Warner Music and EMI Set to Merge 238
morn writes "After the AOL-Time Warner merger, it's now being reported by BBC News, amongst others, that EMI and Warner Music are planning a merger too. How large can a 'media' company get?" I don't know, but I think we're going to find out.
Maybe we wish that. (Score:1)
Yeah, riiight. Like the RIAA is going to go the way of ye village blacksmith anytime this century.
>I want it to get worse and worse until even the regular person in the street thinks, 'What's up with that?' and goes in search of other avenues, other channels to get what they want.
Hmmmm...in 1976, punk & hip-hop were things that were very different than the standard fare. Both of 'em, in fact, faced great resistance from the mainstream, (the regular person in the street was definatly saying 'What's up with that?') and the only reason they're popular now is because they've been so co-opted over the years (hello, media exposure!) that their original significance has all been been bled away.Once they're in that condition, it becomes much more easy for middle-of-the-road acceptance and stadium venue or pop stars to gain public attention through things like crossover mixes and tie-in merchandise..
Very scary (Score:1)
It's already scary how much old people in suits get to decide what's "cool" or not. If the execs don't like you for some reason, you never get your band off the ground, no matter HOW good you are. This certainly won't help. Now instead of MTV deciding what the newest trend is going to be (god damn them for bringing us "Mambo Number Five"...), we have CNN doing it. I don't know which scares me more. I think I'll stick to my Guns N' Roses, Clapton, and Pink Floyd, thanks...
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Re:Very scary (Score:1)
My point exactly
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Re:Very scary (Score:1)
Look at the top 10 today. Backstreet boys. Britney Spears. And the 1001 ripoff acts like NSYNC and Christina Aguilera that follow them. When Clapton came along, could PLAY. The record labels saw an opportunity to make money on his TALENT, and jumped in. They didn't make the man. Metallica had lp's go platinum BEFORE they ever even released a radio single or a video. The labels came to THEM. Same with Guns N' Roses. They put on a hell of a live show (when Axl decided to finish one rather than bitch and quit early - before the Illusion days), and record labels came to THEM. That's a HUGE difference from today's music industry. Record labels have found it's more profitable to CREATE a "superstar" like the boybands (formed by newspaper ads in the case of backstreet boys and nsync - neither asked for singing experience) or tight skirted teens rather than go looking for talent. They decide "Hey, lets make HER our next project" and get her radio play, MTV exposure, a few live appearances that they can carefully enhance with dancers and the soundboard, and THAT is what they market now.
Real bands have to work twice as hard to keep up. The REAL rock bands and performers that are capable of forming a fiercely loyal fanbase aren't signed until the fans are ALREADY present. Record labels no longer take a chance on the POTENTIAL that someone can make it. Now they dictate who is allowed the chance rather than look for someone who does. And fans suffer for it.
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Re:Very simple (Score:1)
ROFL
s/you didn't like them/they didn't like you/
HTH, HAND
The entertainment-retail complex (Score:1)
Re:One Company (Score:1)
1st case of Intellectual Property asset stripping? (Score:1)
Time Warner/AOL don't care about or really want EMI. What they want is the music catalogue.
Once they have that, they'll rip every track to an MP3 (or proprietary format if they can), stick it on a web site and fire the entire staff of EMI. Same for the rest of the Time Warner music division.
The EMI executives must be off their nuts.
The resulting "mega corporation" will have fewer people than now. You'll have a team of marketing droids, a few studios, a single sysadmin and a dozen ftp/http servers.
Re:Corportaion Democracy (Score:1)
I'll take a wild guess: corporations steal 60% of your paycheck, right?
Brian
Re:capitalism (Score:1)
However, I do claim some competition is better than none by definition. How much, like the optimum size for a company, constantly changes from time to time and industry to industry. My problem is with those who think the market can do no wrong, and therefore if it consolidates inexorably, it's for the best. This view ignores the issue of the power consolidation brings -- power to shape both the political and economic field to the wielder's advantage.
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
cutthroat competition (Score:1)
For example, it seems to me a company has little incentive to invest in a new process that would save the company less money than putting the investment elsewhere, even though the process would result in substantial improvements to the economy's productivity if many companies then used the development. Capitalism can be rather short-sighted this way.
Robert Kuttner's "Everything for Sale" had a number of good tidbits on this.
Kythe
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Re:Halt! (Score:1)
~luge
Oh, man! (Score:1)
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Re:EMI? (Score:1)
The copyright in these sound recordings is owned by EMI Records Ltd.
(c)1993 The copyright in this compilation is owned by EMI Records Ltd.
(c)1993 Apple Corps Ltd. under exclusive license to EMI Records Ltd.
So as you can see EMI owns Apple Corps Ltd., the Beatles recording company. Details are at http://www.abbeyroadstudios.com/.
Re:Halt! (Score:1)
Well, unless you're inferring that the Japanese killed the "manufacturing" side of things in these foreign countries by buying them all out, I'm not sure I see where you're going with this. Does competition not exist in these developing countries? It would seem to me that putting the "manufacturing" (which in this example means livestock / breeding) into 3rd world countries you could cut costs - both in terms of production/feeding and land value. How does this destroy the local economies there? The company is effectively utilizing resources that otherwise would go unused, and the workers get an economic incentive (money!) that otherwise wouldn't have been injected into the local economy.
Re:The rules are fairly simple (Score:1)
The media industry has become very consolidated, and a few more big, big deals could unite a large portion of it.
Any TV networks for sale? If AOL still has the stock price to do it, they could be shopping.
Re:vertical integration:bad for consumers,bad for (Score:1)
Any of the other companies you mention could be on each others' shopping lists. It's only a matter of time before these behemoths realize they would be even strong together than apart.
Re:And then there were 4 (Score:1)
Re:Public TV (Score:1)
Its been a while since i've read it, and thats the only thing that stands out. So, are you saying that in the near future AOL will burn down libraries? Thats kind of like the reverse of what I do, burn the 50,000 odd AOL cds and disks I recieve in the mail. AOL Canada is almost as bad.. why the hell don't they call it COL anyways..
Re:capitilism (Score:1)
Re:They should just change the name (Score:1)
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GroundAndPound.com [groundandpound.com] News and info for martial artists of all styles.
Re:Corportaion Democracy (Score:1)
I wouldn't.
Do you get to vote for the CEO in a corporate capitalism? Of course not! This is like dictatorship. Not much different from the communism. In Russia they had politburo, here we'll have chairmen of the board. Same thing, different name.
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GroundAndPound.com [groundandpound.com] News and info for martial artists of all styles.
big deal ? (Score:1)
hmm, soon they will all merge and implode so
Re:Corportaion Democracy (Score:1)
Hopefully the FTC does their job and stays the hell out of the way of this.
