Led Zeppelin Remains a Rock-Solid Revenue Source in the Streaming Era

Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin (Jay Dickman/Corbis via Getty)
Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin (Jay Dickman/Corbis via Getty)

Even in the streaming era, Led Zeppelin being a reliable moneymaker remains the same.

To celebrate the group’s 50th anniversary, Warner Music Group president of global catalog of recorded music Tim Fraser-Harding and his team came up with a plan that would allow the company to make bank on the band without doing much.

In addition to coming up with a “logo name generator,” the group asked artists like Jack White to put together playlists featuring their top Zeppelin tracks. White’s playlist, “Led Zeppelin x Jack White,” which drew thousands of users each day and hundreds of thousands of streams. Thus, Warner and Led Zeppelin were able to rake in the dough without doing very much at all.

For Fraser-Harding, an industry veteran with 30 years of experience who started his career managing an HMV in the ’80s, monetizing a band’s back catalog is an important way to bring in new revenue using old material.

“There is a thirst for discovery on an artist celebrating its 50th anniversary,” Fraser-Harding told Rolling Stone. “It’s about creating the right tools to educate and broaden the horizons for the potential consumer. We’ve got to think about the consumer and how they react. Sometimes, it’s a question of how we make something out of nothing … Not everybody is getting out their phone to Shazam stuff all the time, so we’ve got to be able to find other ways to communicate about older music through marketing and fan engagement.”

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