Spotify Stock Gains Led Music This Year; Universal, Live Nation Up Too – Billboard

The Billboard Global Music Index — a diverse collection of 20 publicly traded music companies — finished 2023 up 31.3% as Spotify’s share price alone climbed 138% thanks to cost-cutting and focus on margins. Spotify is the single-largest component of the float-adjusted index and has one of the largest market capitalizations of any music company.

The music index was outperformed by the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite, which gained 43.4% with the help of triple-digit gains from chipmaker Nvidia Corp (+239%) and Meta Platforms (+194%). But the Billboard Global Music Index exceeded some other major indexes: the S&P 500 gained 24.2%, South Korea’s KOSPI composite index grew 18.7% and the FTSE 100 improved 3.8%. 

Other than Spotify, a handful of major companies had double-digit gains in 2023 that drove the index’s improvement. Universal Music Group finished the year up 14.7%. Concert promoter Live Nation rode a string of record-setting quarters to a 34.2% gain. HYBE, the increasingly diversified K-pop company, rose 34.6%. SM Entertainment, in which HYBE acquired a minority stake in March, gained 20.1%. 

A handful of smaller companies also finished the year with big gains. LiveOne gained 117.4%. Reservoir Media improved 19.4%. Chinese music streamer Cloud Music improved 15.8%. 

The biggest loser on the Billboard Global Music Index in 2023 was radio broadcaster iHeartMedia, which fell 56.4%. Abu Dhabi-based music streamer Anghami finished 2023 down 34.8%. After a series of large fluctuations in recent months, Anghami ended the year 69% below its high mark for 2023. Hipgnosis Songs Fund, currently undergoing a strategic review after shareholders voted against continuation in October, finished the year down 16.6%. 

Sphere Entertainment Co., which split from MSG Entertainment’s live entertainment business back in April, ended 2023 down 24.4%. Most of that decline came before the company opened its flagship venue, Sphere, in Las Vegas on September 29, however. Since U2 opened the venue to widespread acclaim and earned Sphere global media coverage, the stock dropped only 8.5%.

For the week, the index rose 1.1% to 1,534.07. Fourteen of the index’s 20 stocks posted gains this week, four dropped in price and one was unchanged. 

LiveOne shares rose 15.7% to $1.40 after the company announced on Friday (Dec. 29) it added 63,000 new paid memberships in December and surpassed 3.5 million total memberships, an increase of 29% year over year. iHeartMedia shares climbed 14.6% to $2.67. Anghami continued its ping-pong trajectory by finishing the week up 16.9%.