Warner Music Thinks It's Well-Positioned for New Music World
Warner Music Group CEO Steve Cooper cited the company’s “unique position” in the new era of recorded music on the company’s Q1 FY ’21 earnings call Tuesday. “Music is no longer linear, transactional or limited by format,” Cooper said. “It’s…
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complex, multifaceted and interactive.” The “intersection of virtual social spaces, gaming and music presents enormous opportunities to engage with massive and diverse audiences,” he said. WMG is "well on our way to being an immersive, tech-enabled 21st century digital company,” said Cooper. WMG still sees growth in conventional streaming in mature and emerging markets, said Cooper, referencing the number of streaming music subscriptions relative to smart device population: WMG is confident that "long-term sustained growth ... is quite probable" in its traditional streaming music business. On Web3, which Cooper defined as wrapping in blockchain, cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens, WMG sees “the beginning of interactive models coming to the surface and beginning to engage fandom around the world.” Cooper envisions “more opportunities than we can even imagine and believes Web3 “will further amplify the importance” of music labels and publishers. The technology of blockchain, “the perils of navigating crypto,” the skillsets required to deal with distributed, autonomous organizations," he said, will require companies like WMG “that have the financial resources, the intellectual capital … the specific skill sets and the global footprint” to help artists and songwriters navigate through a “brave new universe."