The Onion says... (Score:2)
AOL Acquires Time-Warner In Largest-Ever Expenditure Of Pretend Internet Money
A veritable cornucopia of crap! (Score:2)
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
Sure, because they're the logical next merge (Score:2)
Think about it. AOL already uses exclusively MS technologies and their largest userbase is emphatically MS users. Time Warner would get to add MSNBC to the roster and whatever MSN has to offer. It's really dead obvious and logical. Do you think that their fighting about instant messaging would concern them one tiny bit if there is profit and control in merging with each other?
Besides, MS needs to own more media conglomerates to help control its image :)
*evilgrin* I'm serious. Think about it. Wouldn't that be a logical move?
Re:Depends. (Score:2)
The band from 7-11 that can only sell 20,000 copies gets say a $2000 advance. Maybe $10,000 if you insist on assuming a benevolent record company which aches to throw money at needy artists ;P
That lamer band STILL has to pay for all its recording and its tour out of that lamer advance, plus the label only _presses_ 20,000 copies and does absolutely squat to support the act. The act could sell out its pathetic little pressing and still not be noticed by the label it is in fact signed to. At which point they go back to 7-11, having mostly recouped the advance they've long since spent on the album (even $10,000 only goes so far, and frankly that seems high for a loser band with no business team), and having wasted years of their lives. Their role was no more than the industry's scratch ticket- in case they got lucky, the industry owns anything they record for the next ten years and rights to the publishing. All for a few grand that doesn't even buy them a professionally produced album- and then people like you come around thinking they got a quarter of a million dollars, just because they are a band signed to a major label! What?
Regarding the classical CDs- gee, maybe that's part of the reason why the consumers _and_ the bands get hosed so badly. It doesn't justify it. Are you suggesting that in spite of this, loser rock acts get big advances (albeit earmarked for recording the album and paying for the tour) even when they only expect to move 20,000 copies? And when the industry expects you'll move 20,000 copies, they only _press_ 20,000 copies, and getting more pressed isn't just a matter of selling the first ones- you have to convince the label that you're going to do that much better that it's worth going back to the pressing plant and churning out more, and that might not be the easiest thing to do...
Re:Very scary (Score:2)
Have these artists gotten rich? Maybe they have, but I'm asking because I don't know, and it's certainly not a given.
What I'd like to see are some stats on how much money the various mega-stars have actually come away from the deal with. As anyone who watches ``Behind the Music'' knows, the artists often end up broke, and it's often for reasons other than ``they spent it all.''
My favorite anti-music-industry rant: `` Some of your friends are probably already this fucked [apk.net]'' by Steve Albini.
The big 4 (Score:2)
Re:A veritable cornucopia of crap! (Score:2)
However, some more of the EMI catalogue:
I suspect that it's the "thousands more" that might sway you. EMI subsiduary labels include Food, Hut, Parlophone... etc.
Thanks to Sean [sean.co.uk] for that list, by the way.
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better them than Big Mean German (Score:2)
They call BMG the Big Mean German, and not without reason. They're nasty. They have a history of aggressively suing people for copying long-deleted records to an extent that the others don't. And then there is that Bertelsmann Foundation's think-tank looking for means of regulating Internet content.
Also, in this deal, EMI does not merge with AOL/TW outright; no shares change hands. From what I understand, EMI's music division and AOL/TW's pool their asset portfolios and create a jointly-held (though TW/AOL-controlled) company to manage them. It's a far cry from, say, the way PolyGram was subsumed into Universal (i.e., its assets were basically stripped and transferred to the new owner); had BMG bought EMI, we would probably have seen a recurrence of this.
What will BMG do? (Score:2)
[wired.com]
on the verge of buying either EMI or Sony Music.
Now that EMI seems to be taken, they may have to talk to Sony. Though if Microsoft is split up, I imagine Sony may be interested in buying one of the Windows companies; as such they may be interested in offloading part or all of their music division to an eager BMG.
Re:capitalism (Score:2)
Despite the media spin about how efficient and "good for the consumer" these mergers are, that's not why they merge. They merge because their accumulated power gives them the ability to shape the political/economic landscape. It allows them to set up roadblocks to entry into the market, and avoid competition. It enables them to shut down the kind of threats you envision -- exactly as the RIAA is attempting to do right now (with no small success).
Furthermore, while it may be true that any one monopoly/conglomerate won't last forever, I hardly think this is a comfort. Using the same logic, dictators and tyrants are no big deal, since they won't last forever. either. As has been said so eloquently, "in the long run, we're all dead". We have a vested interest in maintaining competition and curbing corporate power right now.
This is the whole reason we have antitrust laws. For goodness' sake, if mergers are "natural" and less competition is better, why not just scrap capitalism entirely, and set up an aristocratic command economy? We might as well save ourselves the trouble of getting there.
I really don't know what the Feds are thinking, but I'm hoping someone will wake up soon and start saying "no" to the Robber Barons of the 2000's.
Sorry about my rant; I know you probably didn't mean to imply much of what I responded to. I'm just dreadfully tired of hearing about how whatever happens in capitalism is right by definition. We have a capitalistic system for good reasons. When those reasons are subverted, the system ain't working.
Kythe
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It's all about control (Score:2)
Want an alternative view? It won't exist.
Cool! (No really) (Score:2)
Will Steve Case have the savvy to pioneer online music distribution? He's in the right position now - he has the content, he's got the websites, and he even has player software. Stay tuned...
Re:Very scary (Score:2)
There's no 'making up for' about it - failed deals make a great write off for labels. What I'd be interested in seeing is how many bands that sign a deal and get and advance actually make it through the production process to get a release out. I'd bet, just on observation, that something like 20% of the recording deals in the last 10 years have failed before release.
I don't know the stats, but of the successful artists out there, the ones that have come away strongest, financially, are the ones who were shrewd when getting their publishing deals together. Like Michael Jackson - (who owns some percentage of the Beales music now) - he had mega hits in the 80's that he (I believe) has principal publishing on, but think of the early seventies with the Jackson 5 - those kids didn't make shit for their efforts besides unit sales - it was the Motown publishing machine that garnered performance royalties - and still does today.
seagrams (Score:2)
Communism vs. monopoly (Score:2)
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Mergers suck except for the CEOs (Score:2)
Inevitably, the company in question loses efficiency because it has fewer people to do more work. Ironic, because the people fired usually are in order "to be more efficient."
What a crock of shit is the MBA program, which teaches that all workers are easily replacable and all that matters is the bottom line.
My 2 Euros.
