Atlantic records breaks digital sales barrier
p2pnet news view Music:- What a happy trio.
The pic on the right, showing rapper T.I., left, with Julie Greenwald, the president of Atlantic Records, and Craig Kallman, Atlantic’s chairman, is a clip from the John Shearer/Wireimage.Com shot published in the New York Times.
Subject? “Atlantic, a unit of Warner Music Group, says it has reached a milestone that no other major record label has hit,” says the story.
More than half of its music sales in the US, “are now from digital products” such as downloads and ring tones.
Atlantic’s sales would be hugely improved, of course, were it not front and centre among the various corporate music companies which are using the RIAA to try to sue their own customers into submission.
“With the milestone comes a sobering reality already familiar to newspapers and television producers,” says the story going on:
“While digital delivery is becoming a bigger slice of the pie, the overall pie is shrinking fast. Analysts at Forrester Research estimate that music sales in the United States will decline to $9.2 billion in 2013, from $10.1 billion this year. That compares with $14.6 billion in 1999, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
“As a result, the hope that digital revenue will eventually compensate for declining sales of CDs — and usher in overall growth — have largely been dashed.”
Could it be that if, when it first became evident the Net would become the principal vehicle for distribution, promotion, and marketing and sales, the insatiable lust of the Big 4, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG for immediate financial gratification cost them a diamond-studded opportunity?
Might it have been that, had they fully opened their catalogues, struck deals with the likes of Napster (the original, of course), introduced reasonable instead of outrageous wholesale rates to allow online music sites to sell corporate ‘product’ from within fair pricing structures, and treated their customers with respect instead of accusing them of being criminals and thieves, they might now be swimming in cash?
No need to stay tuned.
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New York Times – Digital Sales Surpass CDs at Atlantic, November 25, 2008
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November 26th, 2008 at 11:54 am
People, don’t buy music from Atlantic records!
They are litigators, not innovators, and are frequent guest on Recording Industry vs The People blog.
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=atlantic+records+site:recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com&sourceid=opera&num=100&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
November 26th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
I think that they are lying.
If they don’t I know some people that will become very impatient to see them die and act accordingly.
Do we have to wait until 2014 to see these parasites dead?
No way! We might need to undergo some military operation in there!
Soldiers. . .
November 26th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
…and now you know why the labels don’t want to pay the artist the same for digital downloads that they pay for physical media. They see this as a way to get a pay raise for funding.
Isn’t it funny? Writers get paid off digital but artists barely see anything. If that were not enough they also want the ability to deem a work a promotional and under that category have the right to pay absolutely nothing.
What amazes me is that they carried many of the charges for physical media that have no corresponding relation in digital downloads. What sort of material do you put on a digital download for packaging? Artists are charged for packaging in digital downloads so I’m really curious on that one.
November 27th, 2008 at 5:08 am
In reference to the first Reader’s Write, I’d agree.
And so does “Weird Al” Yankovic.