have witnessed the same trend everywhere. As streaming penetrates local repertoire increases significantly. So we are building our local artist fosters accordingly. What is incredibly exciting today about this local repertoire from these high potential markets is now for the first time in the history of our industry, it can also quickly find an audience beyond the home market. This adds a new element of potential exponential returns when you can move repertoire from a high potential market to a high ARPU market like the U.S. UMG is uniquely situated to take advantage of this dynamic given the size and prowess of both our operations in these high potential markets, but also in the more established ones. Direct monetization of music rights in these high potential markets has been very challenging up until recently. As a result, artist generally only had a couple of options to release their music. Fund themselves by their live business and then use local aggregators to help their music get released, or work with a local media company, usually invested heavily in legacy media businesses like TV and radio with music as an ancillary. As you can imagine, the 1s local market power of these conglomerates and music has faded substantially in this global marketplace. This is why we see so much fragmentation in these high potential markets. And why as a percentage, the independent sector is larger than it is in the developed markets. I want to be clear. We very much view this as complementary to our current business and plan to rapidly grow our market share as we lean into virgin music across these markets and also work closer with domestic entrepreneurs by providing them services locally and globally. Our third strategic pillar is M&A. Working closely with entrepreneurs can often lead to strategic discussions about how UMG can unlock further growth by increased investment, our global scale and synergies. And as you heard from Mavin's president earlier, it's UMG's unique entrepreneurial culture that makes us so attractive to our partners. M&A also provides us with some unique possibilities to build nontraditional businesses, and that is very exciting for us. So we're closer with artists across their value chain and also expand our revenue mix. Let's look closer at our A&R strategy. In China, we have offices in 4 locations today, we are very excited to announce our newest office location in Shenzhen. This will be the new headquarters of our broader Greater Bay Area strategy in China, targeting the largest and most populated urban area in the world. It's actually 11 cities combined with 135 million inhabitants and accounts for 11% of China's total GDP. Culturally, this region is incredibly rich with diverse dialects predominantly in Cantonese. We are the first major music company to devise this strategy and are happy to be at the forefront of the industry yet again. Our strategy in India is also unique. There, we employ a highly efficient structure comprised of multiple small expert A&R and marketing teams, who leverage a single centralized back office to compete at scale in such a diverse country. India has 22 recognized languages and some of those are spoken by significant populations. And with the market shift away from Bollywood and into Indian pop music, we also now see the early signs of global penetration. In Southeast Asia, we were again the first major music company to establish a regional headquarters in Singapore, which we did in 2019. We saw the growth that was around the corner in markets like Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, and knew we needed a dedicated team of experts there focused specifically on this development. I will show some stats on the next slide, but it is safe to say that being a first mover has enabled us to grow significantly faster than the rest of the market there. And lastly, the Middle East and Africa. This represents the final wave of growth across various countries and languages. These markets today represent approximately 22% of the world's population, but less than 1% of our industry revenue. That said, repertoire from both regions have immediate task for audiences to monetize in higher ARPU markets. It's important to note that our revenue CAGR for the past few years ranging from 15% to 35% come with some very attractive margins. These markets with their digital first nature, lack of legacy systems and processes and lower cost structures mean they can be very profitable, especially when the repertoire combined audiences in the higher ARPU markets. And given these markets are growing faster than the more established markets, means that our investments here should remain margin accretive for UMG overall. Let's look at some of our A&R success in Southeast Asia. And it's important to note that all 3 of these markets, I will highlight are predominantly local meaning most consumption is of local artists singing in their local language. Indonesia is a significantly populous country with approximately 275 million people and after only really beginning to invest in 2015, along with the evolution of streaming there, we are now in the leading position in the market. This was achieved by a local A&R and a recent growth in our independent business there. Our revenues have grown 8x and our EBIT growth is 25x over that period. And I'm happy to report that last week, we had over 50% of the local top 50 songs chart. Thailand has recently been the fastest-growing market in Southeast Asia. Since 2018, we have increased our market share by 50% via both local A&R as well as through M&A. We acquired the majority of the RS catalog, the second largest in the country in 2023. And we're happy to announce today that we have just closed the deal for the remaining 30%. We expect after only one year of integration, the acquisition multiple will be an effective 11.5x EBITDA in a market that is growing rapidly. Through this and some other deals on the horizon, we are on track to become a market leader there. And lastly, Vietnam, an incredibly nascent but exciting market for UMG. We actually didn't have a local release there until 2020. But today, we have almost 25% of the Spotify top 200 there, being driven primarily by our local language A&R and our distribution partners. These 3 high potential markets are great examples of how within a relatively short time frame with the right dedicated local resources alongside smart investment decisions and flexible deal making, we're able to rapidly increase our market shares. As I said earlier, we have a long established pattern of investing where the opportunities are to build scale. And this is a strategy we have deployed elsewhere in the world with great success. There is no reason why we would not be successful in these high potential markets as well. The added benefit of our local A&R development in these high potential markets is now the new ability to monetize it around the world. This actually increases significantly the TAM from just a single market to now multiple countries and regions. Our global scale and capability to help further the careers of the biggest artists in the world is a key reason why more artists and labels in the high-potential markets want to work with UMG as we are the best possible partner to help them find global audiences and maximize their revenue. We have seen global repertoire, meaning repertoire that appeals to consumers around the world explode in the past few years from Korea, where we have been consistently partnering with the biggest K-pop labels in the world to help them export artists like BTS and Black Pink. Latin America, where our substantial operations have shaped global talent like J Balvin and Luis Fonsi and most recently from Nigeria. We have seen superstars like Rema take the sound of afrobeats worldwide. And we've been saying for the past year that Indian repertoire is up next to travel globally. Given the mainstream shift in that market and the largest [ Asper ] Group in the world. The clip I'm about to play is an exciting example of something that has never happened before in the history of the music industry, a rapper from India having a massive global hit. Please enjoy. [Presentation]

In conclusion, these markets will continue to lead the world for new subscribers and will grow significantly faster than the more established markets. We plan to aggressively invest and grow in the following areas in the next 3 to 5 years. Organic A&R, the right teams and the right locations to both grow our local market shares and also increase our global repertoire opportunities, the independent sector by a virgin music, to gain scale and bring more entrepreneurs into our system. And lastly, M&A, a focus area we're particularly excited about right now. Thank you very much. And I would like to now hand over the stage to our co-CEOs for Virgin Music, NAT Pastor and JT Myers.