Pope
Re:Halt! (Score:2)
Now, if you want to bring this back to the music industry, the US has a comparative advantage in technology (1-2 years head start) and the incredible financial resources allow companies to rapidly penetrate the largest (and thus most profitable) market in the world. By capturing ALL the access points to the consumer, then can force the rest of the world to come knocking at their door instead of actually being using and going out to find, promote and foster talent. So all the profits flow into a small stable of (tightly controlled) stars while everyone else is left with the scraps (the European market is fragmented by language, the Asia market is probably seen as Sony's stomping ground, and the 3rd world can't afford to buy their next meal, much less music). Profitable
The problems can be fixed as international trade is not a zero-sum game. By removing distortions/barriers and giving farmers fair market value, they can get the foreign currency to buy DVD players and Japanese can get cheaper shushi. Every producer and consumer wins except for the companies trying to play silly buggers. The universe runs on enlightend self-interest and its just a matter of waving the cluebat (plus lining up some off-scene heavy artillery as Napolean famously remarked that God is on the side with the biggest guns). It's going to be one nasty knock-down mud-slinging scrap in the next decade as the full implications of the IT change of economic force (massive minaturisation and connectivity) really flow through to the consumers.
If you want back up facts, just search for vertical integration on the web and trying to map that onto the distribution of bits instead of beef. And if you're still unconvinced, contact me further.
LL
Re:Battle of the isms. (Score:2)
Can you back this up with statistics (say some sor of correlation between IQ and discretionary spending or such?), or is this typical captialism-bashing?
Re:music industry mergers.. _yuck_ (Score:2)
The music industry isn't what makes this world go round. Musicians aren't gods. Accountants aren't inferior people. People losing their jobs are sad people. They're to pity because they lose their jobs.
Your argument centers around money. You may not even realise it yourself, but your anger stems from the fact you, or bands you like, cannot profit from the succes of others. Well, wake up! The music industry is just that. An industry. As alternative bands don't have an audience big enough, they're laid off. Their job is making records that sell. If they're not good at their jobs ther're fired. Just like accountants.
If these fired musicians make music you like, hire them, enjoy them, but please, don't demand charity from your neighbours, like you're doing now.
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Re:Communism vs monopolism (Score:2)
That actually tends to happen when tests are graded properly, where instead of getting a grade based on your percent of questions answered correctly, you are graded on what percent of the class you did better than. Kinda like standardized testing.
Re:Halt! (Score:2)
AOL/Time/Warner/EMI will have the ability to dictate HOW THEIR COMPETITION SELLS if they aply any competent management to the integration of these companies... Of course the word competent is definitely the rub....
Just Six Corporations Remain (Score:2)
NEW YORK--MCI-WorldCom and Bank One-Chase Manhattan merged in a blockbuster $112 billion deal Monday, forming the world's largest telecommunications/banking company and reducing the number of existing corporations to six.
"This is an exciting move for both companies," said Donald Cosgrove, CEO of MCI-WorldCom, whose subsidiaries include SBC-Ameritech, Bell Atlantic-NYNEX and McDonnell Douglas. "As a result of this historic merger, we should be in much better position to consolidate vast amounts of wealth and power in the coming years."
The other five remaining corporations are Daimler-Chrysler, Monsanto-American Home Products,
Shearson-Lehman-Chemical-Citicorp-Travelers Group, Paramount-Viacom-ABC-Disney, and Lockheed-Northrop-Boeing-Pepsico.
According to Forbes managing editor Russell Belanger, at the current rate of mergers, there will be only one corporation in the world by 2000.
"The six remaining corporations have shown great interest in merging with each other," Belanger said. "Clearly, the stage is being set for the long-discussed creation of UniCorp, a $92 trillion corporation that produces every product on earth, from canned yams to basketballs to poison gas."
Belanger said mergers are desirable because they give corporations "synergy," enabling them to better sell their products. "Take Paramount-Viacom-ABC-Disney, for example," he said. "Disney makes the movie, Joel Siegel of Paramount-owned ABC-TV gives the movie a rave review, and Disney subsidiaries Blockbuster and McDonald's promote the video release of the movie in their respective stores with mail-in rebates and Happy Meal action figures. It's a win-win scenario."
Bill Clinton, chief executive of U.S. Government, a division of MCI-WorldCom, praised Monday's merger as "an excellent move."
A spokesperson for the newly formed Bank One-Chase Manhattan-MCI-WorldCom said the company plans to cut 92,000 jobs this month.
© Copyright 2000 Onion, Inc., All rights reserved. http://www.theonion.com/ [theonion.com]
Communism vs monopolism (Score:2)
Re:Communism vs monopolism (Score:2)
Please explain me (Score:2)
At this rate, will Microsoft matter to the gov? (Score:2)
With all of this craziness of the big getting bigger...does MS matter? I think so but will the government? I think the US government has been too quick to rubber stamp these deals. Usually it is Europe that holds these deals up and it is usually Europe that forces companies to give up bits that would otherwise lead to too much power in certain sectors of the economy. If it takes the government this long to handle one giant (Microsoft) how will it handle AOL-TimeWarner, the new MCI (I believe that is the name for MCI-WorldCom-Sprint), etc. ? I don't think they can, at least not in the short term. That means more mergers and more centralized power.
Someone wrote in asking if this was like communism. More accurately, it is more like greedy, dirty, communism where the only concern of the central power is gaining more power and money. (Of course, have we ever seen another form of communsim?)
The idea that this is a form communsim is a stretch, though. It really is pure, uncontrolled capitalism at its best. A merger allows for greater efficiency and higher profit margins. Capitalism's one and true goal is more profit and at higher rates of growth.
Luckily, if history holds out this could all just be a cycle and the pendulum of power could swing the other way again. Who knows?
MS/AOL Time Warner, the logical next merge? (Score:2)
Public TV (Score:2)
(Ever notice that we get the most variety of shows from public TV+BBC?)
I'm slightly afraid of these media companies getting to big.
In more than a few ways they wield more power than any other entity in this country (and indeed, in just about any "free" (as in speech) country).
Anyone who has read Fahrenheit 451 realizes how powerful a media entity that doesn't have sufficient competition becomes.
On the other hand, perhaps they will do well for us.(But, my fears remain.)
Re:Halt! (Score:2)
Direct result: Anyone who isn't at least "their size" has difficulty competing in the market..
Making it (more) difficult for new companies to enter the market.
Vertical monopolies are not always bad (in many cases, they can be very beneficial), however this is a special case- This organization has great sway over the political life of this country, and as a result is subject to regulation (FCC, etc).
The vertical monopoly in "material" industries is less dangerous. Though they might be able to force a single automobile model on us (or something else, "hypothetical"), they cannot force a single THOUGHT on us. This is why a media company is more dangerous.
