Sirius Satellite Radio said on Monday that retail sales since the Thanksgiving weekend have been less than it expected and it now sees 5.9 million to 6.1 million subscribers by year’s end.
“This year’s retail sales results since the Thanksgiving weekend have not been at the pace we had anticipated,” Sirius Chief Executive Mel Karmazin said in a statement.
Bottom Line: will people pay for radio?
Warner Music home to artists including Madonna and James Blunt, reported a fourth-
quarter profit on a gain from a legal settlement. Revenue fell as album sales declined. New releases from groups including Danity Kane and Mana failed to match last year’s recordings from Blunt and Faith Hill. CEO Edgar Bronfman boosted more profitable digital sales, which almost doubled to 12.2 percent of revenue. Music companies look to sales from downloads, cell phones and online videos to make up for falling CD revenue.
“Revenue was a little lighter than expected,” said Eric Handler, a Lehman Bros. analyst who rates the stock “neutral” and doesn’t own it. “Digital was quite strong — they’re outpacing the market on that,” Handler said. He said CD sales were “quite weak.”
Without the $13 million gain from a lawsuit against online file-sharing service Kazaa, the company lost $1 million
(reporter, Don Jeffrey )
 Russia is known not to act out on its claims.
Sony BMG’s director of digital services, Gavin Parry, was one of the few industry executives to talk publicly this week.
“It has been pretty erratic,” he says of physical sales this year. “Some months have been down 10 per cent and other have been down 30 per cent. Globally there are some indications that digital isn’t replacing the void but for Sony BMG, it is. We are up. If people are sitting back waiting for iTunes to fix it, they’re in strife.”
Read the article in Digital Music.
Steve Gordon the author of The Future of The Music Business and the former Director of Business Affairs at Sony TV and Video has this to say……..
Gordon is skeptical that musicians will ever see a dime of money from Microsoft’s “royalty” payment. He writes, “Although this pattern of not paying artists for digital music sales is dreadful, the chances of artists seeing anything from the royalty placed on Zune is even worse. There is nothing in the standard recording agreement that says the labels must share income derived from licensing digital devices. Labels are only responsible for paying for exploitation of music, not licensing electronic devices. So why would the labels share anything with the artists when they already disregard clauses in the recording agreements that would benefit the artists?”