Good afternoon. My name is Nat Pastor. This is my partner, JT Myers. We are the co-CEOs of the Virgin Music Group, which is UMG's business unit focused on the independent music sector. JT and I joined UMG exactly 2 years ago, when UMG acquired our independent label called m Theory, which we have built together for the last 12 years. While the Virgin Music Group is relatively new, UMG has been committed to the independent space for decades. Our task was to reorganize and centralize what was previously a regional diffuse structure to create a global holistic approach to serving the rapidly growing independent music community. JT and I are entrepreneurs, who were drawn to UMG by its entrepreneurial culture. Our goal is to make UMG the preeminent partner for independent labels and artists.

Let's start by setting the stage. What exactly do we mean by the independent sector? The space has existed for as long as the record business itself. In fact, some of today's major labels started out as independents. The digital transformation of the music industry has led to an explosion of diverse thriving independent labels all around the world run by ambitious creative entrepreneurs. Sometimes the artists themselves. Alongside this universe of independent labels, service organizations like Virgin have emerged, supporting independent labels to successfully bring their rosters to market. We'll discuss more about what these service companies do shortly.

But first, let's touch on the growth of the independent space. Major labels have been huge beneficiaries of the digital transformation and emergence of streaming, but this has also been true for the independent sector where improved monetization has lifted all boats. Access to the digital marketplace has resulted in the creation of more viable labels and artists than ever before. The addressable market has expanded dramatically. Since 2021, the independent sector overall has grown an impressive 11% per year.

Now let's look closer at the composition of the independent space. We think about it broadly in 3 different segments. The first is what we'll call a fully independent labels. These tend to be larger, more sophisticated labels. Some so large that while they may not have the global scale of Universal, they could be considered majors in their home markets. These labels signed artists like any other label and release their music digitally and direct relationships with DSPs, so they often partner with a third-party for physical distribution. The next segment is what we call independent services. Virgin falls into this category. We provide digital and physical distribution and other value-added services to our label partners. Labels working with independent service companies range from large ones, who could have chosen to use -- have chosen to use third-party support, but could otherwise have chosen a fully independent path to smaller ones that rely more heavily on third-party support for their growth. Finally, we have companies typically referred to as aggregators or DIY providers. These companies primarily provide only digital distribution access with limited additional services. These companies typically serve small labels and artists though some larger clients also choose to use aggregators as a simple release pipeline.

So if we look at the global streaming market, which is worth over $20 billion, independents account for approximately 1/3 of that total revenue. Inside of that independent space, you can see that independent services and the independent labels account for the vast majority of that revenue. This is where Virgin competes alongside the Orchard, Fuego, [ Believe ] and others. And aggregators in turn, account for a much smaller piece of the total revenue picture. And now if we break down the global revenue by region, you'll see that the independent sector is particularly healthy and strong in the high potential markets. In fact, the independent footprint accounts for almost half of the streaming revenue from these regions. This represents an attractive growth opportunity for Virgin.

Now let's take a moment to explain what companies like Virgin actually do. Historically, companies like ours are called distributors, but that term is somewhat misleading today. Distribution is certainly a service that we provide, delivering our labels music to retail partners and collecting revenue on their behalf. But in a world where digital access is widely available directly through service companies or aggregators, distribution alone is not why our label partners choose us. As you can see here, Virgin offers a full range of services beyond distribution, marketing, operations, business intelligence, capital solutions and more. With our dedicated team and tech platform combined with UMG's reach and scale, we help our label partners maximize their global impact. Now let's talk about our business model. In simple terms, we partner with labels, offering them a suite of services in exchange for a share of revenue, usually between 10% and 30%, for a fixed period of time. In many deals, we also provide financing through advances or commitments for label marketing or A&R investments, which are fully recoupable from the labels revenue. Our business model differs from the majors. Our business has a lower risk profile. You might compare the majors business to venture capital, where ours is closer to private equity or bank lending, generating more predictable but still highly attractive returns.

Virgin is well-positioned for the continued growth in the independent sector, thanks to a few key differentiators. First, Virgin is a separately run global organization within UMG. This gives our clients separation from the major label activity while still allowing them to benefit from the scale of the world's largest music company. Virgin directly manages teams in 30-plus territories around the world in both established and high-growth regions. These global teams operate on our own dedicated music release platform built on technology developed specifically for independent labels over the last 10 years. A centralized global version operation creates significant alignment and efficiency and Virgin's ability to prioritize and help to develop our customers' repertoire in real-time no matter where in the world that repertoire emanates from. Second, Virgins run by entrepreneurs from the independent label community in every region. Virgin's global executive team members have built businesses and have run independent music companies and, therefore, have a much more nuanced understanding of what our entrepreneur clients need from a partner. JT and I chose to join UMG and undertake this journey largely based on our past frustrations with the partners available to us when we were independent label owners. And finally, we're clear-eyed about who we are and who we are not. We're a service-minded organization, who exists to wrap around great entrepreneurs from around the world, helping to achieve global success on their own terms. We're flexible, we're nimble, and we know that we can best succeed when we're focused on our strength as an organization that serves our community of independent partners.

