May 03, 2005Universal Music Revenues
The world's biggest record label, with 25 per cent of the global market, saw downloads contribute four per cent of its total revenue. Jean-Bernard Lévy, the new CEO of Universal's owner, Vivendi, anticipates this rising to 20 per cent 'in a few years'. The company also expects to increase Web-based revenues by pioneering a video royalties deal with Yahoo!, MSN and AOL. Previously they were allowed to stream videos for free, as the labels considered them as advertisements for albums. However, the websites are now generating their own revenue from the streams and Universal will get its cut. |
Universal Music has revealed that it made $52mn from downloads sales in the first quarter of 2005.