Slashdot Mirror
Streaming Surpasses CD Sales At Warner Music (ft.com)
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.
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.
"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 : )
I sold my 400+ CD collection in ~2001 and haven't looked back.
I ripped my CD collection and stored it in the cellar. Eventually I'll probably throw it away since it's probably not worth enough money to pay for the gasoline I would burn driving to the nearest flea market and who wants CD's these day anyway. Show a CD to somebody under twenty and they look at you as if you just asked them to prepare their own food by skinning a deer with a flint hand axe and roasting the raw meat over a fire in the back yard instead of just eating the food that magically appears in the fridge every day. Having said that I wonder how long it will take before one has to pirate streaming services to get one's own no-strings-attached offline copies because all of the musicians are locked up in 'streaming only' contracts and are getting fucked over even worse by the streaming services than they were with the record labels? Hearing indie musicians talk their music seems to have become a promotional tool they use to sell vinyl records and T-shirts and tote bags and occasionally to generate a windfall of real money from live performances. Nobody except Wall Street banks and the old record labels who own the streaming services is making tons money off of streaming.
If we're talking about music, it's not an "Apple proprietary codec" at all, it's AAC.
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates.
AAC has been standardized by ISO and IEC, as part of the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 specifications. Part of the AAC known as High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) which is part of MPEG-4 Audio is also adopted into digital radio standards like DAB+ and Digital Radio Mondiale, as well as mobile television standards DVB-H and ATSC-M/H.
If you have a device that cannot play AAC audio files in 2016, it's time to upgrade. Even an old Nintendo DSi from SEVEN YEARS AGO can play these files.
Apart from that, I do agree with most of what you said. If Apple continues on their current path, they're doomed. And I say that as a Mac/iPod/iPhone user.
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.