And more important to UMG's strategy. We are the means by which UMG can directly participate in the $10 billion independent space, expanding the company's total addressable market. We are the tip of the spear in helping UMG build light infrastructure in critical high-growth markets, where independents are strongest. We work hand-in-hand with Adam Granite's team to ensure that we are coordinated in our expansion into these key markets. And finally, we're a pipeline for entrepreneurial executive talent. UMG's executive team has been built historically by bringing in the best entrepreneurial music executives in the world. Working with music entrepreneurs every day, day in and day out, Virgin can identify the best executives who are candidates to join the UMG executive team in the future. And to close, we know this presentation has been mostly educational on the independent space. So we wanted to leave you with a case study that highlights pretty much everything we've talked about today to crystallize what Virgin offers to our label partners and to UMG. Our partnership with Mavin records on their artist Rema. Mavin, one of the most important independent labels in Nigeria saw immense potential in their artist Rema. While they have strong capabilities in Nigeria, they needed a global partner to help Rema reach his full potential and to establish Mavin as a leader in an important new global genre of Afrobeats. That's where Virgin came in. We provided funding and leveraged our global team to complement Mavin's strong capability in Nigeria to help Rema expand his global reach without losing his authenticity in his home market. Our digital first release strategy built momentum in markets with strong Nigerian diaspora populations like France, the Netherlands and the U.K. As Rema single Calm Down gained traction, we tapped into the power of UMG, connecting Mavin with Interscope to create a remix of calm down featuring Selena Gomez. This collaboration tapped into Selena's existing global audience and catapulted the song onto the global stage. The results, Calm Down became 1 of the most -- the most streamed afrobeat song of all-time on Spotify. Certified platinum in 17 countries and has over 12 billion streams. Clearly, this is a great financial outcome for Rema, Mavin and Virgin, but more than financial success -- the partnership was the foundation for a relationship between Universal and the founders of Mavin. That relationship has blossomed into a key part of UMG's future in Nigeria, an investment in Mavin collaboration between UMG's frontline labels and Mavin across the label's entire roster and Mavin's executives, Don Jazz and Tega Oghenejobo joining the Universal's executive team.

We hope this gives you all a sense of the independent sector within the broader music ecosystem and how UMG is well positioned to expand within that market via Virgin. We're really excited to continue our mission to be the best partner for the growing universe of music entremetiers. Thank you.