I don't care about the size of the company, or its monopoly status (there are good monopolies), rather I care about the effect any competition on the paucity of ideas that exist.
Any corporation that effectively removes (or threatens, or has a great potential to do either) the possibility of independant thought from the marketplace I will oppose.
I, for one, will carefully watch this one.. You should do the same.
Re:Halt! (Score:2)
If you can afford to quit your day job and do the thing you love, what's wrong with that?
Re:Halt! (Score:2)
Complete joke. Prices aren't changing any time soon. We're talking about an industry that takes 3 - 5 dollar profit margins on every stage. The producer can sell the cd for 5 - 8 bucks to the distributor who sells for maybe 9 - 11 to the store, who marks up the price to like 14 - 17 dollars.
These companies have a lock on the industry. They aren't going to endanger their market share or profit margins for the sake of slowly gaining share. This is why they are more and more likely to feed you the same corporate mediocre crap over and over. If they don't differentiate product, they are in no danger of making stupid mistakes.
Re:Corportaion Democracy (Score:2)
As for making it a lot harder for government to become corrupt. That's not happening any time soon. Here's what I see could be done:
- terms limited to 1 or 2 times.
Not going to happen. Government will do all it can to preserve itself.
- completely outlaw special interests. This includes taking money from anyone who could be a special interest.
Not going to happen. They've been promising to get rid of special interests for years. They are lying bastards.
- decrease government size
There are some programs that will be tweaked and/or fixed. However, the bureaucracy is too large with multiple levels and heads in control. Therefore efficiency is a joke.
Corruption. It's human. What can we do but live with it?
Re:Communism vs monopolism (Score:2)
It's a sad circle really. Send your children to private school
Re:Battle of the isms. (Score:2)
Re:Communism vs monopolism (Score:2)
This is false. You can't learn critical thinking and logic purely from hard science, engineering, and mathematics. History, philosophy, english, law, and even media studies all have some worth.
Your foolish assumption is that since there are no jobs directly based on some liberal arts educations, that they are useless. There is so much evidence to demonstrate this that I won't continue.
Re:Very simple (Score:2)
Re:Hmm, surely you have that backwards? (Score:2)
Re:It's all about control (Score:2)
Re:capitalism (Score:2)
What a great day for the consumer !
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Already happens. Within the work place I think it is acceptable for the employer to implement filters on what sites employees can visit.
The day a large backbone provider, or ISP's (likely in collusion with other large corporations) agree to filter certain sites from the internet in their interest - is the day I burn each and every CEO's house to the ground (at least after litigation fails).
"I'm sure some companies are going to start pulling some of these tricks in the near future and most of them will yank a web page today if someone even hints at a lawsuit. Food for thought."
There are good providers who will not do this. It is, of course, inevitable. What they can't do is control the content. If my ISP takes my site down, I can easily move it somewhere else.
Re:capitalism (Score:2)
As your point about cutthroat competition is vague, I don't really understand it. On a general macro level, a more competitive industry usually means less barriers to entry. With this, relatively anyone within (or new entrants) can bring new innovative technology, better goods, better services, or business practices. You're maybe thinking about the quantity vs. quality argument?
Power consolidation results in less choice and less competition. There are, of course, logical reasons for very large horizontal mergers such as this, but I doubt most are in the consumers interest if there aren't many players in the industry.
Re:cutthroat competition (Score:2)
I'll pick up Kuttner's book -- though, if it's like some of his other books, it will fail to provide believable explanations as to why we should introduce regulation, un-needed bureaucracy, and extended social programs (in other words, stuff that looks good on paper but don't really work out in reality). I couldn't stop laughing when he repudiated large labour unions in a couple of chapters in the economic illusion. He was at least right about incredibly stupid supply side economics in that book.
Re:Rush, 2112 (Score:2)
Hell Yeah! I'm optimistic!!!!
Bad news! (Score:2)
Yeah! Corporate Republic! (Score:2)
You guys better watch out...
So are you for or against? (Score:2)
So you're saying that it worked out, right? Or do you not accept that this was an inevtiable result of a company becoming huge and bloated? I would go ahead and accept that idea. These mergers going on lately are like a death knell mostly as I see it. IBM got big, they missed the boat on the PC. Xerox got big, they missed the boat on the invention of air. It happens everywhere in every industry.
So should companies stay small? No, not unless you want a hand-made computer that fills a room. A small company can't buy a $120M fabrication plant.
What is the solution? Companies should stay focused. yeah, its tempting when you own a business selling a popular OS to start marketing applications, but you shouldn't. You should focus like a laser on your OS and make it the best in the world. Why? To eliminate your competitors, which is a very virtuous and noble pursuit if it is done MORALLY, ie, on merit. Not on ideaology like Linux is attempting to do, and not by buying every company in site, bloating your own, and putting out inferior products like Microsoft is doing.
Esperandi
And I don't worship any single OS, I don't know of any that don't have horrendous, ugly problems.
Re:Depends. (Score:2)
I don't understand how you can claim that the quarter-million sellers are being hosed to pay for the loser acts WHEN THE ACTS FOOT THE DAMN BILL! Do some homework. If you want to be a recording act you PAY for the services you need. If you don't seem to be a quarter million seller, guess what? The advance will be basically squat!
The acts only flip the bill if they succeed. Do you think the record company ever sees a penny of that $250,000 advance when the album ends up selling 20,000 copies, and the artist goes back to their job at 7-11?
Or are you suggesting that all rock musicians should be robbed to pay for oboe players?
The already are. The average classical CD costs between $250,000 and $500,000 to produce, and sells between 2,000 and 3,000 copies. SOMEBODY is paying for that. EMI, Polygram, and Sony all have very large classical music divisions, and put out disks, virtually all of which lose money. Where is all of that money coming from?
Re:Very scary (Score:2)
Most of the bands you like are NOT the most talented in the world. Eric Clapton is certainly not the best blues guitar player of all time (not even the best white one), but he became popular because he was in some successful bands, and had a few hit records. There were certainly lots of progressive bands in the 70's whose music was much more complicated and virtuousic than Pink Floyd. They just put some magic in their music, and became popular.
The current music scene is by far the most flourishing it has ever been. Practically every scene is absolutely thriving, and there is by far more different TYPES of music being produced today than there ever was in the past. It is an absolutely wonderful time to be a music fan. I do not have close to enough money and time to buy all of the CD's which come out these days, that I want to buy (and I do have a good income and a lot of free time on my hands). Basically, my advice to you, is that if you think Christina Aguilera and the Backstreet Boys is the cream of what the current music industry has to offer, I suggest that you try just to put just a little more effort into locating good music, because there is an endless supply of it (and, no, you will not find it on the radio or MTV).
