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Streaming Surpasses CD Sales At Warner Music (ft.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the sign-of-the-times dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The times are a changin'. "Warner Music Group has become the first major record company to report that streaming has become its largest source of revenue, surpassing sales of physical formats such as CDs and vinyl," reports Financial Times. Last year, Warner's streaming revenue surpassed its sales for downloads. It goes to show just how much of an impact streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music are having on the music industry. Warner is the third-largest record company and has embraced streaming more quickly than the rest of the industry. "This rapid transformation is evidence of our ability to sign, develop and market artists that thrive in the streaming world," said Stephen Cooper, Warner's chief executive. The company reports that total recorded music revenue grew 10 percent to $610 million in the first three months of the year. Overall digital revenue increased 20 percent to $328 million, offsetting declines in physical formats like CDs.

5 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. You will own nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Rent your dwelling place.

    Rent your computer time in the cloud.

    Rent your media

    Rent your communications device.

    Rent your transportation unit..

    Rent everything.

    You own nothing.

    Slave.

    1. Re:You will own nothing by Feral+Nerd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Multi-terabyte hard drives are cheap. Fuck streaming. If I can't save it locally, I don't want it.

      True... why would I let Wall Street investment banks and the undead corpses of the old record labels leech money out of my wallet with streaming services and on top of that pay for the bandwidth that eats up when I can flip them a bird by having local copies.

    2. Re:You will own nothing by Gr8Apes · · Score: 3, Insightful

      None of my old CDs work anymore.

      What did you do with them? Use them as coasters? Play frisbee with them? I have disks dating back to at least 1986 that still play fine. One suffered disk rot and likely won't rip anymore (took quite a long time and a few attempts to fully rip a quality rip years ago), and a couple that have scratches when loaned but still play.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  2. Said differently... by popo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Warner Music Group becomes the first major music company to see physical media sales plunge to levels beneath streaming"

    --
    ------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
  3. Paying For Radio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You morons have been played by the record companies. They have shifted you from buying and owning physical product to paying for radio and owning nothing at all.

    They are pissing themselves with laughter as you throw money at them and proclaim "old" people to be luddites for not being streaming hipsters.