Thank you, Nat. Thank you JT. You've heard throughout this afternoon about the work we are doing to grow the market, driving growth in subscription, unlocking super fandom, powering a broader music ecosystem. I'll now offer a few observations of how these efforts has shaped our recent financial performance and how it's actually going to or how they're going to drive our future financial outlook. UMG has generated strong top and bottom line growth since our listing in 2021. We have grown revenues at a 14% CAGR over the past 2 years. I hope today's presentations have given you an appreciation for the talent that we have to drive UMG forward. In our recorded music business, we are working to bring new music to the world and introduce our robust catalog to new audiences. Our team is allowing super fans to better express their fandom through unique experiences and products tailored specifically to them. Our music is at the center of a growing ecosystem of partners, who we work closely with to innovate and drive growth. And our publishing company is maximizing the volume -- the value of our songwriters rights through an increasingly diverse array of revenue streams. Our growth has been driven by our exceptional industry-leading frontline business and by our extraordinary catalog. While you've heard a lot about our frontline business today, our catalog, which we consider to be content over 3 years old, has generated revenue growth of a CAGR of 15% over the last 2 years. This strong performance of our catalog reflects 3 primary drivers: 1, the increased monetization of iconic older music through streaming. 2, the uplift in more recent catalog of active artists fueled by their new releases and 3, catalogs continual expansion fueled by our chart-topping frontline business, where the careers and body of work being built today becomes the high-value catalog of tomorrow. We've discussed in detail the clear opportunity we see to continue to grow our streaming and subscription business over the next several years. And while this business represents a large recurring revenue base, it accounts for only about half of our total annual revenue. Our business has been driven by a diverse mix of growing revenue streams. Our subscription and streaming revenues are complemented by a super fan-driven EUR 2.1 billion music -- sorry, EUR 2.1 billion music and merchandise collectibles business and a EUR 1.2 billion license and other adjacencies business. And as you heard from Jodi, Mark and JW, we are rapidly growing our EUR 2 billion music publishing revenues. Our portfolio of publishing rights as well as the revenue streams through which we exploit them, continue to broaden. And again, as you've seen today, we're excited about the opportunities, both within and beyond streaming. Our Super fan-driven physical music business has been growing at an 11% CAGR. And within that, our collectible vinyl business has been growing at a 21% CAGR with an increasing share of those revenues actually coming through our own direct-to-consumer channels. Growth has been powered by the creativity of our label teams, as you saw earlier, as they have developed innovative premium collectibles and also by the resurgent demand among super fans to collect vinyl as well as continued popularity which you believe in Japan for CD and DVD collectibles, multiple versions. This business is complementary and additive to both our top and bottom line. And while lower than digital, physical music has attractive gross margins in the range of 30% to 35%. We are also generating exceptional growth at a 39% CAGR by developing and marketing premium merchandise to super fans. Growth has been driven by product innovation, brand collaborations and our expanded design and production capabilities. And again, an increasing share of these sales are coming through our own D2C channels. While merchandising margins are traditionally lower than music, our merchandise business has generated 10% to 25% gross margins, but with our highest margins earned through our fast-growing premium products and direct-to-consumer. So you can sense, we're especially excited about the scaling of our D2C capabilities. And the role that D2C is playing in monetizing super fans. We are building our own audience and reinforcing our label's core artist brand building capabilities, which you've seen earlier today. Across all products, our D2C revenues have been expanding at a 33% CAGR and our owned audience, which refers to the segment of customers registered to receive marketing materials from our own and generate owned and operated websites, that audience has now grown to over GBP 100 million. This D2C growth is driven by our expanding global footprint of online artist stores, our developing supply chain infrastructure and our increasingly sophisticated customer data capabilities. Licensing and other revenues are now EUR 1.2 billion and have been growing at a 14% CAGR, driven by the extraordinary global impact of our artists and a broadening number of opportunities to monetize their cultural influence. In addition to traditional licensing revenue, which includes broadcast and sync revenue, for example, this line item also includes a number of super fan elements, including in certain geographies, a small but growing live touring business and our film and TV production business. UMG has grown our adjusted EBITDA at a 15% CAGR, since our listing in 2021. We enjoy scale advantages relative to our competition and we continue to benefit from operating leverage. We are in the midst of implementing our previously announced strategic organizational design, focused on strengthening our capabilities and enhancing our ability to foster a culture of entrepreneurship, backed by the scale advantages of UMG. Our redesign is proceeding on schedule, and we will have our -- be at our run rate of EUR 250 million by the end of 2026. Going forward, we expect our fixed cost to grow at a slower rate than our revenues, which again further enhances our operating leverage. And just to let you know, we achieve operating leverage largely through 3 areas: 1, corporate overhead; 2, business unit operations; and 3, sales and marketing. While the corporate and business unit efficiencies are driven by leveraging our fixed cost base of people and overhead as well as by our organizational redesign, sales and marketing efficiencies are driven by better data and analytics-driven decision-making as well as some scale benefits. Our growth and our improvements in operating leverage have driven a substantial increase in free cash flow before investing activities, up 65% over the past 2 years. During that same time frame, we have improved the conversion rate of adjusted EBITDA to cash flow before investment -- before investing activities from just under 60% to over 70%. This cash conversion rate is somewhat dependent on our level of spending on Superstar on super -- or advances that we give to Superstar artists, which are sometimes tied time-wise to whenever there's a major deal renewal. We will continue to be good stewards of the cash flows we generate. Our capital allocation priorities are: Firstly, organic reinvestment into the business. Secondly, value-enhancing M&A for which we set a high bar for both financial and strategic merit. And also returning capital to our shareholders currently in the form of significant dividends. Should we reach a point where we see less opportunity for value-enhancing strategic investment, we will evaluate share buybacks as a future consideration. At this point, we are comfortable with our current leverage and our investment-grade ratings, and we plan to operate within those parameters. We believe we have the flexibility to add another turn of EBITDA to our leverage and still maintain our current ratings. In our growing and evolving business, we are choosing to keep that flexibility for incremental investment opportunities should be opportunities so arise. As you can tell for the presentations today, we are excited by the opportunities in front of us. We anticipate that a combination of continued subscriber growth in both developed and high potential markets, combined with opportunities to meaningfully enhance ARPU will drive a CAGR of 8% to 10% for subscription revenue from 2023 through 2028. Roughly half of this revenue growth comes from high single-digit volume increase in new subscribers with the remaining revenue growth coming from improved monetization. So we expect -- overall, we expect now go through this line forgive me. When we layer in the other revenue sources, we predict that we will have or we will forecast that we will have a more than 7% total revenue CAGR over the same time frame, which is from 2023 through 2028 and a more than 10% CAGR for adjusted EBITDA. We also anticipate 60% to 70% conversion of adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow before investing activities. I would like to remind you that these figures intended to guide you on midterm CAGRs rather than annual growth rates there will be quarters and even years that will fall above or below these estimates. But as we've said many, many times before, the business is best viewed over a longer-term horizon. To wrap up, I'd like to summarize why we believe UMG will be and is an attractive business for shareholders to own for many years to come. We are driving innovation across our business, significantly expanding the addressable market, building a long-term runway for continued high growth. We are powering a new era of streaming growth, streaming 2.0. That will maximize customer value through both subscriber and also ARPU growth. We are unlocking Super fan monetization by developing innovative new products and experiences. We're fueling an expanding ecosystem of music-driven businesses now numbering hundreds of partners, and we are developing our business in many, many new markets. We are well positioned to benefit from all these opportunities. We have an irreplaceable, unparalleled catalog of the world's best songs and recordings, which is consistently replenished by the strength of our frontline labels and our music publishing business. We generate strong free cash flow, which allows us to invest both organically and through strategic M&A and attractive opportunities to drive long-term value for shareholders. We are excited about the opportunities ahead of us and by the collective capabilities of the world-class team you saw today to execute on the opportunities that lie ahead. So with that, I would like to turn the floor back over to Lucian. Good luck.

Well, I'm exhausted, and I know most of this s***. I wonder how you feel. That's definitely the presentation for the day. We're going to be taking your questions in just a bit. But first, I'd like to thank a few people. First, you, our guests. Thank you for your time and your attention and your engagement throughout the whole afternoon. On behalf of myself and my colleagues, I want you to know we appreciate your interest in Universal Music Group, and I hope this has been a rewarding day for all of you. This is, for most of the people, if not most of them, music and this company has been their life's work. And we care deeply about it. We care deeply about the ecosystem, about the journey ahead. And adding -- well, I'm going to go a little bit off script, when you see -- and we'll probably deal with some of this later in the Q&A, when you see the power of the catalog, the power of the hits, the constant replenishment, that's why streaming and subscription 2.0 and the bargaining and our ability to really set the future is something why we feel so confident about, as I said earlier, it's easy to be confident when you know where you're going. Obviously, I'd like to thank our entire leadership team. I'm enormously proud of the team that I've assembled. I'm sure you sense their enthusiasm for what they do, the opportunities they're pursuing and those that they see in the future. You can see how our entrepreneurial culture and decentralized structure attracts leaders and executives with their own unique visions. The companies they build are very different from each other, yet they operate them collaboratively within the group. An event like this takes a great deal of time as well as preparation, and I'm deeply grateful for the effort each of them put into it, all on top of their day jobs and providing all the hits and all the work that they do. I hope that we've been able -- through -- with all the presentations, to have helped you understand the basic facts that I described at the outset and how they're shaping our business. Even as the music industry will inevitably grow and change, we believe these facts will be shaping how we seize the opportunities of tomorrow. So to recap, those 3 fundamentals as we see them. First, streaming, as we know, is a quantum leap forward in music access and monetization. Second, super fandom will accelerate music industry economics. And finally, no pun intended, music is universal. Actually, there is a pun in there as well. Music is universal. As I said earlier, UMG is not only the most successful company in the history of the music business, its track record is unmatched in any media category. We believe that UMG is also the company that is best positioned to realize the extraordinary potential of its future. Once again, thank you. We're now going to be able to take a 10-minute break, readjust ourselves and then come back for the Q&A session. So many, many thanks to all of you. Okay, one last thing. [Break]

