BAD BUNNY HELPS SONY HOP UP

At the midyear point, Sony claims the second quarter’s three biggest albums

HALFWAY THROUGH THE YEAR, it’s still an Encanto world, but it wouldn’t be a summer without Bad Bunny, whose Un Verano Sin Ti is the biggest album released in 2022 to date and No. 2 overall. Bad Bunny helped lead the charge as Sony Music Entertainment grew its market share at the midpoint of 2022 with the three biggest albums of the second quarter: Un Verano Sin Ti (on the independent Rimas and distributed by Sony-owned

The Orchard), Harry Styles’ Harry’s House (Columbia) and Future’s I Never Liked You (Epic). Sony’s market share is up 0.66% year over year to 26.34% at the midway point of 2022. Warner Music Group (up 0.08% to 16.26%) and the collective indies sector (up 0.56% to 20.15%) also grew thanks to significant gains in current market share, while Universal Music Group is down 1.29% at midyear 2022 compared with midyear 2021, almost entirely due to a 5.81% decline in current market share. But UMG remains the dominant force in the market, with its 37.25% share still a full 10 percentage points above Sony’s. And UMG was the only label group to increase its share of the catalog music market (albums older than 18 months), gaining 0.3% to 38.66% over midyear 2021.