Streaming surge drives double-digit revenues at Warner Music Group.
Today, (May 6th) Warner Music Group released their Q2 financials showing double-digit revenue growth. The company’s revenue increased by a massive 10% — or a 13% increase excluding currency exchange — which totals revenue of $745 million.
The company — which is the third largest in the music business — says that its second quarter growth was fueled by a surge in streaming. In a statement, Stephen Cooper, CEO of Warner Music Group broke it down:
“We are now the first major music company to report that streaming is the largest source of revenue in our recorded music business, surpassing our revenue from physical formats… and this new milestone comes only four quarters after our streaming revenue first topped our download revenue.”
Cooper also added that the company’s streaming revenue on recorded music increased by a massive 59% in the quarter.
”This rapid transformation is evidence of our ability to sign, develop and market artists that thrive in the streaming world.”
Last month, the RIAA announced that for the first time ever, streaming made up the largest component of the total U.S music industry revenue in 2015, marking a major milestone for the format. Streaming now accounts for 34.3% of the pie.
But is streaming saving the broader recording business? Streaming is definitely adding a sizable amount of revenue to the music industry, and the notion that it is driving the industry’s growth is something that Spotify’s Daniel Ek is consistently proclaiming. Ek said…“now, finally, after years and years of decline, music is growing again” and ”streaming is behind the growth in music.”
This is difficult to disprove when more and more companies in the music industry report growth in streaming and an increase in revenue as a result.
(Image by Warner Music Group, Creative Commons)
…”a new milestone” to $25B STREAMING & ADVERTISING music mud puddle!
Hey labels, HAVE some BALLS, say NO to YouTube and Google and start $200B discovery based music industry!
START with conversion of over 100,000 global Radio stations to primitive, farm market style music stores! One million dollars per station per year (DORK GOAL) will give you $100 billion dollar music business before 2020.
BE A MEN or step down!
Death to streaming! Long live streaming!
whatever
Wait… what is considered “streaming”? What about all those “streaming” videos on YT with their content? Or the “streaming” through soundcloud. They need to clarify what “streaming” is AND what/where the platform that is driving their sales.
How to save the financials in the record business.
1. stop all free “full play” music streaming
2. focus on paying customers.. iTunes and Apple Music
and Spotify premium.
3. Use YouTube to promote but not to giveaway your content.
This is a business afterall .. it’s fine for all those who are in bed (financially) with Spotify but for everyone else you’re going to be disadvantaged if you buy into the corporate spiel.
AppleMusic and Spotify premium are hopeless too!
At $9.99 i US and $2 in China 500 million subs makes only $36B dollars.
That 500M will never happen.
Inflation adjusted 1999 CDs = $67B today.
We can convert Radio to $100B music store before 2020 Pandora and XM would do $10B in first year.
STOP
& RESTART music NERDLAND.
Looking and listening to Pandora last 1/2 hour if they would not display who play I would have spend at least $4 at 49¢ per addition to the playlist. Go ahead and steel Seconds / Ghost Loft – brilliant.
Just google: ghost loft seconds youtube and take the ownership!
I agree with this. It’s not this complicated except for one thing… ADVERTISING MONEY.
That’s the reason why streaming exists in the first place. In the past, the labels used to BLOCK streaming as soon as they could find it.
The labels are making the most money off the advertising. The bigger the numbers the higher the pay rate. But we don’t know what kind of contracts they have with the advertisers.
Only a record company would champion this as amazing growth. They made a profit of $11M down from $18M…Full numbers here : http://news.sys-con.com/node/3801161