warner blames music downloads for 58% drop in profit
Record labels are still pointing the finger at illegal filesharing as contributing to the dent in music-industry profits. Never mind that the whole scene is changing and these just can’t keep up.
Warner Music Group Corp reported a 58% drop in fourth quarter net income. The reason? Lost CD sales and the increase in illegal filesharing. Don’t think that Warner lost money — that’s not the case. All that’s happened is that the company has made less money. It still raked in $5 million in the fourth quarter.
CD sales are plummeting and there is speculation that digital-music sales are not increasing at a sufficient rate to make up for the lost revenue. Warner is trying to make the world spin backwards to make up its lost profits, but it faces an impossible task. The way people get their music is changing.
The fallout from this will likely see the RIAA, of which Warner is a member, step up in its campaign to bring filesharers to justice. Come on Warner, get with the times. How many more Jammie Thomases do we have to put up with?
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Gary Boggess 10Dec07
Someone please explain to me:
I am a musician & composer. I also own a recording studio. I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to record and produce my music over the last 25 years. The record label I was pitching my new CD to said they couldn’t assure profitable sales due to file sharing’s impact and resulting losses in sales due to people illegally obtaining (sharing) copies of their catalog music and uploading it online.
I’m a male… I don’t have T&A to sell at live concerts in order to make up for the theft of my music. I work as a composer… and record my own work. I do not have a band nor do I dance and look pretty on stage.
Someone please explain how you think it’s fair to musicians, composers, songwriters and artists that you essentially STEAL our product, our music, our hard work, and thus render it impossible for us to make a dime from sales? How would you like it if you went to work and at the end of two weeks, your boss told you that somebody stole your time cards, work logs etc… and therefore, YOU won’t be getting paid???
Howard Kaplan 13Dec07
Why do you feel you are entitled to recoup what it cost you to produce music? No one put a gun to your head and told you that was the way you had to make your living. If anyone in any other field could not profit from his work he would do something else. If you are in a business where you depend on selling multiple copies of your work, and there is no way to insure that people do not copy and share it, then you do something else. In a society where people can “own” series of air vibrations or electrons, the result is chilling and ends up being like the Soviet Union where people are criminals for listening to, thinking about or saying something that someone else “owns.”
Furthermore, I find it very unfair that artists continue to receive royalties on work. I am a dentist and when I put in a filling in a tooth, I do not continue to collect money from the patient each time he chews down on it. Nor can I sue another dentist if he creates a filling that looks like mine.
Stop whining and do something productive. Get a real job, and if you love music do it on the side. I don’t know where this “professional” musician thing came from. It seems musicians have always talked about wanting to express their emotions and pour out their souls in their music and all that crap, but of course, expect to be paid for it. There are things I love to do, but know that just because I like doing them doesn’t guarantee I will be compensated for them. I realize in the real world that I have to supply a product or service that others want to pay for. If somehow tomorrow people became able to do their own dentistry, I wouldn’t turn to the government to force them to use dentists–that’s totalitarianism. I would realize that times are changing and move on to something else.