Streaming Makes more Money than Downloads for Warner Music Group

For the first time Warner Music Group makes more money from streaming music than downloads the company revealed.

Apple’s last minute move into music streaming with the purchase of Beats was critical. Warner Music Group revealed in their earnings call for Q2 that streaming made them more money than downloads for the first time.

“We experienced significant revenue growth this quarter across key segments of our business – in particular Recorded Music, across the U.S. and international and across digital and physical – capping off a strong first half of our fiscal year” said Stephen Cooper, Warner Music Group’s CEO.  “Notably, in this quarter we saw continued growth in streaming revenue which surpassed download revenue for the first time in the history of our recorded music business.  Our commitment to being at the forefront of industry change as well as our ongoing investment in artist development is the foundation of our continued success.” 

Consumers move away from owning music to just consuming ad-hoc on streaming services. This must hurt Apple’s music sales on iTunes. Apple is expected to launch their music streaming service at the WWDC 2015 in June. At this point it is unclear how the company is going to compete with streaming services like Spotify.

Apple has released a new developer version of iOS 8.4 with new changes to the Music App, but the features for the Beats streaming service are still not there. Apple is also rumored to hit delays in negotiations with content providers. On top of that the government is watching closely on how Apple is structuring the deals in regards to anti-competitive rules.