With Warner Music Group’s CEO Edgar Bronfman’s comments this week about how free streaming music services are “clearly not positive for the industry”, and his stating that in the future Warner will not be embracing such deals, how does this affect WMG’s place in the future music market?

After releasing figures this week of WMG’s $17m loss in Q4 of 2009, Bronfman is obviously keen to lay blame somewhere, and in-keeping with his personality, wants to be seen making a stand against various parts of the current music business.

While Bronfman speaks of premium streaming services that require payment from subscribers that he feels will rival iTunes, I can’t help but picture a big swing-and-a-miss for WMG. One reason Spotify has become such a leading platform in music streaming is it’s far-reaching catalogue, and user uptake. The success iTunes has received is also largely down to similar elements – it’s market penetration and availability meant that it reached a large number of users quickly, lead the way and strongly maintained it’s position.

Any future service that hoped to take over from services such as Spotify or We7 would need to rely on the majors withdrawing their catalogues from those services and all coming together to sign deals to give the same catalogue to the new service. Who would choose a subscription service that you had to pay for which only had, for example, the Warner catalogue, when other services offer a wider range, with less stringent pricing options?

The bullish attitude of Bronfman only smacks to me of a company that are not getting their own way in the current music industry model, still relying too greatly on recorded music sales, and wanting to throw their toys out of the pram when their competitors are seeing streaming services as a potentially successful fraction of their future model. Would Bronfman have still made this weeks comments if Universal’s SVP Rob Wells hadn’t spoken in January in support of Spotify?

It still surprises me (but shouldn’t) when the majors are seen to be fighting against the tide of industry changes, rather than accepting the climate as is, while using their efforts to maximise potential income rather than casting negativity over what they cannot control.

In my opinion, were Warner to remove their catalogue from the streaming services, the lost promotion would have more of an adverse effect on recorded music sales than would be compensated for by dictating to consumers that they must buy through iTunes or the premium services of their choosing.

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