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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Bloomberg [bloomberg.com]:

When Vivendi SA [bloomberg.com] took over Universal Music Group in 2000, the industry was riding high on bumper sales of CDs, though the investment soon soured as illegal downloads surged. CD revenue plunged by two-thirds over the next decade, and by the early 2010s, unloading Universal would’ve been a tough sell; who would pay a premium for a company whose main product—pop songs—was widely available for free? But today, Vivendi is considering the sale of a stake in Universal that could value the label at more than $25 billion.
...
The rebound can be traced to the same boogeyman that almost killed the business in the first place: the internet. These days, music fans have largely shifted from illegal downloads to paid streaming platforms such as Spotify [bloomberg.com], Apple Music, Amazon Prime, and Pandora, which generally charge $5 to $10 a month for unlimited access to millions of songs.

Have record labels, like zombies, really returned from the dead?

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