02 LUCIAN GRAINGE
CHAIRMAN/CEO UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP
Not content with his position atop the biggest global music company with the largest U.S. recorded-music market share, in 2023, Grainge continued to redefine what it means to be an industry leader. In his annual letter to UMG staff at the beginning of last year, He emphasized the need for an “updated model” for the music business, advocating for an “artist-centric” approach to streaming royalties that would aim to eliminate fraud and boost payouts to real artists.
His clarion call resulted in new proposals from Deezer and Spotify and partnerships with TIDAL and SoundCloud to study how artists could benefit further from the industry’s dominant revenue generator. In late summer, Grainge partnered with YouTube to find ways for artists to capitalize on the opportunities that emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technology is creating, and in the fall, he also launched the company’s Responsible AI initiative, which lobbied Congress to put guardrails in place to protect creators and rights holders. UMG also used its might to look beyond music, establishing programs addressing environmental stability, sustainability, health care and homelessness.
None of that would matter as much if Grainge wasn’t being just as attentive to his primary responsibilities, and on the home front, UMG thrived, increasing its current market share from 33.6% in 2022 to 35.8% in 2023 while releasing eight of the 10 biggest albums in the United States, according to Luminate — all of which were delivered by Republic Records, Billboard’s top label of the year for the third year running. Through the company’s fiscal third quarter, UMG generated
7.9 billion euros (approximately $8.8 billion), a 6.8% increase in year-over-year growth that executive vp/CFO Boyd Muir said on an earnings call was “beyond our expectation and guidance.” In his 2024 new year’s letter to staff, Grainge wrote that, moving forward, he aims to do nothing less than create “the blueprint for the labels of the future” — ensuring that, in an industry evolving at a dizzying velocity, UMG remains, as Grainge noted,
“the most successful company in the history of the music industry.” Mic drop.