Publisher’s Quarterly: Sony/ATV Widens Lead as Nearest Competitors Lose Ground in Q3

For the fourth quarter in a row, Sony/ATV Music Publishing is No. 1 in Billboard’s publisher rankings of the top 100 radio songs during the third quarter of 2018. The company placed 57 titles in the top 100, down one from the 58 it had in the second quarter. It also held a share in the quarter’s top song, Maroon 5’s “Girls Like You,” as did Kobalt Music Group, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner/Chappell Music, BMG and Pulse Music.

Kobalt retained the No. 2 spot for a second quarter in a row, placing 36 songs in the top 100 (17.53 percent), down from the share of 40 tracks (19.06 percent) that it had in the previous quarter. UMPG held on to No. 3, with a share in 53 of the third quarter’s top 100 songs, one more than last quarter even as its market share fell from 17.21 percent to 16.16 percent. UMPG’s share has dipped five quarters in a row, as has that of Warner/Chappell, which, at No. 4, also had a share in one more title (52) than last time and was the top publisher of country songs, with 25.23 percent.

At No. 5, BMG managed to improve its market share to 8.65 percent from last quarter’s 6.54 percent. It also added a song to its top 100 airplay songs showing, finishing with a stake in 26 songs during the third quarter. Round Hill Music, with 1.93 percent and eight songs in the top 100 songs; and Pulse Music Group, with 1.83 percent and 5 songs in the top 100 songs, ranked, respectively No. 6 and No. 7.

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Meanwhile, Reservoir and Big Machine, ranked No. 8 and No. 9, respectively, return to the top 10 rankings; the former had a one-quarter absence, while the latter missed two in a row. Reservoir’s top song was Drake’s “In My Feelings,” while Big Machine’s top song was Jason Aldean’s “Drowns The Whiskey,” the No. 26 song for the quarter, which featured Miranda Lambert.

Max Martin was the top songwriter for the quarter, co-writing four of the top 100: Taylor Swift’s “Delicate” (No. 4), Ariana Grande’s “No Tears Left to Cry” (No. 6) and “God Is a Woman” (No. 47), and Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” (No. 93).

This article originally appeared in the Nov. 3 issue of Billboard.