Domino Recording Company has reported its financial performance for the year ending August 31, 2020.
By the indie music company’s own admission, it was a quiet period in terms of releases from its most established artists. But the power of Domino’s back catalogue on DSPs – particularly from their biggest act, Arctic Monkeys – has delivered impressive results.
According to documents lodged at companies House, Domino has cash resources of £7.5m, up from £5.1m a year earlier.
While overall revenue was down 16.5% year-on-year to £15.1 million, the indie’s UK revenues increased by 4.8% year-on-year to £4.22m. Overall operating profit was down slightly to £1.75m (£1.88m in 2019).
“The weakness in the company’s new album release schedule was supported by strong back catalogue sales as a result of continued growth of streaming revenues globally,” stated the company’s strategic report.
During 2020, Domino secured three Arctic Monkeys catalogue albums in the Official Charts Company’s Top 200 sellers of the year, all of them driven by streaming consumption of between 83% and 85% of the total. The band also broke through a billion views on YouTube.
Leading the way on the OCC rankings, Arctic Monkeys’ 2013 album AM finished at No.43 with 100,192 sales in 2020 (total sales: 1,401,822), followed by 2006 debut LP Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not with 91,250 sales (total sales: 2,020,957). Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007) finished 2020 at No.131 overall with sales of 56,216 (total sales: 1,125,376).
Domino reached No.7 (689,794 units) in the OCC market shares for corporate groups last year based on the All Music (AES) metric, up from No.8 in 2019 and narrowly ahead of PIAS. Domino’s 0.5% market share was consistent with the previous year, as the indie’s rate of growth was not far off the overall streaming market increase.
The band’s 2020 album Live At The Royal Albert Hall, which has sold 37,101 copies, was released after Domino’s 2019-20 reporting period. It was one of the year’s biggest albums on vinyl.
According to the company’s financial statement, Domino’s catalogue sales as a percentage of overheads edged up a percentage point to 217%.
The indie had 47 staff members (46 in 2019) during the reporting period and released 34 albums (29 in 2019).
FOLLOW 
