Sony Dominates 2025 Publisher Rankings With Hits by Leon Thomas, Kendrick Lamar & Alex Warren
The publisher finished at No. 1 on both the Hot 100 and Radio Airplay tallies last year, besting runner-up Warner Chappell by substantial margins.
Black News 
After sweeping the publisher rankings for the Hot 100 and Top Radio Airplay songs by ranking No. 1 on both charts in all four quarters, it’s no surprise that Sony Music Publishing comes in as the No. 1-ranked publisher for both those charts for the full year, thanks to a 28.33% market share for the Hot 100 and an even better 29.85% showing for Radio Airplay.
Probably the main reason Sony ranked as the top publisher for the year in 2025 is that it had stakes in 70 or more songs on both of the charts for three of the year’s four quarters. Its best showing came in the second quarter, when it had a share in 75 songs on the Hot 100 chart and 73 songs in that quarter’s Radio Airplay chart. Moreover, that quarter was one of two quarters — with the other being the third quarter — in which it topped the 30% market share marker for both charts. In the third quarter, it snared 30.90% for Radio Airplay and 33.88% for the Hot 100 — with the latter being the single highest market share performance Sony attained during the year.
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With regard to the publisher rankings, among Sony’s top-performing songs during the year were Leon Thomas’ “Mutt,” Alex Warren’s “Ordinary,” and Kendrick Lamar & SZA’s “Luther.” Other factors boosting Sony’s stellar year-long performance include having the top songwriter for both the Top Radio Airplay and Hot 100 charts in the third quarter and also coming in with the top songwriter on the fourth quarter’s Radio Airplay chart on its roster: Shane “sombr” Boose.
Also during the year, Sony absorbed a big chunk of the Hipgnosis song catalog when it struck a deal with Blackstone and became its administrator. Blackstone acquired the previously publicly-traded Hipgnosis Songs Fund in mid-2024, merged it with its privately owned Hipgnosis Songs Capital, and then rebranded those catalogs as Recognition Music in March 2025. Blackstone subsequently sold the Hipgnosis Songs Group administration platform and some publishing assets to Sony in June 2025 and made that company its main publishing administration partner.
While Sony’s eight percentage point spread in the Hot 100 rankings and seven percentage point spread in the Radio Airplay rankings show it would have been the No. 1 publisher for 2025 with its own song catalog alone, the addition of the Hipgnosis catalog boosted its overall percentage to attain that lofty spread. Indeed, in 2024, Hipgnosis made the top 10 publisher rankings for both the Hot 100 and Radio Airplay charts in every quarter, with its market share ranging from 1.59% (on the Hot 100 ranking in the first quarter of that year) to 4.36% (on the Radio Airplay ranking in the second quarter). In the first quarter of 2025, Recognition boasted a 1.83% share on the first quarter’s Hot 100 tally.
Coming in as the second-ranked music publisher for the full year for both the Hot 100 and the Radio Airplay charts is Warner Chappell Music, which was the only other music publisher besides Sony to surpass the 20% market share milestone on both charts. Its best showing in 2025 was on the Radio Airplay chart, where it garnered 22.50% for the full year, while it produced a 20.29% showing on the Hot 100 chart. Moreover, Warner Chappell managed to attain better than the 20% market share marker in seven of its eight opportunities during the year, only failing to reach that threshold on the Hot 100 chart in the fourth quarter, when it had a 16.92% share. Its best showing came in the third quarter, when it had a 22.32% share on the Hot 100 chart and a 23.67% share on the Radio Airplay chart.
Warner Chappell’s top songs during the year included “Die With A Smile” by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars, Alex Warren’s “Ordinary,” and “Doechii’s “Anxiety.” Meanwhile, it was the top-ranked publisher on Country Airplay, finishing the year with 31.02% — more than four percentage points higher than its closest rival, Sony, which garnered 26.76% on that chart in 2025.
Coming in as the No. 3 ranked publisher last year on both the Hot 100 and the Radio Airplay charts was Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), which garnered a 19.38% market share for the Hot 100 and 15.81% for Radio Airplay. UMPG’s best showing during the year came in the first quarter, when it tallied a 25.04% market share on the Hot 100 chart, enough to make it the No. 2 ranked publisher on the tally. Its top songs during the year included Taylor Swift’s “The Fate Of Ophelia,” Justin Bieber’s “Daisies,” Shaboozey’s “Good News,” and HUNTR/X: EJAE, Audrey Nuna & REI AMI’s “Golden.” Moreover, a UMPG songwriter — namely Drake — was named the top songwriter on both the Hot 100 charts and Top Radio Airplay charts in the second quarter, while in the first quarter Kendrick Lamar was the top songwriter on the Hot 100 and Taylor Swift was the top songwriter on the Hot 100 chart in the fourth quarter — a distinction she shared with two of her co-writers.
