Warner Music Group has posted a fiscal Q4 profit helped by gains from litigation against online music service Kazaa, but sales fell due to a weak release schedule compared with a year ago. Profits were $12 million compared with a year-earlier loss of $30 million. Excluding the $13 million Kazaa litigation gain, the company posted a loss of 1 cent per share. Revenues fell 5.6 percent to $854 million from $905 million a year earlier.
On the digital side, sales nearly doubled to $104 million both in online downloads and mobile music sales and now accounts for 12.2 percent of total revenue.
On conference call, Edgar Bronfman Jr. said: “I certainly think that more than half of music revenues will be digital in a relatively short period of time..I don’t know whether that’s three years or five years, but it’s coming and it’s coming rapidly.”
Release: Music digital revenue of $97 million grew 106% over the prior-year quarter and represented 13.3% of total Recorded Music revenue. Domestic Recorded Music digital revenue amounted to $68 million or 18.5% of total domestic Recorded Music revenue. Digital revenue from Music Publishing amounted to $7 million, which represents 5.5% of total Music Publishing revenue for the quarter.
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