Did HYBE simply set up itself because the world’s fourth greatest music rights firm?
The South Korea-headquartered agency, which started life as Large Hit – and stays the house of BTS – posted document annual revenues in 2021.
These revenues hit 1.257 trillion South Korea Gained (KRW), in keeping with new investor filings, up by a whopping 58% year-on-year.
That KRW determine converts to USD $1.098 billion at annual common trade charges (per the IRS) – the primary time that HYBE has damaged the billion greenback annual income barrier.
HYBE continues to be a way off being known as a “main”; the smallest of the ‘Large Three’ main music firms, Warner Music Group, turned over USD $5.58 billion in calendar 2021.
However HYBE is placing distance between its measurement and different ‘mini majors’ who every flip over tons of of tens of millions of {dollars} per 12 months – firms like Harmony and BMG (with the latter posting $357 million within the first half of 2021).
One influential consider HYBE’s 58% development in 2021 was its $1 billion acquisition of Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in April final 12 months.
This deal not solely elevated HYBE’s presence within the US market, but additionally introduced Braun’s expertise administration agency, Scooter Braun Tasks (Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Dan & Shay), below HYBE’s umbrella.
As well as, the Ithaca buyout gave HYBE a big presence in nation music, through Large Machine Label Group.
Braun’s Ithaca purchased Large Machine for round $330 million in 2019. Braun subsequently – and controversially – offered the masters for six Taylor Swift albums on Large Machine to Shamrock, for round $300 million.
Nonetheless, Ithaca (and now HYBE) saved the remainder of the Large Machine catalog and roster, together with stars like Thomas Rhett, Florida Georgia Line and Tim McGraw.
Amongst HYBE’s greatest natural income drivers in 2021 was its “Artist Oblique” enterprise, which generated 733 billion KRW ($640m) final 12 months – up 72.8% YoY.
The corporate has beforehand cited its “Artist Oblique” enterprise – revenue-generating initiatives that use an artist’s model/likeness, with out the precise artist needing to be concerned – as one of many primary causes it did properly in the course of the pandemic in 2020.
In the meantime, HYBE’s concert events enterprise grew by an enormous 883.8% YoY in 2021 to 45.2 billion KRW ($39m).
This efficiency was pushed by the sluggish return of concert events final 12 months, together with BTS’ 4 reveals in Los Angeles in December, which marked their first “offline” live performance in two years.
HYBE’s working revenue in 2021 hit 190 billion KRW ($166m), marking development of 30.8% YoY.
Digging deeper into HYBE’s monetary outcomes reveals that the corporate’s album gross sales revenues grew 41% YoY to hit 524 billion KRW ($456m) in 2021 (see under).
In This fall, the three months ended December 2021, HYBE generated revenues of 459.7 billion KRW ($402m), a rise of 48% in comparison with the identical quarter in 2020.
Nonetheless, HYBE’s quarterly album gross sales revenues fell 37.3% YoY to 87 billion KRW ($76m) in This fall (see above).
Inside its 2021 submitting, HYBE additionally breaks down annual album gross sales quantity from HYBE and Ithaca-affiliated artists (see under).
HYBE claims that its annual artist album unit gross sales greater than doubled year-on-year (up by a 2.1-times a number of) in 2021, to greater than 25 million.
It pins this enhance on “inorganic development by way of Ithaca Holdings acquisition and natural development of Korean artists”.
Elsewhere, HYBE reveals that Weverse – its fan-community app that pulls collectively content material made by and for Large Hit artists together with music movies, teasers, motion pictures, merch gross sales and reside streams – grew to six.8 million Month-to-month Energetic Customers in This fall 2021, which was up 7% in comparison with the prior quarter (Q3).
The typical income per paying consumer (ARPPU) for Weverse fell by 11% in comparison with the prior quarter (see under).
The publication of HYBE’s monetary outcomes observe the information that BTS will carry out their first in-person concert events in Korea since October, 2019 on the Seoul Olympic Stadium on March 10, 12 and 13.
They may even be taking their BTS PERMISSION TO DANCE ON STAGE present to Las Vegas on the Allegiant Stadium in entrance of a reside viewers in April.
Moreover, following the announcement in November that HYBE acquired a $421 million stake in a crypto agency, with plans to launch digital collectables, HYBE notes in its buyers presentation that that it plans to launch a brand new “platform/merchandise” in mid-2022, with extra plans to “Invigorate [our] fan neighborhood”.
All KRW-USD foreign money conversions on this report have been calculated on the common annual fee revealed by the IRS in the US.Music Enterprise Worldwide
