Warner Music Group mobile revenues slip in Q2

Warner Music Group reported its mobile music revenues slipped from $56.4 million in the first quarter of 2008 to $49.2 million in the second quarter. The music giant reported a $37 million Q2 loss, compared with $27 million losses a year earlier--revenue grew 2 percent to $800 million, from $784 million a year earlier. Overall recorded music sales rose only 0.6 percent year-over-year to $652 million, but WMG's total digital music sales grew 48 percent to $164 million versus $111 million a year ago, a swing the company credited to increasing music download purchases. Digital sales now represent 21 percent of WMG's total revenue.

"Approximately 65 percent of our total digital revenue was generated in the U.S. and 35 percent in the rest of the world," said Warner Music Group chief financial officer Michael D. Fleisher during Thursday's earnings call. "Our worldwide digital revenue stands at about 70 percent online and 30 percent mobile. In both the U.S. and internationally, online is a larger share of our digital business than mobile. Mobile remains soft as ringtone sales fell year over year in the U.S. and remained flat sequentially internationally in the quarter. Newer mobile products, such as ringback tones, full track downloads and other more innovative offerings remain too small as yet to meaningfully impact mobile results."

For more on Warner's Q2 results:
- read this release [1]

Related articles:
7digital to distribute Warner [2] MP3s across Europe
Warner Music Group [3] profits tumble in Q4
WMG [4] head: Don't repeat music biz mistakes on mobile
Warner [5] yanks content from Nokia Music Store