Re:Very scary (Score:2)
I'll stick to my Guns N' Roses, Clapton, and Pink Floyd, thanks...
Of course, all of these artists are definitiveely part of the "music establishment", and all were developed by money from the major music corporations. They are all among the best selling artists OF ALL TIME, and the major music corporations have gotten very rich from them and these artists have gotten very rich with the help of the corporations.
Pink Floyd is tenth best selling musical act OF ALL TIME. They have sold 52 MILLION records in the US. Guns n Roses and Eric Clapton are #30 and #32 respectively, having sold 35 and 33 MILLION records. Pink Floyd's "The Wall" is the THIRD best selling album of all time at 23 million copies, and GnR's "Appetite for Destruction" is #17, and has sold 15 million copies.
It seems the artists you fear the corporations are going to reject are the very ones who they have promoted, and who they continue to promote. There is clearly a problem when you claim that you can live out with the major record companies when all of the artists you like are EXPLARY of the music establishment, and the wealth associated with it. When you start liking artsts who have sold less than fifty gazillion copies (and there are seemingly inifinite number of such artists out there), you can start talking about living without the record companies, and about fearing what they have to promote. Which artists exactly do fear are getting too much promotion? The nine who are above Pink Floyd?
Re:Very scary (Score:2)
Have these artists gotten rich? Maybe they have, but I'm asking because I don't know, and it's certainly not a given.
I don't know if those artists in particular are rich. I seem to remember something about Roger Waters being quite rich, but I do not know for sure. Many music artists are quite rich. Herbert von Karajan's estate was worth 0.5 billion Deustchmarks when he died (in 1990). Some artists such as Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, and others seem to have quite a lot money, but I don't know their exact values. Of course, a lot of this money has come from other sources than recording, but I would argue that the "rock star" is inherently tied to records and would not exist without records.
What I'd like to see are some stats on how much money the various mega-stars have actually come away from the deal with. As anyone who watches ``Behind the Music'' knows, the artists often end up broke, and it's often for reasons other than ``they spent it all.''
A lot of the ones on Behind the Music are new artists who got average contracts, e.g. TLC. One thing to keep in mind is that 90% of new artists fail, and that they do not get lucrative contracts because they are so risky. The few who do succeed make up for the rest. The money is not necessarily going to rich people people behind the scenes, but to pay for recording, production, promotion, etc., etc. It is very expensive to bring up a new artist, and that is largely what you are paying for.
Some of the artists who went bankrupt was just out of irresponsibility (e.g. MC Hammer). He had plenty of money during his heyday, but blew it all, and then lost his popularity. This is hardly the music industry's fault.
Most of the more established artists have far more control. Many own their own record companies.
My favorite anti-music-industry rant: `` Some of your friends are probably already this fucked'' by Steve Albini.
And while you are at it, check out The Cost of CD's [hyperion-records.co.uk] which is one of the more informative breakdown of where the cost of the CD is actually going. One interesting item: by far the biggest chunk of the retail CD price goes to the music STORE, so those who think CD prices are too high should be complaining to the stores, not the record makers.
Re:Depends. (Score:2)
They were only a superstar act _because_ the industry picked them to be, and the industry only picks a few acts each decade to do that with (Michael Jackson, Springsteen around 'Born in the USA + the live set, Madonna etc), but they had what it took to be marketed that heavily- and that almost certainly means a GnR business team who on the one hand got the band a cut of the money, and on the other hand were ready to _guarantee_ product.
This is an _extremely_ cliched view and very false. The industry cannot PICK who is going to succeed - only the listeners can. Yes, the industry can pick who the listeners will hear (to some extent) but it is still up to the listeners to decide. There have been albums which have been EXTREMELY heavily promoted, which have failed miserably. Remember Michael Jackson's HIStory?
Guns 'n Roses _in_particular_ was not chosen to succeed. They are a real band - not assembled by a record company. They released an EP before getting the major label contract. But my main point is that Appetite for Destruction was released much earlier than the point at where it succeeded. It was released in 1987, but Guns n Roses didn't become mega-pop superstars until a year or two later. They say that it was word of mouth and such which made the band big. Clearly if they were "chosen to be big", they would have succeeded immediately.
Talk to any Guns 'n Roses fan, and you will get some major arguments to your claim. You can't judge taste, but compare GnR to the other acts of the time - Poison, Warrant, etc. GnR's songs were catchy, energetic, and much more radio friendly in comparison. It was good music, and a lot of people agreed. In fact, just thinking about this, I think I'll go pull my copy of Appetite for Destruction off the shelf.
There is absolutely no such thing as a guarantee in this business. The music business is much riskier than most other businesses, because trends come and go and nobody can predict them. New artists are especially risky, because nobody can predict how they will appeal.
I love how Steve Albini is suddenly getting massive link-exposure on Slashdot. You're linking to a different copy than I linked to- I used the copy on this page, which has a more detailed costs breakdown on the band's expenditures, which you might find morbidly interesting. It's here: "Some of your friends are probably already this fucked". READ THESE ARTICLES, PEOPLE! It gets... _tiresome_ listening to otherwise really sharp and clued Slashdotters saying 'Gee, we should help support the artists though, so the music industry can't be all bad' because they don't know the reality and are only guessing.
I read Albini's article and he it is based on one fundamentally flawed assertion. He is looking at the micro-music industry, not the macro-music industry. He does not understand that one single record does not exist in a vaccum. All of the major record companies support music which they lose money off of. Classical, and jazz, for example, which almost always sell less than 10,000 copies, and sometimes even less than 2,000 (and almost never make money). The money made off of successful artists who sell 250,000 copies (like in your example) are used to pay for non-profitable artists. Albini's assertions are only correct if every item in the catalog sells 250,000 copies, but this is never the case: usually an extremely small number (like 10%) sell that big, and big-time money is lost of the rest. Much of the "profits" (the $700,000 in the article) goes into failed projects and is not re-invested into new successful projects. Albini does not understand that successful projects fund failed ones. If every record sold 250,000 (or 25,000,000 copies), the record company would indeed be more profitable than it is. But the business is so risky that it is impossible to predict with any degree of accuracy how much an artists is going to appeal to the masses, so the success rate for new artists is only about 10%.
I suggest you read The Cost of CD's [hyperion-records.co.uk] which persuasively argues that $20.00 is a fair price for classical CD's (and is written by an independent classical record company).
