Devoted to show business and the entertainment industry

Even with expectations much lower than last year's same quarter, Warner Music Group (WMG) still underperformed far below analysts projections. They dropped an enormous 74 percent in net income for its fiscal first-quarter in comparison to last year.

The reasons given for the horrid showing were soft domestic and European sales and not as many albums released as the year before. It really shows some incompetence here in my estimation. Let's see, during the Christmas sales season, let's not put out as many albums as the year before. What kind of thinking is that?

As far as the analysts' projections, they thought that the company would still reach 24 cents per share on around $944.8 million in revenue, rather they were only able to reach 12 cents per share on $928 million in revenue; a decrease from $1.04 billion from the same quarter last year.

Net income from the quarter dropped from $69 million to only $18 million. A couple more quarters like that and they'll just about disappear.

Still they continue to say they refuse to drop DRM and make it easy for people to consume music. The comment is that "it doesn't make any sense." How many more quarters like this will make any sense?

Responding to Apple's Steve Jobs to end the use of DRM, Chief Executive Officer Edgar Bronfman Jr. said:

"We advocate the continued use of DRM in the protection of our and our artists' intellectual property. The notion that music does not deserve the same protections as software, television, films, video games or other intellectual property, simply because there is an unprotected legacy product available in the physical world, is completely without logic or merit."
 
Ok Edgar, tell us what your next move is.

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