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That figure was inconceivable when Grainge took over the top job at Universal in 2011 (just two years later, Vivendi rejected an $8.5 billion bid from Softbank for UMG), a time when the music business was approaching its nadir, shaken by a digital revolution that passed it by and not yet rescued by a streaming model that would bring it back to profitability.

As of press time, UMG’s valuation stands at $53.9 billion. Universal’s direct listing was a watershed moment for both the world’s biggest music company and the industry at large, signaling a new era in the value of music as a financial asset. “But I can assure you, because of the time difference, that when we got home at about 2:30 in the morning, we all slept well.” “I had the entire corporate team with me, all the people that had really done the heavy lifting on the work for the listing, and it was very exciting,” Grainge says. Ultimately, Grainge and his team trudged to a Santa Monica, Calif., studio to livestream the ceremony at midnight local time, with one festive addition: a gong that executive vp/chief business administrator Will Tanous had airfreighted in. “There had been a lot of debate right up until probably a week before as to whether we’d actually be able to fly to Amsterdam for the listing ceremony,” says Sir Lucian Grainge, chairman/CEO of UMG.

But for Universal Music Group, which went public through a direct listing on the exchange in September, the Dutch government’s COVID-19 rules forced a rethink of the usual celebration. The Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange, which traces its roots back to 1602, has a tradition of inviting corporate executives celebrating particular milestones - an initial public offering, a merger - to its trading floor to bang a gong, announcing the opening or closing of the day. We look forward to the wide-scale return of concerts - especially for the sake of all the artists and professionals whose livelihoods depend on them - and we applaud the touring leaders on this list who’ve worked tirelessly to support their clients, customers and employees during such troubled times. Touring executives lost some of their swagger on this year’s list as a result, while the talent agencies consolidated: Creative Artists Agency announced plans to acquire ICM, UTA grabbed the United Kingdom’s Echo Location Talent Agency and expanded its ranks and roster, and Casey Wasserman launched a new agency force - Wasserman Music - after acquiring Paradigm.

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It was another tough year for the live-music business, of course, as the pandemic persisted and threw wrench after wrench in plans to restart it at full throttle. KKR closed a deal to buy Kobalt Music Royalty Fund II Blackstone bought a stake in Merck Mercuriadis’ Hipgnosis Song Management, while earmarking an additional $1 billion to buy music for a separate, private fund and Apollo committed $1 billion to help Sherrese Clarke Soares’ new HarbourView Equity Partners buy assets like recording and publishing rights. Meanwhile, three of the world’s biggest private equity firms - KKR, Blackstone and Apollo Global Management - placed billion-dollar bets on music in the fall. Music’s new investors became power players in their own right, too, such as billionaire Bill Ackman, whose investment entities had purchased 10% of Universal by September. They also bought back rights to many of their catalogs, both recordings and publishing, in some cases paying a premium for rights they had previously given back to creators in exchange for extending their contracts so they can control more of the music that will drive returns for decades to come.

Universal Music Group's Sir Lucian Grainge Tops Billboard's 2022 Power ListĪll three major music groups soared as they raked in record-breaking revenue of their own and snapped up some of the indie world’s strongest labels.

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