Warner Music may stop licensing songs to free online streaming sites | Music | guardian.co.uk

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Warner Music has indicated it may stop licensing its songs to free online streaming services such as Spotify and We7. The record label's chief executive, Edgar Bronfman, said yesterday that allowing people to access free music on such sites was "clearly not positive for the industry".

A spokesman for Warner Music confirmed that this will not affect deals currently in place, meaning songs by artists such as T.I, Fleetwood Mac and Estelle will still be available to hear on the likes of Spotify. He could not confirm how this would affect future deals, except that Warner did not feel ad-supported free services was a sustainable business model for the music industry.

Bronfman's comments come in response to the latest financial figures posted by Warner Music, which show a loss of $17m (�11m) in the last quarter of 2009. CD sales for the third-largest record label in the world continue to shrink, but figures show digital sales were up 8% on last year.

Bronfman expressed his reservation over Spotify, which is currently only available in Europe, entering the US market as a free streaming service. "The 'get all your music you want for free, and then maybe with a few bells and whistles we can move you to a premium price strategy', is not the kind of approach to business that we will be supporting in the future."

Instead, Bronfman suggested Warner Music would be looking to take a bite out of Apple's share of the market with iTunes by offering its own subscription service.

Bronfman also hinted that a merger with EMI, who posted losses of �1.8bn since March last year, was not out of the question.

via guardian.co.uk

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