If you do not believe that 90% of projects fail, then here's an exercise for you: Get a one-year-old magazine on pop music, and look at the reviews of new artists. See how many you recognize. I have a one-year-old copy of PopStar (teeny bopper magazine) here. It has reviews of the following new top-40 artists: DollsHead, Rockell, Ultra Nate, The Murmurs, Baxter, She Moves, Tyrese, Rebekah, 4Kast, and Wild Orchid. Of those, only one "made it" (that I know of - Tyrese), and the rest failed - finished from music to find other careers. All of these were on major labels such as MCA, WB, etc., etc. If there was a "sure thing" as you claim, why would these artists be sign? If the industry can just make artists popular, why didn't they make these artists popular? Certainly they had a vested interest. This is a reality. It is always said that 90% of new artists fail, and all evidence (such as the above) demonstrate this to be true. The "massive profits" made from the one successful artist (Tyrese) are used to pay the others, before the company sees a profit. That changes the picture a quite a lot.
NEWS: Jan 23, 2001 (Score:2)
Today, Netscape-Warner-AOL-Time-Mirabilis merged with AT&T-MediaOne-Windows*-Compaq-Digital-Altavista, creating the largest company known to mankind, Netscape-AT&T-MediaOne-Warner-Compaq-Time-Mirabil
"We will continue to let competition... merge with us."
NATTMOWCTMWDAOL will be listed on the NYSE as "AOL". Stock for AOL rised 48 1/4 yesterday in anticipation of the merger.
* - So what if Microsoft has been split up into Baby Bills? I can dream, can't I?
--
And you thought AOL/TW couldn't get any bigger... (Score:2)
For an example of how this will affect the consumer... well, take a look at TIME and Newsweek's coverages of the AOL/Time-Warner Merger. Very different, indeed! (Although, since Newsweek directly competes with TIME, they might also have ulterior motives...)
-Hypr Geeque
Re:another view of the merger (Score:2)
Yes, buzz and momentum are are indeed the two primary characteristics that Wall Street looks at in companies. Revenue and expense amounts are secondary issues that have little influence in valuation formulas.
The marketing muscle in conventional, non Internet-based media is what has kept AOL and TW so powerful, in spite of their substandard services and products.
Amazingly, most people are still glued to the TV, read Newsweek, listen to NPR, and generally accept other maintsream media channels to guide the decision making process. Until the general populous learns to think critically and make evaluations for themselves, then Corporate Mediocrity will continue to dominate the landscape.
Thankfully, the VC infrastructure in the US provides enourmous amounts of capital to help startups to achieve fantastic results that benefit all of us. (I'm not a super-patriot by any means. I hope that the best minds throughout the world have the opportunities that US capital makes possible; and indeed the best and the brightest do go to the US for that very reason: to have their visions realized.)
Maybe we want that. (Score:3)
Because those channels EXIST... people always talk about mp3s in a context of ripping off major label artists. Well, when there's only two major labels and only three major label artists and you hear them EVERYWHERE you go, tell me, would you even want to rip a mp3 of them? I think not. It becomes a non-issue, quite naturally.
This is _good_. Because it's _bad_. And it can have very harmful effects on music industry consumers and artists. AND THAT IS AS IT SHOULD BE... the natural counterbalance to the impossibly overwhelming dominance of the industry (I foresee a future in which you can be blackballed for ever having released an mp3. Bowie, of course, gets exempted ;) ) is the increasing irrelevance of the industry to their original concerns- as they become entirely about media control and efficient profitable distribution, they become entirely not about music- the highest of ironies.
Once they're in that condition, it becomes much more easy for grassroots support and underground or indie artists to gain public attention through things like the web and mp3s.
Re:Halt! (Score:3)
Another reason why this is bad is that EMI was (AFAIK) the only free-standing record company among the five giants.
Re:Public TV (Score:3)
Arcum dun said:
Perversely, a public TV affiliate is, so far, the ONLY station in the Louisville area that even broadcasts in digital TV/HDTV (WKPC-15). As far as I know, it may well be the only TV station in all of Kentucky (excepting possibly TV stations in Cincinatti that reach Covington and the rest of Northern Kentucky, and which may have their broadcast towers in the Covington area) that is HDTV-capable right now. (WKPC is one of two public TV stations in Louisville--Kentucky Educational Television, or KET, has actually broadcast some of the HDTV programs that PBS has done on the digital-TV channel-15 allocation on WKPC, and is really the only group in the area that's even promoting digital TV. They also have a second KET affiliate, where there isn't near as much of a digital push.)
None of the other stations in the area are doing HDTV/DTV yet (I've not even heard of the big powerhouse stations announcing anything as far as DTV broadcast plans for the Super Bowl or the Sydney Olympics), largely for two reasons: 1) Louisville is not in the "top 50" markets and was expected to be one of the last cities to adopt DTV anyways (close to the grace period ending in 2006) and 2) none of the TV stations want to invest until they can get a reasonable guarantee that Insight Louisville will carry the channels (Louisville and Jefferson County have mandated cable monopolies signed with the original company [Storer Cable, which has been bought and sold many a time since including by TCI (die...please) and Intermedia], which run out respectively in 2002 and 2006; something like seventy percent or more of people in Louisville have cable TV, and Insight really doesn't want to even think of trying to put DTV channels on cable until the entire subscribership HAS to buy Insight Digital or do without cable :)...a lot of cable companies aren't wanting to carry DTV at all, because they say it'll use up too much bandwidth they could use to sell people ten different flavours of the Discovery Channel).
I actually worry less about public TV here losing out on digital than a lot of the smaller TV stations. (The Fox and UPN affiliates, which are owned by the same people, should be safe, as should the NBC and ABC affiliates (owned by WAVE and WHAS, the two biggest stations in Louisville). The former WB, now Pax, affiliate isn't likely to get HDTV unless the pastor of the fundy Bible-based cult that runs it can manage to steal even MORE money from the parishoners (they're having to move because they schemed for over ten years (including setting up front businesses to first build a shale-mine operation, then a mini-mall) to get a four-lane access road built through a residential suburb, proceeded in pissing off the entire neighbourhood in the process, and got told "no" for the final time when the Army Corps of Engineers ruled that the area is a wetlands and thus is federally protected...oh, did I mention that they also own a radio station, and happen to not only be probably the largest fundy Bible-based cult center in Kentucky but also practically RUN the Religious Reich and all its PACs?). I can't exactly say I will be weeping for them if they don't get enough loot^H^H^H^H tithes to get a DTV transmitter...the one true indie station in the area, which was set up by an African-American person as a "community" TV station (which also had to fight like hell to get then-TKR/TCI Cable to carry it within the "basic" cable so that people in the poorer areas of town who were cable subscribers could view the channel), I DO worry about whether they'll be able to afford it...it could be the one thing that drives them under, or they could survive it like they have with everything else.)
