Atlantic Records reaches digital milestone

THE DIGITAL WORLD is ever growing, yet this week it has reached a milestone. Atlantic Records has become the first music label to have its digital revenue over-take its earnings from physical sales.

Atlantic, which is part of the Warner Music Group, reached the marker in the US with 51 percent of revenues over 12 months ending on September 30.

This is a first of its kind, as so far digital sales in the UK are currently around 10 percent of total revenue.

This may seem strange as more digital downloads were sold in the US last year than physical records – yet they only accounted for a fraction of overall music industry revenues.

Digital revenues can come from song downloads through online music stores as well as products for mobile phones such as ringtones.

Craig Kallman, Atlantic's chairman and chief executive says that reaching this target was the result of changes introduced after its merger with the Elektra label four years ago.

"It was really important to educate artists about how we had to change the thinking on the release cycle and the type of products we were releasing," he explains.

Kallman also said that some fans only want to buy the physical disc, some only want to buy a ringtone and a T-shirt, others just want a concert ticket, others want to buy a digital album yet everyone wants something different now. "We need to offer them whatever they want, whenever they want."

This achievement from Atlantic puts back the faith in the music industry which was concerned that the advent of digital technology would only promote illegal file-sharing and therefore a distinct loss in revenue.

Much of this success comes from the popularity of sites such as Itunes and other legitimate download stores.

However, although this is good news for the company, with CD sales falling fast, the industry is left with a decline in overall income for what looks like the foreseeable future. µ

L'Inq
The Guardian