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Posts Tagged “Warner Music Group”

"New York-based Warner Music Group Inc. lost $37 million, or 25 cents per share, compared with a smaller year-ago loss of $27 million, or 19 cents. Losses from continuing operations total 23 cents per share in the latest period." The company is also suspending its dividend payments in order to have more cash on hand. Which can only mean one thing: It's time to give Lyor and Edgar raises again! [AP]

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The ultra-spendy Hamptons concert series Social@Ross—which featured shows by the likes of Billy Joel, Tom Petty, Prince, Dave Matthews, and James Taylor, as well as a $3,000/show pricetag for those people not famous enough to get in on their name recognition alone—will, alas, not see a second year. Which isn't all that surprising, given that Warner Music Group's purchase of Social@Ross promoter Bulldog Music resulted in an $18 million charge for the company and a lot of shareholders having heart attack-ack-ack-ack-ack-acks. [NYP / Photo: Getty]

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MySpace's digital-music joint venture is reportedly bringing Sony BMG and Warner Music Group aboard this week; the service, which will allegedly launch later this year, is expected to incorporate both paid downloads and ad-supported streaming. Or, as a nameless source breathlessly says, it'll "bring in all forms of [making money from digital music] and much more tightly integrate them." It should probably think about somehow integrating the hackers who will be gunning for a way to make the "paid" part of the service free as soon as it launches if it wants to really be all-encompassing. [NYP]

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if i take a nap instead of posting, can i get a raise?

Lyor Cohen Gets A Raise, World Officially Insane

First, Edgar Bronfman, now his right-hand man, Lyor Cohen. You'd actually think that Warner Music Group was a successful organization in the midst of a growth industry, the way they're handing out raises to executives around there. While it's not an especially good time to be a WMG employee, if you're Lyor Cohen, Chairman and CEO, everything's coming up golden parachutes and roses. More »

9:30 AM on Fri Mar 21 2008
By Dan Gibson
618 views, 7 comments

hint: the suitcase is full of money

What Will Take For This Man To Get Fired?

Perhaps buoyed by the status upgrade for their stock from "revulsion" to "indifference", HITS is reporting that Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman has been given a new five-year, $1 million-per-year contract, which can be extended indefinitely. More »

5:30 PM on Mon Mar 17 2008
By Dan Gibson
452 views, 1 comment

to celebrate, the bronfmans are heading to reno!

Warner Music Group: More Like The Bluth Company All The Time

While Jim Cramer isn't quite saying "I love these guys! They beat the treason charges! We had it as a 'Don't Buy.' Let's bump it up to a 'Risky!'" just yet, there's some good news for Warner Music Group as the status of its stock been upgraded from "Sell" to "Neutral" by Pali Research. I'm not sure what would possibly account for the upgrade, considering the captains of that particular ship are seen as less competent by the day, it seems, the research group finds "the downside" of owning their stock less significant. Way to go, Edgar! Ahmet Ertegun would be proud! [New Ratings]

12:30 PM on Mon Mar 17 2008
By Dan Gibson
194 views, 1 comment

Latest by HoneyB.Fly: Besides hustling Linkin Park for a new album and squeezing Madonna for every last dime before she gives them the old heave-ho, who else is left on the Warner Music roster to bring home the bacon? Seriously... more »

lawsuits

Linda Perry To Warner Music Group: "What's Up With The Money You Owe Me?"

Linda Perry, the former 4 Non Blondes frontwoman who went on to produce songs for Christina Aguilera, Pink, and Gwen Stefani, is suing Warner Music Group for royalties she believes she is owed on James Blunt's Back To Bedlam, which came out on her imprint Custard Records. Perry is suing for royalties on the album—which, according to the suit, has made WMG a cool $100 million—plus $5 million in damages, and she's saying that Warner Music Group "follows the far too familiar scenario involving a large multinational corporate record company which takes advantage of a small, independent production company." For its part, Warner says that it has always compensated the label in accordance with the contract the two parties agreed upon when Perry initially brought Blunt to WMG's attention, which sounds to me like code for "read the fine print, lady." [BBC]

9:45 AM on Thu Mar 6 2008
By Maura Johnston
451 views, 15 comments

Latest by Ned Raggett: I salute you all, my fellow sufferers. more »

when your tenure is described as 'raping and pillaging,' that's a bad sign

Prepare To Be Shocked: WMG Execs Possibly Incompetent

Talk about a buried lede: The industry insiders at HITS Daily Double decide to write about Alex Zubillaga's exit from the sinking ship that is the Warner Music Group, information that is news to a select group of people. As WMG head Edgar Bronfman's brother-in-law, Zubillaga's departure is a little strange, and the fact that neither Bronfman nor Lyor Cohen's deals have been extended past their expiration a year from now is also interesting. But the real news comes a bit further down the page: When the higher-ups at WMG purchased Roadrunner Records, they "forgot" to check the contract of the band they bought the entire label for in the first place, and who they're now trying to negotiate with in a last-ditch effort to make good on their investment. More »

1:30 PM on Mon Mar 3 2008
By Dan Gibson
1,133 views, 2 comments

Latest by blobby: That is an awesome heading. more »

web 2.noooooo

Perez Hilton's Imprint With Warner: Slightly Less Wasteful Than Setting A Pile Of Cash On Fire?