Halt! (Score:3)
Re:Conglomerates will rule the 20th century (Score:3)
Or maybe they just want a huge legal MP3 collection 8-)
Corportaion Democracy (Score:3)
Will the government matter whan that happens? Peobably not. Corporations will do everything that the governemnt does today. People will loose their democracy and choice when that happens.
Very sad news. Hopefully FTC will put a stop to this.
--
GroundAndPound.com [groundandpound.com] News and info for martial artists of all styles.
They should just change the name (Score:3)
:)
Re:Battle of the isms. (Score:3)
Present a perfectly valid utopian system and human nature will completely tear it apart.
Example:
Taxes based on consumption. A progressive inheritance tax jacked up.
These seem nice until you realize it takes away from your and your childrens ability to succeed. Human nature intends to dominate.
Education based on choice is a good thing. I sure as hell hope Gore or Bradley are not elected (for those of you interested in the impending US election). We need choice put back into the system otherwise this cycle will continue.
As for dumbing down consumers; You are absolutely right. Feed anyone mediocre crap and they will come to expect and even like mediocre crap.
Re:its a misunderstanding (Score:3)
Dumb down the consumer, convince them they all want the same crap. Wallow in profits.
This is why we fear complete control of mass media. Combine it with inefficient government bureaucracy and corrupt unions and we become a victim of our own design.
Hmm... (Score:3)
So gain control over a substantial "Internet" provider like AOL and implement "Acceptable Use Policies" governing what you put on your web page...
Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Corporations can tread on the First Ammendment in ways that Congress simply can't. It may end up that governmental internet censorship becomes a moot point if every company you can get access from demands that you be politically incorrect. And how long will it be before these vast companies start blocking access to sites that don't enforce their morality policies or that belong to a competitor? What if your ISP decides it's not in their best interest for their users to be doing price comparasons and decide to block access to The List [thelist.com] for instance?
I'm sure some companies are going to start pulling some of these tricks in the near future and most of them will yank a web page today if someone even hints at a lawsuit. Food for thought.
The larger they are the bigger they fall (Score:3)
When Corporations merge, they combined assets add up. Their marketshare also does. But there are operations, their methods might not. A simple example - the board of a big company in Manhattan might have x board members, who need 2x secretaries to do their work. When they merge with someone else in LA with y board members (having 2y secretaries), the number of secretaries might not be 2(x+y). It doesn't scale. And many CEO's don't realize this.
Result - the corporation becomes too huge to manage. They become inefficient. and the smaller companies who can remain nimble will win.
This sounds like good news, until one realizes that we are talking about people and their livelihoods.
Sad, but that's how the wheel turns.
atypical capitalism-bashing (Score:3)
Conglomerates will rule the 20th century (Score:3)
The size of the company assured leverage with suppliers and brought incredible economies of scale to the market, but also created a bloated beast unable to cope with nimble competitors that would emerge from Japan during the 70's.
Partnerships and cross-licensing is the way to go for this century - you don't need to own it to use it.
Prediction - within three years, everything but the TW network of cable will be sold off. AOL will realize that Time magazine, Fortune, and other old-world media products (perhaps even CNN) are simply holding back the type of growth they were used to in the pre-merger days.
Re:Depends. (Score:4)
Michael Jackson after Thriller was the most overexposed man in show business. That's very, very dangerous. Are you suggesting that you expected his later releases to do comparably well? You're not talking like an insider here, you should _know_ what I'm talking about if you're going to come across authoritative. The industry will gear up to 'do business' on certain albums, whatever you think. Look at Thriller itself- after surprisingly high volume with Off The Wall (not that surprising, it was a very very strong album), the industry knew to expect serious sales volume from the start with Thriller, okayed expensive videos that broke the color line on MTV, and prepared for extremely heavy distribution. It's the same with Bruce Springsteen's live set- after Born In The USA (which the record company _knew_ was strong, very strong), the industry geared up for a major promo blitz, backing it with the distribution.
You're being naive, I'm afraid. Just supposing some obscure album _did_ click with listeners so heavily that it was set to surprise the industry with monster sales- just where do you think people are going to BUY enough copies of such an album if they're not pressed and shipped to the stores? (Interestingly, with mp3 some random person might develop monster mindshare just by being copied around enough... something that cannot happen with the commercial products as they can't be legally copied so heavily)
Regarding G'n'R, hell- I like them pretty well myself, I'm not calling them the Monkees. But don't you remember the sales volume of, not Appetite, but Use Your Illusion I+II? Again, a breakout hit that basically sold out everywhere laid the way for the music industry to DO TONNAGE on the next album, and to put the earlier album into reprintings. GnR earned their shot- you might be interested to know that GnR are also near the top of the list as far as sound engineering is concerned, on top of everything else- but having done so, the industry decided to MAKE THEM into the megastars they became. And that was not up to GnR, it was up to the suits. They'd still be selling out to this day if they hadn't been given this treatment, but not as the superstars they became.
Regarding your take on Steve Albini's experience, are you out of your mind? I don't understand how you can claim that the quarter-million sellers are being hosed to pay for the loser acts WHEN THE ACTS FOOT THE DAMN BILL! Do some homework. If you want to be a recording act you PAY for the services you need. If you don't seem to be a quarter million seller, guess what? The advance will be basically squat! I'm sorry, there is no compensation as you suggest. In particular, it's lunacy to suggest that the bigger acts subsidise the minor ones when the minor ones are being hosed even worse, and when it's possible to do some homework comparing music industry accounting with other manufacturing industries. In the final analysis, what happened to the music industry is not a question of subsidizing small acts or defending narrow profit margins. What happened to the music industry is middle management, and corporate bloat. Nothing about this suggests that it benefits consumers- or artists.
Regarding your cited article, The Cost Of CDs, I quite agree. Two points:
- Classical Musicians DO NOT foot the bill for recordings of their orchestras
- Classical Musicians have a UNION which forces the record company to actually pay them scale.
This does not correspond with any situation in the rock and pop industries, and Steve Albini was not writing about classical music performers.Or are you suggesting that all rock musicians should be robbed to pay for oboe players? o_O maybe you're suggesting that rock musicians should have a union like the classical guys? At least the latter get paid.
Depends. (Score:4)
GnR are a different case- they were superstar level in an era when sales volume was huge by comparison, but the industry was already ripping off most acts. My guess, since I've heard things to suggest that GnR _are_ in fact pretty wealthy, is that they had a manager or some business team who knew what to do when negotiating a superstar act with the industry. They were only a superstar act _because_ the industry picked them to be, and the industry only picks a few acts each decade to do that with (Michael Jackson, Springsteen around 'Born in the USA + the live set, Madonna etc), but they had what it took to be marketed that heavily- and that almost certainly means a GnR business team who on the one hand got the band a cut of the money, and on the other hand were ready to _guarantee_ product.
