Epidemic Sound’s revenues jumped 29% to $181.6m in 2024, as EBITDA soared 150% YoY to $13.9m
Sweden-headquartered music manufacturing firm Epidemic Sound has revealed its annual report for 2024.
Monetary highlights from the report embody a 29% YoY leap in revenues, to 1.921 billion Swedish kronor, or USD $181.62 million on the common alternate 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 response to 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 “the most effective sound results firms on this planet.”
That acquisition means “our clients now profit from a choice 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 monitor created – what one would possibly 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 monitor, although it lately introduced that the underside finish of that vary is rising to $1,775.
This enterprise mannequin offers Epidemic the flexibility to say that it’s “the one firm on this house that totally owns its music, with 100% affiliate-free tracks and sounds… Content material creators of any dimension 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 business, the corporate stresses the varied methods during which it has expanded the share of the income pie going to artists through the years.
In 2015, when it started distributing its music to YouTube and music streaming providers, Epidemic applied a 50-50 cut 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 full bonus pool was $2.9 million, up from $2.5 million the 12 months earlier than.
“Epidemic Sound additionally offers artists the liberty to work below non-exclusive agreements and to have the ability to work on a number of tasks concurrently,” the corporate famous within the annual report.
The corporate additionally notes the rising reputation 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 monitor 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 are going to 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 additionally provide distinctive mentorship alternatives for rising inventive expertise and supply creators with an ever extra wealthy and various selection of music to encourage them,” Höglund wrote.
In a weblog put up final 12 months, the corporate laid out its strategy to AI, declaring that its plan is to make use of AI to assist artists quite than change them – a part of what it known as an “artist-centric” strategy to synthetic intelligence.
The corporate additionally confused that any use of AI must be centered on the wants of the top person of its music.
“We are going to keep laser-focused on person wants, creating additional AI-powered music discovery options and adaptive instruments,” Epidemic acknowledged. “Fixing actual issues for actual content material creators.”Music Enterprise Worldwide
