MPs and music industry bodies have criticised the pay of Sir Lucian Grainge, chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group (UMG), who is set to earn more in 2021 than all UK songwriters did combined from streams and sales of their music in 2019.
Grainge’s pay this year is buoyed by one-off cash bonuses that total an estimated £123m, following UMG’s successful stock market flotation in September, and the sale of an additional 10% stake of UMG to Chinese company Tencent.
They could push his total earnings for 2021 over £150m, the figure that the Intellectual Property Office, a UK government body, calculated, using average royalty rates, that UK composers and lyricists earned in 2019 from streaming, downloads and sales.
Conservative MP Esther McVey
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