Okay. Welcome back. We're going to go into Q&A now. I think I know most of you, but for those of you that I haven't had the pleasure of speaking to before, my name is Erika Begun, and I'm Head of Investor Relations for Universal. We have a couple of microphones that people will be walking around the room with. Please wait till you are called on, and when you are called on for a question, please state your name and your company before you ask your question. And with that we'll open it up. Right here in the front.

It's Will Packer from BNP Paribas Exane. Can you help us a little bit think through the underpinning factors for the ARPU growth implicit in your subscription streaming guidance? What are the factors that give you confidence there? Should we think that you'll use the wholesale pricing lever in the forecast period to make sure that your partners put pricing? Or will you incentivize them to increase pricing as we're shifting from a world of volume growth to a mix of ARPU and volume growth? And the second question, just to sneak in, in the presentation, you talked confidently of the ad streaming outlook, which has been volatile recently. One structural potential headwind is the transition to short-form video and the lower rates of monetization relative to premium video. Could you talk through that challenge and how you're looking to ensure that the ad streaming outlook is well underpinned?

Will, maybe I'll do the first one, which is about the improved monetization of ARPU. If I can just say one thing to you, it's very inappropriate for us to incentivize platforms to increase pricing. That's not -- it's really not appropriate and not what we would ever do. But that said, we ran through a number of factors there, which are very, very important in terms of what the monetization improvement is. We talked about super premium tier, and that's something that Michael covered in his presentation, and we're in advanced talks with Spotify about what that would actually look like. And again, it's very, very interesting. That 20% to 30% of music listeners are in a category of super fans and maybe somewhere in the region of 20% are interested in a super premium platform that would include products like early access, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that is the -- that's one aspect of the monetization improvement. Another, just to give you a bit of information, the price point that's in the marketplace, let's call it, the $9.99 or the $10.99 kind of price point just to overly simplify that. That's been around for 13 years. In that amount of time, if we just look at the U.S. market alone, inflation is around 40% on a compound basis over that period of time. And clearly, going from $9.99 to $10.99 is a 10% increase. So in our -- as we're looking and we're modeling and we're projecting the reality is that we are truly expecting price increases. And you talk about whole -- sorry, I'm rabbiting on here, but you mentioned about wholesale pricing. All content companies have the right to set what is appropriate commercial terms for the usage of -- for us, in terms of usage of our repertoire. And we will do that. That's important, we've reached a moment in time and it is -- for us and our artists, it's critical that we get appropriate compensation for the value that we're actually delivering to the platform. So we think it's a very appropriate moment in time. We're -- continuing to keep going. But we get more than 600 million consumers paying an amount per month for paid subscription. All those years ago, that was not an obvious outcome. So keeping the business model to the consumer incredibly simple and straightforward and incredibly good value has really helped us get to where we are today. So we feel good about that. We're now into looking at streaming 2.0, and we have to pivot. We have to move. We have to reshape. We have to innovate. We have to segment. We have to diversify. So there's lots of components as now is a great moment in time to move for the next level of streaming and subscription growth.

And perhaps I'll take the second question. Lucian, did you want to add something?

No.

With respect to ad streaming and short form, realize it's an ongoing evolution. Sorry, I normally project so much, I forget to turn the microphone on, apologies. There's an ongoing evolution right now. Innovation in terms of ad products catching up to what's happening in terms of consumer engagement. There's a lot of traffic, obviously, with short-form platforms. And I think a good rule of thumb is the monetization follows the consumer eyeballs. You've heard on earnings calls for Alphabet discussions about they'll focus on ad product innovation to be able to capture full value. So the whole ecosystem is looking at the challenge and the opportunity. But the thing to keep in mind is it's an incredibly competitive category. I think that there's a sense that the concentration of short-form video with TikTok means that it's harder for us to be able to capture value. We obviously went through a whole reset with TikTok. And I think we have a much stronger partnership with them now, an industry-leading partnership across a variety of different components I spoke about earlier. But in terms of competition, according to Luminate, their mid-2024 report, while TikTok is still the most used short-form video platform among music listeners, in terms of other platforms catching up, with YouTube Shorts, with Facebook Reels, Instagram Reels, they're all seeing significant growth to the point where you're seeing a level of parity certainly in the U.S. market in terms of consumer engagement with these different platforms. So we think elevated competition and a greater focus on monetization is going to ultimately result in an increased contribution from this sector. We're very engaged here. We're working closely with our partners. We've reset a number of our deals. We believe that the basic principle of the consumer engagement, providing the incentive to be able to figure out ad monetization, is going to transpire over time. So we're long-term confident in our ability to capitalize on the growth in short-form video.

