Call it the calm before the Taylor Swift storm. The first three quarters of this year — which span Dec. 31, 2024, through Oct. 2, 2025 — effectively function as a report card for the record business before the inevitable takeover of the superstar’s Life of a Showgirl album, which came out Friday (Oct. 3). The album immediately sold 2.7 million copies on its first day, which would already make it the second-biggest album of the year to date — but that’s not under discussion just yet.
Even without the new Swift release, her label home REPUBLIC — which encompasses Republic Records, Island Records, Mercury Records, Big Loud and indie distributor Imperial — is still leading the pack for the year so far, with a 13.60% three-quarter current market share, powered by huge albums from Morgan Wallen, Sabrina Carpenter and The Weeknd, among others. It’s a jump from the industry-leading 12.69% current share Republic enjoyed at midyear, though down from the Swift-powered 15.21% it posted through three quarters in 2024, when her The Tortured Poets Department album spent 17 of its eventual 19 weeks atop the Billboard 200.
Keeping Republic high pre-Showgirl are the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack and continued gains from Big Loud (2.71%, up from 1.42%) and Island (2.68%, up from 2.15%). The former was driven by Wallen’s continued success, the latter a remarkable jump considering that 2024 was a big breakout year with Carpenter and Chappell Roan. Clearly, the label continued firing on all cylinders.
In second once again is Interscope Geffen A&M (IGA), inclusive of Verve Label Group, which ended the third quarter with a 10.43% current market share. That’s up from the 10.13% IGA held at the same mark in 2024 and is boosted by chart-topping albums from Lady Gaga and Playboi Carti this year, plus the continued success of Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft and Kendrick Lamar’s GNX, both from last year. By song consumption units, Lamar and SZA’s “luther” remains the biggest song of 2025 so far, and IGA’s current share has come down from its Q1 high of 12.67% as the song has receded.
Making the biggest jump in the third quarter is the Atlantic Music Group, at a 7.83% current share, though that mark comes with some caveats that make it difficult to compare with past quarters. Most significant: This is the first quarter that Luminate’s market share numbers reflect Atlantic’s reorganization, which moved 10K Projects and its 1.52% current market share under Atlantic for the first time. (Atlantic’s share also includes 300 Entertainment, which was included in previous quarters.) That helps explain Atlantic’s jump from 5.75% at the midyear 2025 mark (and 5.51% from Q3 2024), though it also enjoyed a huge third quarter. Subtracting 10K’s performance for comparison purposes, Atlantic’s 7.28% for the period from June 26 through Oct. 2 reflects Alex Warren’s summer of success with “Ordinary” and chart-topping albums from Twenty One Pilots and Cardi B.
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Warner Records, which ranked fourth, maintained its strong position over the past few years, posting a 6.13% current share, though it was down year over year from 6.54% last year. (Warner’s share includes some of Warner Latin, Warner Nashville and catalog label Rhino.)
Atlantic’s growth has benefited the Warner Music Group overall, boosting its current share at the nine-month mark to 16.83%, up from 16.25% at this point in 2024. That’s still far behind Sony Music Entertainment’s second-place showing: The label grew year over year — from 25.89% to 26.65%, with help from a Bad Bunny bump. And Universal Music Group (UMG) remained No. 1, although despite its top two labels boasting double-digit shares of their own, the absence of a Swift album during the period contributed to the music company’s year-to-year current share slip to 35.96% from last year’s 36.65%. (That, of course, will change soon.) By distribution ownership, the indie community is down from 21.21% last year to 20.55% this year, while by label ownership, the indie community stands at 39.43%, up from a 37.09% share in 2024, easily the largest segment of the industry.
Sony’s benefited from owning at least a majority stake in five of the six labels that round out the top 10. At No. 5 is Columbia Records, with a 4.54% current share, up slightly from the 4.41% it held this time last year. For the same comparative period, RCA dropped one slot to seventh and 4.31% to 4.22%; Alamo Records, in eighth place, vaulted from 1.86% to 2.54%, inclusive of its indie distributor Santa Anna; and Sony Latin (2.11%) and Sony Nashville (1.83%) finished ninth and 10th. In sixth place was UMG’s Capitol Music Group, which includes Virgin Music, Quality Control/Motown, Astralwerks, Blue Note and Capitol Christian Music Group, and scored 4.31% of the market, up from 4.04%. (The Interscope Capitol Labels Group, or ICLG, accounts for 14.74% of current share in total.)
In terms of overall market share — inclusive of current and catalog releases — UMG was essentially unchanged at 38.46% for the first three quarters of this year vs. 38.47% for the same period last year. Inching up were Sony (27.63%, from 27.25%) and Warner Music (18.97% from 18.42%). That came at the expense of the indies, which dropped from 15.85% to 14.94% by distribution ownership. Among the individual labels, REPUBLIC (10.08%) narrowly edged out Interscope (10.00%) for first place, with Atlantic Music Group (8.50%) and Warner Records (7.04%) just behind. At 5.88%, Capitol Music Group jumped to fifth, beating out Columbia’s 5.33%, while RCA (5.10%), Epic Records (2.47%), Sony Nashville (2.01%) and Concord (1.77%) rounded out the top 10.
Among catalog share — titles older than 18 months — Interscope takes the title, coming in at 9.86%, down slightly from its industry-leading 9.93% at this point last year, but still maintaining its top slot. REPUBLIC, at 8.98%, beat out Atlantic Music Group’s 8.71% for second place, with each label improving a bit year over year. From there, Warner Records (7.33%), Capitol Music Group (6.37%), Columbia Records (5.57%) and RCA Records (5.37%) follow, while Epic Records (2.73%), Concord (2.07%) and Sony Nashville (2.06%) make up the top 10.
