“At a recent conference in New York City, Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman said he wanted to lead the music industry with ‘innovation, not litigation.’ It was litigation, though, that led to the fourth-quarter profit his company reported Friday,” Nat Worden reports for TheStreet.com.
Worden reports, “Thanks to a $13 million gain from a lawsuit against online file-sharing service Kazaa, Warner Music was able to record a profit of $12 million, or 8 cents a share, for the period ending Sept. 30. That marks a reversal from last year’s loss of $30 million, or 21 cents a share.”
“Excluding the settlement, the music company recorded a loss of a penny a share, missing Wall Street’s expectations for a break-even performance on this basis, according to reported by Thomson First Call,” Worden reports.
“On the top line, Warner’s fourth-quarter revenue dropped 5.6% from a year ago to $854 million. Analysts were looking for revenue of $893 million. Once again, the company showed strong growth in digital music sales, which comes mostly from online downloading services like Apple’s iTunes. Warner’s digital revenue rose 13% from the third quarter and 96% from last year to $102 million, but that segment makes up only 12% of total revenue,” Worden reports.
Worden reports, “Digital sales growth reflects Warner’s ongoing efforts to shift its business model to fit the changes in music consumption around the world that is being wrought by the Internet… music companies like Warner are wrestling with the threat to their longtime marketing practice of bundling music content into albums.”
Worden reports, “By selling entire albums, record labels could extract more money from consumers who wanted to own a single song from an album. ‘Typically, consumers are really only interested in owning one or two tracks from any particular CD,’ says Phil Leigh, senior analyst with Inside Digital Media. ‘So, in actuality, they were spending $10 to $15 for just a couple of songs.’ On music downloading sites, like iTunes, consumers can now buy single tracks at a time for $1. ‘The major recording companies are terrified of what this will do to their revenue,’ says Leigh.”
Full article here.
We wonder if Middlebronfman still dreams of a slice of revenue from each iPod, regardless of whether the iPod plays Warner content or not? You can guess the answer to that one: the music labels never met a revenue stream, real or imagined, that they didn’t love with every ounce of their shriveled, black hearts. Middlebronfman probably salivates every time he reads about Microsoft’s capitulation to Universal with their ill-conceived Zune (even though a cut of each Zune sold won’t amount to a hill of beans). As we’re fond of saying, “Eliminate the middlebronfman!” Apple isn’t the problem. Apple is the solution.
Related articles:
Warner’s Middlebronfman: ‘We sell our songs through iPods, but we don’t have share of iPod revenue’ – October 05, 2005
Warner CEO Bronfman: Apple iTunes Music Store’s 99-cent-per-song model unfair – September 23, 2005
Music managers unhappy with Apple over artist’s royalty payments – October 03, 2005
