Warner Music claims a net loss of $17 million…….
Warner Music Group posted a wider third- quarter loss because of expenses tied to job cuts and a drop in compact disc sales. Revenue from recorded music fell 3.7 percent in the quarter as albums by Linkin Park and Michael Buble didn’t drive sales as much as new releases from Red Hot Chili Peppers, James Blunt and T.I. a year earlier. Increased sales of downloaded music and mobile-phone ringtones failed to make up for the decline in CDs.
The international recorded music decline was worse than we expected,” Tuna Amobi, an equity analyst at Standard & Poor’s in New York, said in an interview.
“The market expected a price from us we could not justify,” Bronfman said on a conference call today.
Digital revenue alone gained 29 percent to $119 million, accounting for 15 percent of total sales compared with 11 percent a year earlier.
Warner made deals during the quarter with companies including Joost.com and Snocap to put videos online and sell downloads. Warner also created a unit, Den of Thieves, to make original music programming to promote artists on TV and the Internet and on mobile devices. Warner also made a $110 million investment in Frontline Management, a talent agency run by Irving Azoff, in order to diversify its revenue. (Don Jeffrey; Bloomberg)
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