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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.

4 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. 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. Re:Apple by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're tied to their proprietary products and codecs.

    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.