Sony’s global music rights operation – across recorded music and music publishing – generated USD $2.768 billion in the three months to end of June 2025.

That’s according to MBW’s calculations based on Sony Group Corp’s calendar Q2 2025 (fiscal Q1 2025) results, as announced by the Japanese firm today.

The $2.768 billion figure was up by 8.8% year-on-year (vs. calendar Q2 2024) at US dollar-converted consistent currency.

In monetary terms, Sony’s overall music rights operation (recorded music plus music publishing) generated approximately $223 million more in calendar Q2 2025 than in the prior-year quarter.

(Our regular note: MBW’s calculations of Sony’s music earnings – explained at the bottom of this story – are based on average quarterly exchange rates, provided by Sony, from its reported Yen to USD. We believe this gives a more accurate picture of Sony’s worldwide results than its reported Yen figures. This is because Sony Music Entertainment and Sony Music Publishing both aggregate the results of their worldwide subsidiaries on a USD basis. However, this global USD conversion system still risks a certain amount of FX distortion by converting revenues from Tokyo-based Sony Music Entertainment Japan – which would usually report revenues in its ‘root’ currency of Yen – into USD.)

Recorded music revenue breakdown

Sony’s global recorded music operation generated USD $2.09 billion in calendar Q2 2025, up 8.4% YoY versus the equivalent quarterly period of the prior year on a USD basis.

Within Sony’s calendar Q2 2025 global recorded music result, streaming generated USD $1.36 billion (on a USD-converted basis), up 7.3% YoY.

(This ‘streaming’ number combines both subscription and ad-funded streaming revenues generated by Sony’s global recorded music operation.)

Quarterly revenues from physical music sales in calendar Q2 2025 hit USD $180 million (up 19.0% YoY).

Sony’s ‘Other’ category within recorded music generated $481 million in calendar Q2 2025, up 3.1% YoY versus the prior-year quarter.

This latter category (‘Other’) includes license revenue (public performance, broadcast and sync), merchandising, and live performance income.

The solid performance across all categories contributed to the overall growth in recorded music revenues, with streaming remaining the largest revenue driver.

According to Sony Corp‘s results, Sony Music Entertainment’s ten biggest recorded music projects in the calendar Q2 2025 quarter (ex-artists signed in Japan), in order of global revenue generation, were:

1. Bad Bunny (Rimas Entertainment) – DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS
2. SZA – SOS
3. Sleep Token – Even in Arcadia
4. Tate McRae – So Close to What
5. Bad Bunny (Rimas Entertainment) – Un Verano Sin Ti
6. Pink Floyd – Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII
7. ATEEZ – GOLDEN HOUR : Part.3
8. Bruce Springsteen – Tracks II: The Lost Albums
9. JENNIE – Ruby
10. Miley Cyrus – Something Beautiful

Music publishing performance

Sony’s global music publishing operation – led by Sony Music Publishing – generated USD $683 million in the three months to end of June 2025.

That quarterly revenue figure, at the US dollar level, was up 9.9% year-on-year.

Based on Sony’s reported streaming growth rates, Sony’s global music publishing operation derived approximately $392 million of its quarterly revenues in the calendar Q2 2025 period from streaming.

That publishing streaming figure was up 8.0% year-on-year.

Quarterly profits

Sony Corp also today issued some profit numbers for its corporate Music division in the three months to end of June 2025. (The following figures include Sony’s operations across Recorded Music, Music Publishing plus Visual Media & Platform.)

In calendar Q2 2025 (fiscal Q1 2025), Sony’s corporate Music division posted a quarterly operating income of 92.8 billion Yen (USD $642m).

That represented an operating margin of 19.9%, from total divisional quarterly revenues (again, ‘Music’ including ‘Visual Media & Platform’) of 465.3 billion Yen (USD $3.22bn).

Sony Corp additionally presents to investors its Adjusted OIBDA performance in each quarter (see below) – a metric also used by Warner Music Group to present its earnings.

