Music Majors in the Streaming Economy: Warner Music Group

In its last annual report Warner Music Group (WMG) exhibited a total revenue of US $3.58bn – the highest since the recorded music company was sold by Time-Warner to the Investor Group in 2003. Although overall costs also increased to US $3.15bn (WMG 2017: 38-39), the operating income is remarkably high with US $222m (WMG 2017: 40) especially compared to the disastrous results of the early 2000 years with annual losses of about 1 billion US$. The main driver of the revenue growth is the music streaming boom. In the recorded music segment streaming revenue increased by US $434m to US 1.34bn in the fiscal year ending on September 30, 2017. The music publishing segment contributed a further increase of US $58m of streaming revenue (WMG 2017: 36). Thus, WMG earned almost US $500m more with music streaming in 2017 compared to 2016. The further analysis highlights how the music major’s business model has shifted to the music streaming economy.

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The Blockchained Music Business – the Intermediaries’ Perspective

On March 3, 2017, an international workshop on “The Blockchained Music Business” was organized by the Department of Cultural Management and Gender Studies (IKM) of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and the Music Information Center Austria (MICA). Carlotta De Ninni (Mycelia for Music Foundation, London), Peter Jenner (Sincere Management, London) and Benji Rogers (PledgeMusic & Dot Blockchain Music, New York) were the workshop supervisors focusing on different aspects of the blockchain technology’s impact on the music business. In the second part of the workshop’s summary, we focus on the discussion of the workshop-group on the impact of blockchain technology on the music industry’s intermediaries that was supervised by Benji Rogers (PledgeMusic & Dot Blockchain Music, New York).