Universal Music Expands Share of Global Market in 2004

Universal Music grabbed more of the U.S. market to widen its lead as the world’s biggest record company in 2004 despite facing a rival of similar size for the first time, data released Tuesday show.

Annual statistics from the trade group for the world’s record companies also reveal that music consumers have aged as the industry chases more older listeners after losing younger fans to file sharing and illegal downloading.

About 55% of the music sold last year was bought by people older than 30 compared with 48% in 1999, the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry said.

More records are being sold in mass-market retailers such as Wal-Mart, which cater to older customers, while teenagers are more prone to download songs, which are not counted in the industry statistics.

For Universal Music, a unit of Vivendi, albums from U2, Eminem and Shania Twain helped it grow to a 25.5% share of the $33.6-billion market from 23.4% in 2003, and ward off the threat from newly created Sony BMG, which had the top-selling album of the year, Usher’s “Confessions.”

“In 2004, all of the majors lost share to Universal, who had a storming year, and that’s all happening in North America,” said Keith Jopling, the federation’s market research director.

Sony BMG, which had 21.5% of the market, is a joint venture created last year by combining the recorded music divisions of Japan’s Sony Corp. and German media conglomerate Bertelsmann.

The group excludes Sony Music in Japan, the world’s second-largest market, which the federation now counts as an independent. That helped keep the worldwide indie market share flat at 28.4%.

Universal grabbed a big chunk of North American market share from its three main rivals, jumping to 32.5% from 27.9% while Sony BMG’s share in the world’s largest region slipped to 24.9% from 27.6%.

London-based EMI scored top sellers with a new album from Norah Jones and a greatest hits compilation from Robbie Williams to hold the global third spot with a 13.4% share, a drop of 0.1 percentage point from 2003.

Warner Music, which was sold out of the Time Warner Inc. media empire last year and taken public earlier this year, slipped 1.2 percentage points to 11.3% of the market in 2004 with the fewest of the 50 top-selling albums.

By genre, Americans are buying more country music and less pop than they did five years ago, the phonographic foundation found, while Britons are buying more rock and rap and less dance music. Germans also are buying more rock at the expense of pop and dance.