The financial reporting of the two independent record majors, EMI and Warner Music, show that there is still an awful lot wrong in the record industry. EMI issued an interim statement saying that music revenue was down 13.4% and total revenues were off over 5%, while Warner revenues were off 5% in total, 6% for music, at constant currency, in line with EMI overall.
There was a 20% slump in the Warner share price over the few days leading up to its results, with analysts questioning whether or not it was big enough to keep up with Sony BMG and Universal, now that no merger is likely with EMI.
Both companies showed big increases in digital revenues with EMI up by 26% as physical revenues fell 19.8%, stimulated perhaps by the launch of the iTunes DRM free EMI products
At Warner, digital download revenue increased by an even more impressive 29 % to $119 million now making up 15% of he total $804 million quarterly revenue.