In calendar Q2 2025 (fiscal Q1 2025), Sony’s Music division posted an Adjusted OIBDA of 117.1 billion Yen (USD $810m).

That represented an Adjusted OIBDA margin from total divisional quarterly revenues of 25.2%.

Methodology note

Note: All YoY percentage rises/falls published in this story are calculated at constant currency at the US dollar-converted level.

MBW uses Sony’s own quarterly average currency rates for these calculations, and the below data from Sony’s filings.

For this analysis, MBW has calculated Sony’s financials from Japanese Yen into US dollars at the following prevailing exchange rates in each quarter, as provided by Sony Corp:

• Calendar Q1 2023: 135.4 Yen per USD
• Calendar Q2 2023: 137.0 Yen per USD
• Calendar Q3 2023: 144.4 Yen per USD
• Calendar Q4 2023: 147.9 Yen per USD
• Calendar Q1 2024: 148.2 Yen per USD
• Calendar Q2 2024: 155.6 Yen per USD
• Calendar Q3 2024: 149.5 Yen per USD
• Calendar Q4 2024: 152.2 Yen per USD
• Calendar Q1 2025: 152.6 Yen per USD
• Calendar Q2 2025: 144.6 Yen per USD

By applying these exchange figures to each applicable period, we effectively get a US-leaning constant currency picture of Sony Music’s performance.

This isn’t a perfect system; it risks overplaying Sony Music Entertainment’s global business slightly by converting a chunk of revenues from Sony Music Entertainment Japan (which would usually be straight-reported in Yen) into US dollars.

But it provides us with a cleaner reflection of the performance of New York-based Sony Music Entertainment outside of FX distortion, because the company had to convert its US currency into Yen in the first place for Sony Corp’s results. The same is true for US-based Sony Music Publishing.

MBW believes this currency exchange system is the yardstick used internally at Sony Music Group‘s HQ in New York.

Sony’s own description of its three corporate music divisions is as follows:

• Recorded Music – Streaming includes the distribution of digital recorded music by streaming; Recorded Music – Others includes the distribution of recorded music by physical media and digital download as well as revenue derived from artists’ live performances;
• Music Publishing includes the management and licensing of the words and music of songs;
• Visual Media and Platform includes the production and distribution of animation titles, including game applications based on the animation titles, and various service offerings for music and visual products.

Within / covering the first two divisions listed above:

• Sony Music Publishing, run by CEO & Chairman Jon Platt, is Sony’s US-headquartered music publishing operation. Sony Music Entertainment, run by CEO Rob Stringer, is Sony’s US-headquartered recorded music operation.
• And Sony Music Group – also run by Rob Stringer, as Chairman – is Sony’s US-headquartered umbrella group for both Sony Music Entertainment and Sony Music Publishing.

Music Business Worldwide

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Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said he has “lost faith” that Benjamin Netanyahu can achieve a “decisive victory” in Gaza, days after the country’s security cabinet agreed to expand the military offensive in the shattered enclave.

Smotrich, an ultranationalist and key member of the governing coalition, accused Netanyahu of conducting an “about-face” after having promised this time to “go all the way”, and criticised the premier for leaving open the possibility of a ceasefire-for-hostage deal with Palestinian militant group Hamas, in a blistering three-minute video on Saturday.

Smotrich said he had remained in government “as long as I believed we were driving for decisive victory”, but that he had now “lost faith that the prime minister can and wishes to lead the [Israeli military] there.”

The veteran premier has come under pressure from his far-right allies, including Smotrich and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for more hardline policies throughout the Gaza war. While the statements on Sunday were the most expansive to date by the finance minister, he did not explicitly threaten to resign or bring down Netanyahu’s government.

While Smotrich has attempted to outflank Netanyahu from the right, the premier’s decision to expand the offensive against Hamas in Gaza has been heavily criticised as reckless both at home and abroad.

Netanyahu’s security cabinet ordered the Israeli military to begin preparations to “take control of Gaza City” after a marathon session that lasted into Friday morning. The cabinet suggested that civilians sheltering in what was once the enclave’s largest population centre would be forced to evacuate.