Kobalt, the No. 4 ranked publisher on both the Hot 100 and Radio Airplay charts in 2025, was the only other publisher to attain a double-digit percentage market share for the year, finishing with 11.9% on the former chart and 10.22% on the latter. Its best performance in 2025 came in the last quarter of the year, when it finished as the No. 2 publisher on the Hot 100 with a 21.43% share. Its top songs during the year included “Die With A Smile” by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars, “Doechii’s “Anxiety,” Shaboozey’s “Good News,” and Morgan Wallen’s “What I Want” featuring Tate McRae.
While BMG is usually the No. 5 ranked publisher and maintained its hold on that position for the full year, it bucked its traditional ranking in the third quarter, when it hit No. 4 on the Hot 100 ranking with a 12.75% share. Its top songs during the year included Shaboozey’s “Good News,” Kendrick Lamar & SZA’s “Luther,” HUNTR/X: EJAE, Audrey Nuna & REI AMI’s “Golden,” and “Die With A Smile” by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars. Overall, BMG scored 5.61% market share on the Radio Airplay chart and 6.91% on the Hot 100 for the year.
Three publishers appear in the second half of the Top 10 publishers rankings on both charts: Pulse, Position and Concord. The latter enjoyed the best performance, coming in at No. 6 on the Radio Airplay ranking and at No. 7 on the Hot 100 with a market share of 1.71% and 1.14%, respectively. What’s more, its separately operated joint-venture with Pulse finished at No. 8 on the Radio Airplay ranking with a 1.13% share and at No. 10 on the Hot 100 ranking with 0.64%, just beating out the No. 11-slotted peer music’s 0.63% showing on the Hot 100.
If Concord and Pulse’s market share was consolidated, it would have been the No. 6 publisher on the Hot 100 ranking with 1.78%. However, its combined 2.84% in Radio Airplay market share would still leave it in the No. 6 spot on that ranking.
As for the other publisher to make both charts, Position Music was boosted by having three songs from the Benson Boone catalog, all its top-performing tunes last year: “Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else,” “Beautiful Things” and “Mystical Magical.” It finished at No. 8 on the Hot 100 and No. 9 on Radio Airplay for the year.
Rounding out the Top 10 publisher rankings on the Hot 100 was St. Nicholas Music, which came in No. 6 based solely on its fourth quarter showing, when the Christmas songs of the late Johnny Marks made their annual revisit on the charts; and Reservoir, which ranked at No. 9 thanks to a strong performance in the first quarter when its top song was Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso.”
On the Radio Airplay ranking, Big Machine Music came in at No. 7 with 1.17% for the year, thanks to its strong third quarter performance with a 1.75% tally, when Russell Dickerson’s “Happen To Me” was its top song; and Spirit Music Group, which ranks No. 10 with a 1.07% share when its various catalogs are consolidated — just beating out the No. 11-ranked Me Gusta Music with a 1.06% share.
METHODOLOGY
In order to come up with an annual publisher ranking, Billboard added together the Hot 100 point totals for each publisher for each of the four quarters, then divided each publisher’s point total by the Hot 100 point totals for all four quarters combined, to come up with each publisher’s market share for the year. Billboard did the same for the radio airplay rankings, adding up each publisher’s song detections for the year for the top 100 songs in each quarter and then dividing their respective totals by the total play detections for the Top 100 songs from all four quarters.
To determine the top 10 publishers on the Top Radio Airplay chart, percentage calculations were based upon the overall top 100 detecting songs electronically monitored by Mediabase (which provides data to Luminate for Billboard’s airplay charts) at: 3,066 U.S. radio stations in the first quarter and second quarters; 3,133 stations in the third quarter; and 3022 stations in the fourth quarter. Monitoring was done 24 hours a day, seven days a week for each of the successive four calendar quarters for the year beginning Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, 2025.
To determine the top 10 publishers on Hot 100 Songs, percentage calculations were based upon the top 100 songs for each quarter as ranked by Billboard Hot 100 points calculated from digital sales, streaming and radio airplay detections tracked by Mediabase (which provides data to Luminate for Billboard’s airplay charts) during the respective periods of: Dec. 27, 2024 to March 27, 2025, reflecting the chart dates of Jan. 11 to April 5; March 28 to June 26, reflecting the chart dates of April 12 through July 5; June 27, 2025, to Oct. 4, 2025, reflecting the chart dates of July 12, 2025 through Oct. 4, 2025; and Sept. 25 to Dec. 25, 2025, reflecting the chart dates of Oct. 11, 2025, to Jan. 3, 2026. Publisher information for musical works on both charts has been identified by the Harry Fox Agency. A “publisher” is defined as an administrator, copyright owner and/or controlling party.