What you're seeing, Jamie, is the special cases- not the 'winners' in the sense of some lottery or luck, but the acts that combined musicianship on a commercial level with a business team that seriously kicked butt and could (a) negotiate contracts well for the band and (b) even more importantly, deliver product for the record company on a superstar level- handling the artist, augmenting promotion, managing all this so intently that they were like a superstar _company_ or business team, wildly outperforming the business teams of the other bands.
I love how Steve Albini is suddenly getting massive link-exposure on Slashdot. You're linking to a different copy than I linked to- I used the copy on this page [arancidamoeba.com], which has a more detailed costs breakdown on the band's expenditures, which you might find morbidly interesting. It's here: "Some of your friends are probably already this fucked [arancidamoeba.com]". READ THESE ARTICLES, PEOPLE! It gets... _tiresome_ listening to otherwise really sharp and clued Slashdotters saying 'Gee, we should help support the artists though, so the music industry can't be all bad' because they don't know the reality and are only guessing. Would people believe the practices of Microsoft without proof? "They can't be _all_ _that_ bad!". Would people believe how dumb Netscape was without proof? (*g* disclaimer, yes, I'm using Communicator, but I understand JWZ has some feelings on the matter ;) )
Re:Communism vs. monopoly (Score:4)
Examples: the exploding Pintos, and the memo saying that fixing the problem would cost more than the resulting deaths- this is a beautiful example, because it forced the corporate officers to choose between intentionally spending money (thus breaking the rules) or potentially being liable for negligence (which would only happen if they were caught making such a decision). Naturally, they were compelled to take the path of least expenditure, as the rules of being a corporation were more immediate than the rules of not being negligent. Another good example is the Nestle flap over infant formula- to the corporate officers, giving third world nursing mothers infant formula (until they stop lactating at which point the infant formula stops being free) wasn't even a choice- the crime was ill-defined and not technically illegal, and the profitability was obvious. Thus, according to the rules of being corporate, they were forced to do this as not doing it would leave them open to charges that they were not maximizing profit for the corporation.
See how the rules pressure corporations to commit crimes, or hunt down ways to abuse the world that aren't technically crimes yet? It's a very powerful effect, and this bears thinking about.
It's going to be a never-ending chase (Score:4)
With the number of channels expanding exponentially, the normal retail constrictions lose their pricing power. Parallel imports, recirculating radio shows over the net, MP3 servers, mobile phone, whatever.
The only way to to become big enough that your catalog is comprehensive enough (what most e-commerce sites are mostly at this stage) that people will put up with some sort of rental (which could be hidden in the normal telecom/connection charges). I would estimate minimum 20% to the total market, and total includes all music back to the prehistoric-age beating on stones (with effectively inifite storage, anything and everything could be eventually digitised). So you'd probably end up with 3-5 major comprehensives and a raft of niche specialists. The infrastructure IMHO will be coming under incredible deflatory pressures because you will be able to fit a complete radio station into a briefcase. Take a look at Gilder's Inventing the Internet Again [upenn.edu]. Essentially you can replace local storage with bandwidth (think of the time/space the bits spend in the air as the memory) which means reduction in costs/weight of the receiver. Something like the Transmeta chip would be able to decipher software as it flows from the air, dragging the MP3 stream after it. Given another few years, you'd be able to set up a jukebox at home, then listen to your favourites all day. Implication, severe market erosion by any ad-based distribution network (like radio/e-commerce). Also once people discover that one internet radio station is much the same as another (not surprising when they are all owned/programmed by clones of the same marketing droids
There's a consumer revolution coming and people are rearranging chairs in a mad rush so they're not the ones left standing when the bullets start flying.
LL
vertical integration:bad for consumers,bad for AOL (Score:4)
For example, Miramax would be remiss to provide content to AOL from this point forward, as Disney (the parent of Miramax) competes with Time Warner's media properties. Feeding AOL means feeding Time Warner, which is counter to Disney's goals.
Supplying content to Yahoo on the other hand, doesn't present this problem, as Yahoo only aggregates and distributes. Yahoo is following the correct model for the new economy.
music industry mergers.. _yuck_ (Score:5)
Mergers usually contain downsizing, but you cant look at downsizing in the music industry the way you can look at it other places. Remember this is maybe the only industry left that is selling a mass-produced artistic product created by individal artisans (as opposed to the massive centralized committeework that produces movies.. you could maybe claim movies are still an artistic, but i wouldn't say so. you don't often have a person or a small group of persons making a movie with total artistic freedom, and you certainly can't ahve a movie that was made by one person working alone..).
If, say, warner cable and TCI cable merge, you're probably going to see a bunch of accountants and managers and people who do whatever it is you do if you work for a cable company lose their jobs. Well, whatever. One accountant is the same as another; any accountant can do the same work as any accountant.
Music doesn't work that way. When the label drops a musician, they're losing something specific that only that musician can do.
When Universal bought Polygram last year, there was a _lot_ of bands getting dropped and a _lot_ of pain. I can't remember the number that lived and the number that stayed came "bloody thursday" (the day they released the list of who got pink slips) but it was fairly sickening.
This bbc article kind of irritates me for its lack of considering what effect this is going to have on non-mainstream artists. "The company would unite artists like The Spice Girls, Madonna, Robbie Williams and the Rolling Stones - and hits might be made available on the internet. " ?? please. This is NOT a good thing.
i would insert something here about hoping that they make up for a small amount of the lost artists by firing all the management at Neglectra records.. but i doubt it would really be appropriate here.
Re:Halt! (Score:5)
The other problem is that it doesn't expose them to market forces (good form their point of view) but it means that their system can become rather stratified and slow to react to changes. Perhaps this is good in the long term in that really new talent could emerge somewhere but in the short term it denies airspace to new groups when media companies are interest in creating star-packed franchises (another Beatle) feeding frenzy so they can sell merchandising rights and future revenue from relicensing fees.
Is it good for a company to completely dominate the music tastes for generations? Economists have always noted the negative effect when an elite group holds on to all the productive assets, whether land or (in this case) mindshare/branding.
LL
And then there were 4 (Score:5)
But Universal bought Polygram and it looks like we have EMI/Warner leaving only these:
The music industry keeps getting smaller and smaller. Together these 4 control over 90% of the music industry.
One Company (Score:5)
Seven for the Browsers in their halls of stone,
Nine for smaller ISP's doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord AOL on his throne.
In the land of Wall Street, where the shadows lie.
One Company to rule them all, one Company to find them,
One Company to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.