Yet the expanded military offensive could be delayed until early October to allow time to call up reserves, forcibly evacuate hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and create the required humanitarian aid infrastructure.

Smotrich, who took part in the deliberations, said the plan amounted to “launching a military operation that is not aimed at resolving the issue, but rather at putting pressure on Hamas to agree to a partial hostage deal”.

‘‘That’s not how you win a war,” Smotrich added, highlighting an aggressive alternative plan — which he did not describe in detail — he claimed would lead to “a lightning-fast military victory”.

Smotrich and his far-right allies have publicly supported the full reoccupation of the entire Gaza Strip, the “voluntary emigration” of the territory’s 2mn people to undefined foreign countries, and the re-establishment of Israeli settlements across the enclave.

Zvi Sukkot, a parliamentarian from Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, told Israel’s army radio on Sunday morning that the party could reconsider its membership in Netanyahu’s government and push for early elections.

“I don’t see any point being partner to something that will ultimately send soldiers [into battle] without first knowing what the end result will be,” Sukkot said.

Netanyahu’s governing coalition consists of the premier’s Likud party, two far-right parties, and two ultra-Orthodox factions, which have already suspended their involvement in government due to differences over conscription.

Despite the coalition troubles, political analysts remain sceptical that snap elections are likely in the coming months. The governing coalition is trailing the opposition in the polls, with Religious Zionism in danger of not passing the electoral threshold for entry into the next parliament. Elections are not formally meant to be held until the autumn of 2026.

The country’s military chiefs opposed Netanyahu’s plan due to fears that it would overstretch an already exhausted fighting force after 22 months of war and endanger the remaining 50 Israeli hostages held by Hamas, 20 of whom are still believed to be alive.

Opposition leaders emphasised the toll that expanding the war would have on Israel’s international standing, as well as the cost for the Israeli taxpayer.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid warned on Sunday that ‘‘delusions of conquering the strip’’ would result in new taxes, cuts in social welfare spending and higher debt service.

“Instead of improving education for Israel’s children — we will pay for the education of Gaza’s children,’’ Lapid said on X.

Nine western states — including the UK, Germany and France — rejected the Israeli security cabinet’s decision in a joint statement with the EU on Saturday, warning that it risked aggravating the “catastrophic humanitarian situation” in Gaza and endangering the Israeli hostages, and could violate international law.

We’re about to find out in a bizarre case that could alter not just the career of a CEO but also a one-time corporate jewel of American enterprise, a global industry, and what a previous Commerce Secretary has called “the most important piece of hardware in the 21^st century.”

The drama began on the morning of August 7, when President Trump posted a short statement on Truth Social: “The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you for your attention to this problem!” The post suddenly directed attention to a letter Senator Tom Cotton (R.-Ark.) had sent to Intel’s board chairman two days earlier. It said Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan “reportedly controls dozens of Chinese companies,” and a multinational company had recently pleaded guilty to violating U.S. export controls “under Mr. Tan’s tenure,” among other accusations. By day’s end, Tan had sent a letter to Intel employees saying, “There has been a lot of misinformation circulating about my past roles…. I have always operated within the highest legal and ethical standards,” and Intel had told the media, “We look forward to our continued engagement with the Administration.” The stock fell 5% on an up day for the market, another blow to Intel shareholders who had hoped—finally—that things might have hit bottom.

How Intel lost its edge

It would have been a one-day story if it weren’t about Intel, once the world’s biggest, most advanced maker of computer chips.

It’s decline began some 20 years ago, when the company made multiple acquisitions, many of which were in telecommunications and wireless technology. In concept, that made great sense. But acquiring businesses is a skill of its own, and David Yoffie, a Harvard Business School professor who was on Intel’s board of directors at the time, told Fortune “100% of those acquisitions failed. We spent $12 billion, and the return was zero or negative.”