Yes, I think I suspect that part of the element of the questions will continue our part of the fabric of everything that you've just seen: the quality of the product, the genres, the global reach. We said throughout this afternoon, it just doesn't appear. If we could just sort of stand out and pull it off a tree, then we would have. So it's a VC mentality in terms of investing and sharing. And when you bolt on some of those journeys that you saw from Olivia Rodrigo into this vast catalog, this -- it's that catalog with that product, the new release, bolted into it, which is what's driving acquisition for the platforms and our growth. So everything that we've done on where we -- to create this demand, you have to remember that it was only 13 or 14 years ago that no one actually believed that streaming and subscription could be a business. And we've been through that journey, and we're continuing to evolve through that journey, and we're now at the beginning of what I believe we can probably define as 1.0, and we're at the beginning of 2.0. So ARPU price points, as Boyd said, it's an extremely sensitive issue for us. But we've needed to create what we've done, which is a complete total beautiful product and a marketplace. The industry was really substantially hit, as you know, by file sharing and piracy. And all those years ago, we were told -- I was told that it was over. So we're now sitting at 640 million paid premium subscribers. With all the ad funded with all the various mechanisms with our own direct-to-consumer channels with the entire portfolio of all the activity that we do. So we've done that, and it was thought-through, intentional, and now we're at the beginning of the next phase. And what we've done, what we've been able to do with the DSPs and with the partners, don't underestimate that we call them partners, they are partners. The amount of work, the amount of strategy -- and on my earnings calls, we talk about win-win situations, you don't underestimate what I'm trying to say, they really are genuinely win-win. And where we are with the various new sectors, health, wellness, fitness, no one talked to us about fitness 5 years ago. So we've been through Peloton. And now we're going to -- we're about to talk about the advantages and the opportunities that AI give us in effectively sampling and licensing and so on. Social, I talked about the category. No one asked us about the social category. We just went on and did it. According to my slide, it's worth $5.3 billion as a sector. Games, we think that the games business and the platforms of games and how we bed the music into it and the brand and how the relationship that the games platforms has with their consumers, will allow us D2C and fan experiences. And I suspect that we'll be back here 2 or 3 years' time talking about that sector. Password sharing is something that we're focusing on. And we're working with the platforms and with the partners to actually improve monetization and to improve the entire share of the pie. And it's also our duty, it's our responsibility, to make sure that our artists and our songwriters are as protected and compensated as best as we can. And an artist, all of them that you saw today, whether or not they're from Bombay or whether or not they're from California, they don't want their music to be competing with the sound of an elevator door closing to a rhythmic beat. They don't want that stuff. Their stuff, their music, their art. They don't want -- I'm going to see Chappell Roan on Friday night. You saw him playing in a little pink piano. And it's going to be like a religious experience seeing her. They don't want their music to be competed with rain falling on a pane of glass, which is controlled by an algorithm. So the must-have quality and the dependency that these businesses and these platforms have and are in for their own ecosystem, for their own asymmetric businesses, whether it's on Amazon, or Apple or the 1,400 other businesses that we license, or wherever they are around the world, this is why we have a path and a long-term path to actually achieving everything that we talk about doing, that we've done the first part of the job, which is that we've created a business model that never existed. And what we continue to do is create music and product and culture, which is absolutely the best and the most critical throughout the entire world and throughout every single market, whether or not it's a mature or any market that's actually developing. Thank you.

It's Silvia Cuneo from Deutsche Bank. A couple of questions I would like to ask. The first one is, since you talked about the importance of emerging music market in the future, I was wondering if you could help us think about how much they will drive the subscription growth within the mix. To what extent do you already have the capabilities in place? Or do you need some M&A and inorganic partnerships to help you drive subscription growth in emerging markets? And then the second question on your D2C strategy and merchandising, given that differentiates UMG from some of the competitor labels, just wondering if you see this and hedge potentially in the future, to attract new artists given that you can provide this flywheel effect with a full range of services differently from others? So could you share more thoughts on that?

Maybe I'll go with the first question. The high markets. These are -- in many cases, these are parts of the world that if you go back in time, there was little or negligible monetization. And we're now seeing a quite remarkable shift with, again, the embracing of paid subscription in parts of the world where the monetization was at best anemic. So we're now looking at the subscriber growth and the subscriber additions, it is now skewing more towards the high-potential markets. So when I talk about or when I mentioned about the subscription revenue growth in the -- over the next 4 years in that 8% to 10% range, and I said that half of that comes -- half of that revenue growth comes from new subscribers, when you go underneath that, that is powered by a high single-digit increase, volume increase in new subscribers. And again, when you go underneath that, you will see the skew of the subscribers, it will skew more towards the high-potential markets as we're actually accessing the demographic that is incredibly, incredibly compelling. So the half being of the subscription revenue CAGR coming from subscriber growth is a blend of the high potential markets and the subscriber markets. So then the second part of your question is very much kind of like what do we need? And I thought Adam and his team actually covered that pretty well. We do have boots on the ground in all of these countries. Our level of investment historically has been adjusted to reflect the reality of the monetization. And the reality of the monetization historically has not been overwhelming. But we're now seeing with the increase in subscribers and you're looking at the uptake, you're looking at the change in the behavior, what you're actually seeing is a path to very, very meaningful monetization. So what does that mean? We will up our investment market by market in terms of organic, doing what we do, signing talent, bringing that talent to, firstly, the market and hopefully then to the world. It will take M&A, of that we've been very, very clear that most of these -- nearly all of these markets have got very strong local language catalogs and repertoire. And the reality is, is that we can -- over time, we can actually, through M&A, increase our market presence in those markets. And that, we fully intend to do. And the third aspect, which is probably related as well or there may well be overlap is what Nat and JT we're talking about, which is bringing entrepreneurs and labels into our ecosystem. And then once they're on the inside, things tend to happen. There will be opportunities to buy them over the course of time, they run out of money or whatever it may be. So we will grow on multiple different levels in all of those markets. By the way, there's no one solution for the entirety of high potential. It's market by market, geography by geography, language by language, culture by culture.

