MUMBAI: David Gilmour’s ‘Rattle that Lock’, Future’s ‘DS2’ and Maitre Gims’ ‘Mon Coeur Avait Raison’, were among the best-sellers for Sony Music Entertainment (SME), which witnessed a growth in sales and operating revenue by 15 per cent in Q2 2015 (ending on 30 September, 2015), compared to same quarter last year. The growth in this music division was reported by Sony Corporation amidst the 0.5 per cent decline in its overall business, from ¥1,901.5 billion in Q2 2014 to ¥1,892.7 billion in Q2 2015.

The music segment is comprised of the recorded music, music publishing and visual media and platform categories. As per the financials, recorded music witnessed an increase of 12.6 per cent, music publishing witnessed an increase of 8.1 per cent and visual media and platform reported a jump of 34.6 per cent. The growth in sales is attributed to an increase in visual media and platform sales reflecting higher live entertainment venue revenue and higher sales of animation products. In a six-month period of 2015, all three categories witnessed an increase of 13.2 per cent.

SME reported an increase in sales from ¥120.6 billion in Q2 2014 to ¥138.7 billion in Q2 2015, which is an increase of 15 per cent y-o-y (a 4 per cent increase on a constant currency basis).

Operating income increased from ¥12.2 billion year-on-year to ¥14.6 billion, which is an increase of 20 per cent, due to an improvement in product mix, reflecting an increase in digital streaming revenues.

The company decided to re-align its business segments from the first quarter of the fiscal year ending 31 March, 2016 to reflect modifications to its organisational structure as of 1 April, 2015, primarily repositioning certain operations in all other and the devices segment. As per the change, the operation of Sony’s disc manufacturing business in Japan, which were included in all other, is now included in the Music segment.

For the six-month period ending September 2015, “operating income includes ¥18.1 billion gain on the re-measurement to fair value of SME’s 51 per cent equity interest in Orchard Media, Inc., which had previously been accounted for under the equity method, as a result of SME increasing its ownership interest to 100 per cent, recorded in the music segment, as well as a gain of ¥12.3 billion yen from the sale of a part of the logistics business, in connection with the formation of a logistics joint venture, recorded in corporate and elimination.”

The forecasts for sales and operating income for music segment remains unchanged from the July forecast.