So you're Warner Music Group. You're smarting because your stock price is in the toilet, one of your marquee artists is leaving for heretofore unproven ground, and you're still pinning your hopes on people eventually remembering that James Blunt exists. Also, you're still smarting from wasting a bunch of money on a concert-promotion company that wound up being little more than a front for throwing celebrity-studded parties on your dime. So what do you do to turn things around? How about throwing money at a self-obsessed blogger with flattening pageviews, rudimentary MS Paint skills, and a track record of getting more than one percent of his users to buy albums by the artists that he waxes rhapsodically about? More »

10:30 AM on Tue Feb 26 2008
By Maura Johnston
1,611 views, 52 comments

Latest by kisskisskiss: @kisskisskiss: That should say "stop letting Jezebel steal all your moves." more »

Warner Music Group disclosed in its first-quarter earnings release that it bought Bulldog—the promotion company that put on those "$3,000 a pop if you're stupid enough to pay to get in, free if you're famous" Social@Ross shows that featured artists like Billy Joel—last May, but that it has since bailed out of the company and will take an $18 million charge on the venture, which comes out to a 12-cent loss per share. WMG's overall earnings this quarter took an 11-cents-a-share hit. Honestly, where did they think they were going to make the money from on that series? Product placements in gossip columns? [Silicon Alley Insider / Photo: Getty]

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whoops

QTrax: The "Legal P2P" That Isn't Quite Legal

After putting up a pretty Web page on Friday and having a splashy launch event at the MIDEM conference yesterday, QTrax—the long-in-the-works ad-supported peer-to-peer system that was supposedly going to have all four major labels on board—was supposed to launch its client at midnight ET. But there's one small problem: Three of the four major labels don't actually have deals in place with the service, thus throwing the "legal" part of the company's whole "legal peer-to-peer" claim in serious doubt. More »

10:00 AM on Mon Jan 28 2008
By Maura Johnston
747 views, 1 comment

Latest by Matt_: Irecived this Email today from Qtrax when I registered and got the software. Someone at Qtrax needs to use spell check. (Oh thats right they cant even Spell tracks ) Hello Matt Welcome to Qtrax, the world's first free and more »

lawsuits

Warner Music Group Posts Another Copyright-Infringement Lawsuit To The Internet

Warner Music Group has filed a federal copyright-infringement suit against the MP3 aggregator Seeqpod, which scours the Internet for music files and allows people to stream said files from its site. The site—which is apparently owned, in part, by the U.S. Department of Energy (?!)—believes that it isn't engaging in infringement according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because it doesn't host the files it streams; it merely allows users to find them easily. But we know what the record industry thinks about technical details! More »

3:45 PM on Wed Jan 23 2008
By Maura Johnston
634 views, 8 comments

Latest by loudersoft: But the thing with Hype is you can't download directly from them. You have to visit the originating post to download any content. more »

gah

Warner Music Group: Dumber Than We May Have Ever Thought

No doubt you remember the Social@Ross series of concerts from this summer, which featured big-name chefs, ottoman seating, Tom Petty, Billy Joel, James Taylor, Dave Matthews, and Prince—and a $15,000 price tag. Well, according to Pali Research analyst Rich Greenfield, Warner Music Group may remember those concerts quite well! Why? Because the beleaguered record company apparently shelled out about $16 million to acquire the shows' promoter, the Bulldog Entertainment Group, and has since lost a total of around $30 million as the result of the acquisition. More »

2:10 PM on Fri Jan 11 2008
By mjohnston
891 views, 4 comments

Latest by cockfightbarmitzvah: The only way I'd pay $3000 for Bill Joel Tix is if it was an Ultimate Fighting Championship match that pitted him against the Billy Joel from 1976. That guy would so kick Billy Joel's ass if he had a more »

The Warner Music Group-owned distribution company Alternative Distribution Alliance has purchased the old-school online music store Insound for an undisclosed sum. ADA reportedly plans to use Insound's recently launched digital-store backend as a way for its member labels and indie accounts to open up digital stores of their own. [Billboard]

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Some of Warner Music Group's titles are now available in the Amazon MP3 store, leaving Sony BMG as the lone major-label holdout from the DRM-free digital-music shop. Notably absent from Amazon's digital shelves: Josh Groban's Noel, Against Me!'s New Wave, and that last James Blunt record, which really at this point should be available for sale anywhere just so people may stumble into buying it accidentally. [Reuters]

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Warner Music Group is really into the idea of the 360 deal, where record companies "music-based content companies" share in the profits of merchandise and touring with their artists, but I'm curious to the thinking behind its just-announced joint venture with the estate of Frank Sinatra, whose touring revenue will be severely hampered by the fact that he's, um, not with us anymore? I'm not sure that particular income gap can be made up by another 25 Duets albums. [WMG Investor Relations]

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Highlights from this morning's Warner Music Group Q4 conference call: Edgar Bronfman Jr. is predicting a rebound in 2008; he also thinks that record companies should now be known as "music-based content companies" (quite the melodic turn of phrase there, Junior); ringtones are losing their luster (who could have predicted that?) and the new plan is for WMG to "window" music releases, i.e. slowly rolling out a lot of music-related products from artists over time, instead of just putting out one album every couple of years or so. [Silicon Alley Insider]

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From the "pouring your money into other assets before your company's stock price sinks below $5" department comes this item about Warner Music Group's CEO: "MUSIC mogul Edgar Bronfman Jr. is stockpiling Manhattan apartments. The Post's Braden Keil reports the Seagram heir and his wife, Clarissa, who recently sold their East 64th Street townhouse for $50 million, have paid $18.75 million for a 10-room condo in the historic Carhart mansion on East 95th Street.... Last summer, the Bronfmans reportedly paid $19.5 million for a co-op at 1040 Fifth Ave., the building where Jackie Kennedy Onassis resided." [NYP]

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