Sweden-headquartered music manufacturing firm Epidemic Sound has printed its annual report for 2024.
Monetary highlights from the report embrace a 29% YoY soar in revenues, to 1.921 billion Swedish kronor, or USD $181.62 million on the common trade fee for 2024.
Epidemic’s adjusted EBITDA, in the meantime, soared 150% YoY to SEK 147 million ($13.9 million), whereas unadjusted EBITDA elevated 24-fold to SEK 107 million ($10.13 million).
“Since 2009, Epidemic Sound has grown from an bold thought into a world powerhouse, the main soundtracking platform, with a mission to soundtrack the world,” CEO Oscar Höglund wrote within the intro the annual report.
In line with Epidemic Sound’s annual report, the corporate boasts greater than 50,000 music tracks and 200,000 “Hollywood-grade” sound results, a library boosted by its current acquisition of Soundly, which Höglund described as “among the finest sound results firms on the earth.”
That acquisition means “our clients now profit from a collection of over 250,000 high quality tracks and sound results,” Höglund stated, including Epidemic plans to proceed M&A exercise “to make excessive impression ‘tuck-in’ investments that may speed up our technique.”
Launched in 2009, Epidemic Sound pays its artists a flat charge for each observe created – what one may name a “work for rent” mannequin.
In 2024, Epidemic Sound paid artists a hard and fast charge of USD $1,500 to $8,000 per observe, although it just lately introduced that the underside finish of that vary is rising to $1,775.
This enterprise mannequin provides Epidemic the flexibility to say that it’s “the one firm on this area that absolutely owns its music, with 100% affiliate-free tracks and sounds… Content material creators of any measurement can simply add music and sound to their movies throughout all platforms – with out worrying about copyright claims, hidden charges, or takedowns.”
Little doubt conscious that its flat-fee mannequin for artists has beforehand raised eyebrows within the music trade, the corporate stresses the assorted methods during which it has expanded the share of the income pie going to artists over time.
In 2015, when it started distributing its music to YouTube and music streaming providers, Epidemic applied a 50-50 break up with artists on royalties from music streamers.
And since 2021, Epidemic has been handing out a “Soundtrack Bonus” to artists, proportional to the recognition of their tracks on the corporate’s platform. For 2024, the whole bonus pool was $2.9 million, up from $2.5 million the 12 months earlier than.
“Epidemic Sound additionally provides artists the liberty to work beneath non-exclusive agreements and to have the ability to work on a number of initiatives concurrently,” the corporate famous within the annual report.
The corporate additionally notes the rising recognition of its music, reporting that movies soundtracked with its music now receives 3 billion views on YouTube and TikTok per day, with YouTube alone accounting for two.3 billion views per day.
That’s up from 2.5 billion YouTube/TikTok views a 12 months earlier.
Höglund highlighted a few of these successes on this 12 months’s report, together with the Victor Lundberg and Gamma Skies observe Seasons of Love, which garnered over 30 million views after it appeared within the YouTube collection I’m Turning Into A Vampire from My Story Animated (MSA).
“We’ll proceed to make use of M&A to make excessive impression ‘tuck-in’ investments that may speed up our technique.”
Oscar Höglund, Epidemic Sound
He additionally highlighted the corporate’s rising roster of partnerships with notable musicians, together with guitarist Johnny Marr of The Smiths, techno DJ Richie Hawtin, and the Grammy-nominated Jordin Sparks.
“These partnerships not solely enrich our music catalog but in addition provide distinctive mentorship alternatives for rising creative expertise and supply creators with an ever extra wealthy and numerous selection of music to encourage them,” Höglund wrote.
In a weblog submit final 12 months, the corporate laid out its strategy to AI, declaring that its plan is to make use of AI to assist artists reasonably than exchange them – a part of what it referred to as an “artist-centric” strategy to synthetic intelligence.
The corporate additionally harassed that any use of AI needs to be targeted on the wants of the tip consumer of its music.
“We’ll keep laser-focused on consumer wants, growing additional AI-powered music discovery options and adaptive instruments,” Epidemic said. “Fixing actual issues for actual content material creators.”Music Enterprise Worldwide
