With Terra Firma in danger of not being able to cover its debt for EMI, Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. said during WMG's first-quarter earnings call this week that his company may still seek to purchase EMI. EMI was a major topic of conversation during the call, according to the New York Post, and Bronfman said that he saw no regulatory issues with WMG purchasing EMI, whose auditors recently expressed "significant doubt" that the label could continue if Terra Firma can't raise $180 million from investors to avoid breaching its debt covenant. If Terra Firma defaults, Citigroup, the bank that owns EMI's debt, is expected to take control of the label and seek to sell all or parts of the company.

"We feel consolidation is certainly is possible," Bronfman said, according to the Post. "Should it come to EMI's lenders having the opportunity to rescue value, they're going to try and rescue as much value as possible."

Bronfman also criticized Apple's increasing power over digital music consumption. He said "The number of potential subscribers dwarfs the number of people purchasing music on iTunes," when talking about music subscription services that focus on unlimited access to a library for a recurring monthly fee, as opposed to Apple's a la carte sales style. He also said that WMG will stop licensing its songs to free music streaming services because "Free streaming services are clearly not net positive for the industry and as far as Warner Music is concerned will not be licensed. The 'get all your music you want for free, and then maybe with a few bells and whistles we can move you to a premium price strategy,' is not the kind of approach to business that we will be supporting in the future."

It is not clear whether WMG will remove its music from existing services or only decline to make deals with new outlets in the future, but Bronfman said the focus will be on promoting streaming services that require payment. The idea is that fans could pay a monthly fee directly to a streaming service, or get access to the music as part of a deal for a mobile phone, broadband connection or another gadget, according to BBC News. Bronfman feels that such services would be used by "hundreds of millions if not billions of people, most of whom are not today either buyers or certainly heavy buyers of music." He added that the services would be much more profitable than per-track downloads in the long term, according to the BBC.

As previously reported, WMG reported a 3 percent increase in revenue to $918 million and a net loss of $17 million for the first quarter. WMG ended 2009 with $339 million of cash and total debt of just $1.94 billion, giving it plenty of overhead to finance an EMI acquisition, notes the Post.