"Atlantic, a unit of Warner Music Group, says it has reached a milestone that no other major record label has hit: more than half of its music sales in the United States are now from digital products, like downloads on iTunes and ring tones for cellphones."

New York TImes

Yes but what are the total sales and earnings on those sales at Atlantic? A total fallacy surrounds this story. They wanted digital to exceed physical because that was the corporate speak coming out of WMG. The share price is now $2.98. says it all. A pyrrhic victory, indeed.

I'm reading the official figures from France for the first term of 2008 at the moment. The value of the industry has dropped 50% since 2003. More specifically, music sales (physical and digital combined) are down 13% on the previous year. Although digital sales are up nearly 70%, they still only represent... 6.2% of market share. So I have to question Warner's reporting on this.

In other news, singles are down 43% in volume and value; albums are down 9% in volume but 14% in value. Sales in supermarkets are down 24%, but "only" 4.5% in volume and 10% in value in specialised large retailers (such as Fnac presumably).

I could go on like this for 54 pages, the size of the report. It's pretty depressing.

The report does not include live music nor synch rights. The latter would make interesting reading - although the arrival of a large number of bargain-bin synch libraries is eating into that market too. By bargain bin, I mean libraries that are offering indie music at $300 instead of the previous going rate of $3000 (don't forget to take off 50% for their cut).

If anyone has some good news, it's perhaps the time to chip it in here.

Exactly Walter! The story is smoke and mirrors. If Julie Greenwald thinks they have it all figured out she is badly deluded. No matter what the digital percentage, until a major takes an unknown talent from this date (using 5 dots or 20 dots to connect the puzzle) forward and turns that act into a superstar, a major publishing windfall, and a significant sustainable live draw, its all bullshit.

As the back catalogue from heritage acts that has saved the majors asses starts to decline in revenue (and as a whole it will)the wheat will be separated from the chaff
as to articles like this (and executives trying to save their own asses)that serve no more than to fool the public as to its true meaning.