“Warner Music Group, the world’s third-largest music company, on Thursday posted a fall in quarterly profit, hurt by an industry-wide slump in sales as more fans choose to buy songs online rather than physical albums,” Yinka Adegoke reports for Reuters.
“Warner’s net profit fell to $5 million, or 3 cents a share in its fiscal fourth quarter, from $12 million, or 8 cents a share, a year ago,” Adegoke reports.
“Sales of digital music at Warner were up 25 percent at $130 million during the quarter but this could not make up for the short-fall in CD sales,” Adegoke reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Because, thanks to Apple, music fans now get to choose the songs they want to buy and are no longer stuck buying them bundled with filler on an overpriced plastic disc. Welcome to the brave new world of consumer choice, Middlebronfman. The days (decades, actually) of artificially-inflated profits are over. You’ll actually have to do some work now. Imagine that.
Adegoke continues, “U.S. album sales are down 14 percent year on year, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan, as more fans choose to buy music as individual songs through online stores such as Apple Inc’s iTunes, or resort to using free file-sharing services to get music.”
MacDailyNews Take: And the more the music cartels withhold their music (or higher-quality, DRM-free music) from iTunes in misguided (and, quite possibly, illegal) attempts to break Apple’s dominance, more people will resort to using free file-sharing services, as opposed to — sorry to dash the hopes and dreams of coke-addled cartel dinosaurs the world over — signing up for unending music subscription services.
Adegoke continues, “Warner Music stock is down nearly 70 percent since the start of the year as evidence of a faster-than-expected deterioration in music sales has become more clear to investors.”
MacDailyNews Take: Gee, that’s too bad, huh? Offer your music in higher quality, DRM-free form via Apple’s iTunes Store, Warner et al., and you’ll sell more music. Here comes the ground guys, pull up before it’s too late.
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