Intel also tried unsuccessfully to grasp the mammoth cell phone opportunity. The company understood the opportunity and was supplying chips for the highly popular BlackBerry phone. The chips were designed by Arm, a British firm that designs chips but doesn’t manufacture them. Intel understandably preferred to make phone chips with its own architecture, known as x86. The company decided to stop making Arm chips and to create an x86 chip for cell phones—in retrospect, “a major strategic error,” says Yoffie. “The plan was that we would have a competitive product within a year, and we ended up not having a competitive product within a decade,” he recalls. “It wasn’t that we missed it. It was that we screwed it up.”

As years went by, simple poor management crept in. Intel kept missing new-chip deadlines and lost market share. The company gave up on smartphone chips. CEOs were replaced, but the production troubles continued until, by 2021, for the first time in Intel’s existence, its chips were two generations behind competitors’. Those competitors were Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung.

In crisis mode, Intel’s board brought back Pat Gelsinger, an engineer who had spent 30 years at Intel before leaving for 11 years to be a high-level executive at EMC and then CEO of VMware. As Intel’s CEO he announced an extraordinarily ambitious and expensive plan to reclaim the company’s stature as the world leader in chip technology. In February of this year, as the stock price fell, the board fired him and brought in Tan.

Despite it all, Intel is still crucially important because it’s the only U.S. company with the technology and know-how to make leading-edge chips in America–though it hasn’t actually done that in eight years. At the highest level of geopolitics, primacy in chips is central to power, and for the past eight years the world’s fastest, most valuable chips have been made only in Taiwan and South Korea. That’s why Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act with bipartisan majorities. It became law in 2022 and starting last year has sent billions of dollars to chipmakers, American and foreign, building new factories and other chip infrastructure in the U.S. Intel was allotted the most subsidies, about $8 billion plus loans, though the company hasn’t received most of the money, which is disbursed based on reaching project milestones.    

It’s as if the money came just a little too late. “Intel had a great opportunity,” says Gauvar Gupta, an analyst at the Gartner research firm. “They were getting all these subsidies from the government. But I think they just could not execute.” At that critical moment, poor performance was costly. “A year and a half ago there was still positivity with Intel,” says Alvin Nguyen, an analyst at the Forrester research firm. “Now, not as much. The negativity that’s hit them, it’s just snowballed.” 

Now suppose Tan were to step down as CEO. “Who wants that job?” asks Stacy Rasgon, a longtime tech analyst at Bernstein. He observes in a recent note that Tan “doesn’t ‘need’ to run Intel (he’s very wealthy and has a lot of other things to occupy his time)…. He clearly wants to do what is best for Intel…” But it’s unclear if resigning would be good or bad for the company, “especially with Trump’s crosshairs on his back.” Rasgon, speaking to Fortune, asks, “How do you attract somebody else into that spot?”

Getting Tan wasn’t easy. “The board took a while in finding the new CEO when [previous boss] Pat Gelsinger left,” says Gupta. “It took a long time to find a candidate willing to take control and lead the company in a direction.”

Nonetheless, Yoffie and three other former Intel directors argued in a statement to Fortune for a new company, a new board, and a new CEO, spinning off Intel’s manufacturing arm into an independent company to secure America’s chipmaking dominance.

Trump’s post puts himself at the center of a crucial conundrum for national security. Global dominance requires a reliable source of leading-edge chips. That’s why Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in 2024 said they’re “the most important piece of hardware….” The world’s largest producer of leading-edge chips by far, Taiwan’s TSMC, is building two fabs in Arizona, subsidized by the CHIPS Act, with more planned. “You can make the argument that the more capacity builds in Arizona, maybe the less we need Intel,” says Rasgon. But TSMC isn’t an American firm, and Nguyen says “the best technology from TSMC is definitely not coming to the U.S. at this time.”

Which leaves Intel. “They’re the only American company that can do it,” says Rasgon. “But Intel still has to prove they could deliver. They haven’t proven that.” Trump has shined a spotlight on the once-iconic company. But identifying problems and solving them are two very different matters, something Intel-watchers have known for going on two decades.