We think the environment for price increases has changed, and we are optimistic about continued pricing increases going forward, and that is additive, especially in developed markets. We think developed markets for subscription streaming has a lot of growth in front of it, and we’re really pleased with the potential and opportunity there. Emerging markets are growing even faster than developed markets. The penetrations across emerging markets on average are still single digits, and have the opportunity to grow into the 10s, 20s, and hopefully over time, even the 30s. Although the average ARPU is lower in emerging market, their rate of growth has increased, and we think has tremendous promise. We’ve also been investing at Warner into what we think are some of the most promising emerging markets.
Steve, in his talking points, talked about our investments in the Middle East, which in €˜21 was the world’s fastest growing market, growing, I believe, 35%, and we’re building our market share into that growth. So, we see emerging markets as being a real opportunity for subscriber growth, revenue growth, but also for us to develop real footholds and develop our market share and footprints. Ad-supporting has been more challenging in the short term. Remember before the macro environment was so challenging, ad-supported would grow in line double digits pretty consistently with subscriptions. But when macro environments get difficult, one of the first things that we’ve seen consistently gets – is affected negatively is ad-supported. We saw it when COVID hit in 2020, and we’re seeing it now.
The ad-supported market is in decline. Even though consumption of products go up, just monetization has gone down in the short term. When the macro environment starts to improve and economies start to improve, we would expect to see that improve and ad-supported to rebound strongly and go back to growth. We also see the emerging streaming category as one that is still in early stages, with more diversified revenue streams, increased number of partners and deals, and growth within many of the key partners within that category. So, we see – and Web3 as an emerging component. So, we see the emerging streaming bucket as one that is a continued growth area for us, noting that our deals, many of our deals in there are fixed price, that the growth is not consistent.
It can be lumpy, but over time, we see it as an extremely promising growth contributor. So, we see streaming as a very diversified form of growth now globally across subscription, social, fitness, Web3, and we’re very pleased with how it’s developing, and see it as an area that we’re really optimistic growth going forward. Thanks, Kutgun.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Laszczyk with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.
Stephen Laszczyk: Thank you. Good morning. Steve, congratulations on your retirement from Warner. Maybe two questions if I could. First, on market share, you had some notable releases, album releases in the back half of the fiscal year. Could you maybe talk a little bit more about how those impacted market share in the quarter? And then looking forward, how the release slate is shaping up relative to other major labels as we head into 2030. And then a follow up to Ben’s question on emerging, maybe for Eric. The labels are in the process of negotiating with ByteDance owners and looking to expand its regular service. It’d be great to get your latest thoughts on the opportunity you see to improve monetization of ByteDance at a holistic level, whether that’s on the TikTok side of the house or with the expansion of ByteDance itself. Thank you.
