Music Ally

Warner Music Group’s experience investing in Imeem and iLike appears to have put the label off taking more equity stakes in future music startups.

“I don’t think we’re planning to be investors going forward,” said Stephan Bryan from Warner Music Group, speaking during a Labels & Services panel at MidemNet.

He went on to describe Imeem and Lala as “a unique situation where we were essentially playing a dual role”. However, one startup that WMG is very happy with at the moment is Spotify.

Bryan revealed that WMG’s stats appear to reveal that users of subscription services are currently listening to a much wider spread of songs than normal users. It’s changing the way WMG markets, putting different kinds of resources behind new artists.

“When you’re in an access model or subscription model, it’s more about sustaining engagement with content over time,” he said.

Bryan also talked about WMG’s ambitions for Spotify in the US, saying that the label is focused on taking services like Spotify into discussions with ISPs in the US, in an effort to strike deals along the lines of what the company has done with TeliaSonera and 3 in Europe.

For more on the Labels & Services panel, click here for our liveblog on the MidemNet Blog.

Tags: WMG

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 24th, 2010 at 2:19 am and is filed under Digital Music Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.