It was a great question. And you've touched on most of it. It's going to be a combination of targeted M&A in those markets that we see that are developing and growing. It's all local language. It's all local culture. It's all their own rhythms, their own beats. Boots on the ground, as we said, with A&R. We've got 9 labels in India. There will be individual A&R people with complete infrastructure and shared services around all the dialect and just the geographic size of the country, finding, developing. And we've got one act that they came up with, which I think is one of our biggest records at the moment, Humankind (sic) [ Hanumankind ]. It's the first hip-hop record to work globally out of India ever in the world ever. So we've seen with K-Pop, we've seen with Rema, we've seen with BTS upwards, sideways, downwards, anything goes now. Before I did this job, I ran the international division from London, I've been in the U.S. now for almost 15 years. I worked here, lived here and I managed 60 countries or whatever it was. And there was no marketplace. There was no business. The technology wasn't there. We couldn't distribute it. We couldn't monetize it. Partly, we couldn't monetize it because there was no legal framework around IP. So how we are organized with the quality of the team that we've got into place and the appetite that we have for where we see these opportunities, something that we're excited about, we've been active in the Middle East. We bought companies in Netherlands. We've bought companies in Thailand. You saw the data on Vietnam. We've had a complete reorganization of our business in Greater China when I brought Tim in 9 months or so ago. So when you bolt all of that on, and these are not massive -- when we talk about M&A, let's just be -- we have to be calm. We are talking about small markets with small companies but with entrepreneurs that have had the entire run of the place because there was no business there on the domestic repertoire. And that's where Virgin comes in. So we've got like a sort of a dual, even actually, as Boyd said, a triple-pronged attack to look at entrepreneurs, to support entrepreneurs and labels and ideas and innovation through the label services and also with our own managing directors in the markets, maybe more on the pop side, maybe more working with media and the sort of what I would call as sort of the pop idol, American idol sort of products, et cetera, et cetera. So it comes back to why haven't we broken the Japanese act? I promise you we will. I don't know which one, and I can't tell you when, but everything is on the table. And you can see the activity. You just have to look at airlift, tourism, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia. We're excited about all this, and we're covering it.

And if I could maybe just pick up very quickly the question, the second one, about D2C and the competitive advantage there. I think the premise of the question is very strong. As you saw from the presentation today, we're finding more and more ways to engage with super fans, really focusing on the D2C channel. We're confident in our ability to innovate and serve the super fans' interest. And I think one of the things that differentiates our strategy, and you heard specific discussions of this. I think, in the Interscope Capitol Labels Group presentation, they went through some very interesting case studies. We have a very artist-specific product innovation focused approach to productizing super fan demand through D2C. We think that the scale opportunities can be generated with a common tech platform in the background and that the right way to approach, taking advantage of the super fan opportunity, is to be very artist-specific and to really focus on product innovation. So that's one of the things that differentiates our strategy. I think you've seen the whole gamut of product innovation activity that's happening. So I would just close with reiterating the premise of your question and agreeing, yes, I think that it becomes a significant competitive advantage for us in signing and retaining artists because of the way that we cater to artists directly and go after the super fan demand by taking a very artist-specific approach and then scaling the tech background -- the tech platform in the background as the scale opportunity.

I don't want to go into too much detail, but there are some markets which are hugely significant domestically and have some export capacity. So you take for example, Nigeria and the acquisition that we made of Mavin, it's still quite a small market but its opportunity is export, rhythms, beats culture and its voracious appetite. But we're also going to be -- we know that when we look at the demographics and you analyze it, that market is going to be something over the next 5, 10, 15 years. So it's a sort of a triple-pronged attack. Find, acquire, work with, invigorate, innovate, bring innovators in into our company, into the ecosystem, work with the platforms to actually build the economies and the demand and the export.

Great. We have a question right here.

Ed Young from Morgan Stanley. Could you give us some parameters perhaps about the level of investing activity? You've given your guidance before investing activity and you've spoken variously about being disciplined and the high bar, but you've also talked about sort of being willing to invest a turn of EBITDA maybe into investment. There's also been no mention of Chord today as an acquisition vehicle. So perhaps you could give us some thoughts on the quantum and the means by which you might do content investment over the course of the plan?

Sure. Well, I mean, the reality is that we do generate cash. It's a beauty of this business. We're seeing that over the coming years, we'll convert 60% to 70% of our adjusted EBITDA into cash before investing activities. So we can work those numbers out relatively easily. We have a significant commitment to paying a dividend. I would reference that. And there's -- just maybe just for -- to bring everyone up to same speed, there's a relationship agreement between Vivendi Bolloré and the 2 Tencent-led consortia to a relationship agreement to compel us to pay a dividend, which is 50% of our adjusted net profits, the certain adjustments, noncash adjustments to that. So that is in place. So we've got a significant commitment to pay those dividends. Where we are today is -- our view is that, for the growth that we see ahead we should be investing our surplus cash into that growth. Building, I said for instance, the Nat and JT, Virgin Music business, the high-potential markets. It's very -- I think it would be remiss of us to not actually back the opportunity by investing our surplus cash into that. That doesn't mean to say that we necessarily go and take advantage of the flexibility we have in terms of our gearing today, and that is really just flexibility that we appreciate having. And it doesn't mean to say we're going to go and use that. But the reality is we do spin off quite considerable cash, and we will pay that significant dividend, and we will have sufficient surplus cash in order to invest in the business in a meaningful way. Now just in terms of Chord because there's...

