Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

marker.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 245 posts

Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#11

Post by chx »

HenryBemis wrote: post #6
makapuf wrote: post #4

The issue there is that new songs ans creativity destroys value of old songs and so this way of treating copyright plus no entries to public domain means that old songs will be pushed forward all the time whereas new songs have no incentive at all to emerge. Especially if distribution is consolidated between a few actors.

Oh how I totally disagree with you... I thought I'd never move on to listen to "what kids listen to these days" and "most of it is crap". And then a cousin (with similar music taste) pointed me to "Post Rock" genre.. Mogwai (yes from the movie), Bloc Party, Sigur Ros, God is an Astronaut, 65daysofstatic.. I now split my time between good old classic heavy metal (Iron Maiden - Iron Maiden)(anything after 7nth son is j…

> anything after 7nth son is junk imho

those are fighting words, my friend. Fear of the Dark and Paschendale are just two examples that came after Seventh Son and are rightly played often by the band at their concerts and immensely popular.

Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#12

Post by corrys »

makapuf wrote: post #4

The issue there is that new songs ans creativity destroys value of old songs and so this way of treating copyright plus no entries to public domain means that old songs will be pushed forward all the time whereas new songs have no incentive at all to emerge. Especially if distribution is consolidated between a few actors.

New songs do have an incentive to emerge - it’s just human creativity. In the last 2 decades distribution has been massively democratized, the opposite of what your fear is. Anyone can distribute their music online to billions of people for free (YouTube, SoundCloud, etc).

Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#13

Post by DSingularity »

zozbot234 wrote: post #8

I wonder why this guy thinks that the rights to a successful song are an "uncorrelated" asset. Wouldn't strong economic growth mean that people are far more likely to spend money on these things? Especially for 'sync' rights which mostly come up for things like ads, or derivative mass-marketed media (e.g. successful song X ends up in the soundtrack of movie Y)? Just seemed like a weird claim to me.

Yeah. And that money goes to him. And with a weak economy people will stop paying him but now the streaming services will pay him more.

Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#14

Post by bagacrap »

He raised $1B of others' money; he hasn't spent anything close to that yet, even in aggregate. The article is extremely light on details of why this guy thinks he can turn a bigger profit off these song catalogs than the traditional publishers can, but I guess he's cutting a lot of fat compared to the big publishing houses? This seems positive to me because it's shifting more money towards the artists:

"In the music industry, paying for assets at a 10x multiple is considered top dollar. Mercuriadis is reportedly paying up to 20x, making it impossible for others to compete."

Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#15

Post by decasia »

This new moment of marketization is interesting to observe from the sidelines.

I'm a musician but I've never gotten paid for making music and don't want to be. This way, songwriting and playing music can remain something I do purely for the intrinsic joy of it. And it's not really so long ago that, if you wanted music in your house, you had to play it yourself.

I have nothing against recorded music or professional musicians, but it's interesting how much we seem to collectively forget that buying music isn't the only way to have access to it. Not everything we need has to be obtained as a commodity (still less through a monthly subscription).

Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#16

Post by stuart78 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #8

I wonder why this guy thinks that the rights to a successful song are an "uncorrelated" asset. Wouldn't strong economic growth mean that people are far more likely to spend money on these things? Especially for 'sync' rights which mostly come up for things like ads, or derivative mass-marketed media (e.g. successful song X ends up in the soundtrack of movie Y)? Just seemed like a weird claim to me.

While everything may be influenced by macro trends, there will still be movies, Super Bowl Ads, radio and Spotify playlists which rely on music licensing. It may dip in bad times, but the bet is that they will do better than other investment types.

Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#18

Post by nickthemagicman »

bagacrap wrote: post #14

He raised $1B of others' money; he hasn't spent anything close to that yet, even in aggregate. The article is extremely light on details of why this guy thinks he can turn a bigger profit off these song catalogs than the traditional publishers can, but I guess he's cutting a lot of fat compared to the big publishing houses? This seems positive to me because it's shifting more money towards the artists: "In the music…

That's optimistic of you to think that he's going to give more profits to the artist.

Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#20

Post by MR4D »

zozbot234 wrote: post #8

I wonder why this guy thinks that the rights to a successful song are an "uncorrelated" asset. Wouldn't strong economic growth mean that people are far more likely to spend money on these things? Especially for 'sync' rights which mostly come up for things like ads, or derivative mass-marketed media (e.g. successful song X ends up in the soundtrack of movie Y)? Just seemed like a weird claim to me.

Uncorrelated probably means to the stock market. The US market was up about 30% in 2019, but I doubt the value of any particular Taylor Swift song increased by that much.

I’m sure there is some correlation to general GDP growth, and you would actually want that. It’s the specific stock market correlation that you tend to not want.

Post reply on HN