Q3 LABEL MARKET SHARE: SONY STAYS HOT, INTERSCOPE’S ON TOP

THREE QUARTERS into 2022, Bad Bunny continues to dominate the U.S. music landscape, with Un Verano Sin Ti (The Orchard) comfortably the biggest album of the year so far and the only one to reach the 2 million mark in equivalent album units, according to Luminate. It and the next three top-performing albums released this year — Harry Styles’ Harry’s House (Columbia), Future’s I Never Liked You (Epic) and Lil Durk’s 7220 (Alamo) — helped Sony Music Entertainment grow its third-quarter market share to 26.68%, shaving away some of rival

Universal Music Group’s double-digit dominance.

UMG’s 37.16% third-quarter finish, down from 37.25% last quarter, was aided by the continued success of 2021 albums by Morgan Wallen, The Weeknd, Olivia Rodrigo, Drake and the cast of Encanto, all of which are in the top 10 for most consumption units in 2022 so far.

For the first time, Warner Music Group’s overall market share includes its owned independent distributor, Alternative Distribution Alliance, which contributed a little over three percentage points to WMG’s 19.27% share. Luminate Data and WMG’s agreement to include ADA’s share aligns it more closely with the other two majors, which have long included Ingrooves and Virgin (UMG), and The Orchard and RED (Sony) in their corporate shares.

Overall rankings for the top 10 labels remained static from the second quarter. The top five were Interscope, 9.73%; Atlantic, 9.13%; Republic, 8.03%; Columbia, 7.02%; and Warner Records, 6.32%.