One other piece of it is the M&A that we're looking at doing strategically is in these high-growth potential markets. And you can talk about Chord and the acquisition, what's off-balance sheet and music publishing and recording rights there are. Unfortunately, I can't buy Sony. If I could buy Sony, then I'd buy Warner as well. So my GC is going to have a meltdown. But I'd -- yes, we have to be realistic on where -- what cash we need and where we need it, and we're extremely comfortable post dividend, post organic growth with these markets that you saw that we're extremely confident that we can invest and that we can acquire and that we can really build a great company for the next 10, 15, 20 years onwards. And I think you can explain a bit more because a good Chord, one of the reasons why we set it up. One of the reasons why we're excited about it.

And the Chord really is, it's an investment vehicle. We have 25%, Dundee Partners has 75% in Chord. And the purpose behind that vehicle is for us to be positioned that we can take the opportunity in the marketplace where there's catalog or music publishing assets that become available. And we would envisage doing those kind of acquisitions if and when they come up and they are completely opportunistic, that we would do those through either Chord or another investment vehicle. But the focus on our M&A is very much into the growth opportunity that we see that we really want to execute and all of those strategic opportunities and Chord and other vehicles are there in the event that one of these catalog or rights acquisitions comes into play.

The last great deal that was done of sort of substantial was the MI deal. That was 13 years ago now.

Great. We'll go behind -- sorry, Mike, in the middle over there.

I'm Michael Morris with Guggenheim. Two questions for me. One, I believe Apple and Amazon have seen their growth slow on the subscription streaming side recently. So do you expect this move forward to streaming 2.0 to help reinvigorate their interest and commitment to the space? And is a reacceleration from them important for you to hit your streaming growth targets? And then, Michael, you mentioned better monetization of the ad-supported streaming business. Does any of that include maybe the start of some subscription payments in the ad sports space in more mature markets where it's not fueling subscription growth or a move to the premium tier?

Or maybe I'll need the additional comments right away here, the inability to operate the microphone. The Chief Digital Officer is having tech problems here at the desk. That's not a good sign. So with respect to streaming 2.0 and Apple and Amazon, yes, we think that there's a great opportunity to product innovate to be able to grow subscribers. As we've conveyed in our remarks, the scope of the opportunity and the nature of our expectation that this is going to become a feature of subscription platforms to focus on the higher-value customers and to ultimately have it as kind of industry standard table stakes that you're offering a super premium tier. There's been some speculation about both Apple and Amazon. You look at it from a historical perspective, and music has been core to the platform strategy of both companies in different ways. As you saw in the presentation by Steve Berman of the Made on iPhone weekend music video, Apple has been talking to customers about the value proposition of their platform through music for several decades. Music is critically important to them. They innovated with higher quality with Atmos. We think that innovation definitely is part of the path for them in terms of continuing growth and having a strong music strategy. And Amazon in different ways, from being a physical retailer of music products at the beginning of e-commerce to having musically the #1 use case for their voice platform and the strategic importance of that. So their I think both platforms are really vested in getting music right. And we believe that streaming and looking at the opportunity to grow revenues through product innovation is definitely something for both of those companies that we expect will be part of their strategy going forward. In terms of ad-supported monetization and how we think about the approach to take there. I think that the premise of your question raises a really good point about -- I mean you look at the Netflix example and having the triple tier approach to segment the customer base and to grow revenues. I think that during streaming 1.0, having rich-free offers that were engaging the consumer and initiating the behavior that you later convert to streaming or to subscription, there was a logic to that, and there was a lot of success with that. But I think we're at the point right now where we've gotten to scale, where we should revisit how we're thinking about the 3 tiers in the freemium model, how we're thinking about long-term free users, how we're thinking about the opportunity to product innovate around what different tiers of service offer. And we're certainly looking for enhanced monetization. And if you look at the level of activity and the opportunity just around advertising revenue, all those things point to doing a better job of monetizing ad-funded streaming in the future. But specifically to the premise of your question, yes, it's definitely something that we're looking at.

Well, they want to look at as well. Why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't we want to do it together? They are selling their own products. They're selling their own products worldwide, whether or not it's services, cloud or TV and film. But when you look on the hardware side, they're seeing stuff in the same way that we are: activity, demographics, India, Africa, Latin America. So let us just all grow and learn together and respond to actually what the consumers are doing and what their products are doing. And that's why, once again, we're confident that these partnerships with these platforms will continue to grow and will continue to develop at different speeds and in different ways and for different reasons. They've all got different products, and they need ours.

Okay. Sorry, I don't want to cut you off. We'll take our last question over here.

Julien Roch with Barclays. The first question is for Boyd, coming back on M&A. You've answered that basically you would use all your cash flow of 60%, 70% less dividend to grow the business organically but also M&A. Your 7% plus is constant FX, not organic. So can we have some color on how much contribution of M&A do you have in the 7% plus? That's my first question. And then on publishing, and I know that's not part of the guidance because the guidance is total revenue in paid streaming, but would it be fair to say that you expect publishing to be up low double digit to get to your 7-plus percent?

Sorry, I mean just on the -- we don't need to do the M&A to get our revenue growth to be more than 7%. This M&A is going to be phased over years. And so the reality is -- and a number of -- a lot of it is going to be kind of future focused. So there really is -- that's not included in the more than 7% revenue CAGR.

It's not a tactic. It's a strategy. Would that be fair to say?

Sure. I don't know if that answers the -- or I -- I don't know whether I've answered the 7%, but M&A is not included into the more than 7% revenue CAGR. On publishing, I think you would look at the kind of industry guides that are out there and look at whatever is out in the marketplace. And I think the latest is that, for the foreseeable future, an 8%. And again, this is market information is 8% is the kind of CAGR that people are looking at for the publishing business. You looked at some of that performance that we have delivered over or Jody and team have delivered over the last kind of 2 to 3 years. I mean it's truly really remarkable how they have outpunched the competition in the marketplace. And so they're coming off of incredibly strong revenue growth. But in terms of moving with the market, I would suggest that they will move in line with the market, hopefully, a bit better.

Great. Thank you all so much for joining us today. That concludes our webcast.