While the music industry organizations continue to pretend that the courts decide the path of technology evolution, risking moreover to take unprecedented blows, the recording labels take note of an historic first. Atlantic Records, a label owned by the multinational Warner Music Group, has actually announced that more of the half of music sales in the United States (51%) come from the digital market in its several forms.

Having published artists like Ray Charles, John Coltrane and, more recently, the Ben Gibbard‘s indie band Death Cab for Cutie, Atlantic is the first of the industry big names to state to have delivered more tracks on iTunes, ring tones and web streaming than CD-Audio. After 10 years from the Napster phenomenon appearance, the New York Times recalls, at least in one case digital delivery has become the privileged tool for doing business and, hence, making profits in the recording market.

The analysts state to be surprised by the Atlantic esteems, and they continue to foresee that the industry on its whole won’t be able to largely count on digital if not after some years. WMG itself, contrariwise to Atlantic, barely gets 18% of its total revenue in the States from on-line sales. Meanwhile the majors are constantly pursuing new sources of income to recover the losses of the CD market, whose drop isn’t apparently filled up by a proportional growth in digital sales.

According to the Forrester Research figures, the “traditional” music market will drop down to a 9.2 billions of dollars value in 2013 from the 10.1 billions of this year and from the almost distant 14.6 billions of 1999. “It’s not at all clear that digital economics can make up for the drop in physical“, states the former EMI exec John Rose now turned into an analyst, and it’s for this reason that the labels hopes are currently aimed toward those “secondary” channels like concert tickets and the merchandising nourished by artists.

Forrester Research foresees that digital music will reach 50% of the majors revenues pie not before 2011, and meanwhile compact discs still made up for two thirds of total sales. The Atlantic Records result could be a case apart hard to achieve in the medium term particularly considering that, in a direction opposite to the general trend, the label states to have not seen any drop in its CD-Audio sales.

Similar posts: