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

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

#91

Post by m12k »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #83

From one perspective, this looks like economically useless activity. And it could be. But it isn't necessarily so. Historically, content creation and distribution were bundled. Distribution further bundled the content per se and performances. This was all an artefact of the up-front cost of manufacturing and distributing physical media. With digitization, there is no reason a content creator shouldn't be able to esse…

The article makes it sound like he's only buying proven songs, meaning they already have distribution. Also, as Napster, Pirate Bay and now Spotify have shown, distribution really is trivial - what he's buying is the right to restrict legal distribution.

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

#92

Post by 52-6F-62 »

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…

Haha I’m going to join the others who seemed to get excited at your comment.

This is a short, two-part doc about a small music venue I was fortunate enough to spend my late teens and early twenties frequenting. It was the closest thing to my small town that brought me a lot of music from the generation you’re listing. Searching YouTube will unearth performances from the place. I’m in one of the group photos they put up somewhere in this. I miss the place.

Some of Tim and Scott's stories are entertaining and worth the listen.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ngBr-WiQ5ek

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

#93

Post by JumpCrisscross »

m12k wrote: post #91
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #83

From one perspective, this looks like economically useless activity. And it could be. But it isn't necessarily so. Historically, content creation and distribution were bundled. Distribution further bundled the content per se and performances. This was all an artefact of the up-front cost of manufacturing and distributing physical media. With digitization, there is no reason a content creator shouldn't be able to esse…

The article makes it sound like he's only buying proven songs, meaning they already have distribution. Also, as Napster, Pirate Bay and now Spotify have shown, distribution really is trivial - what he's buying is the right to restrict legal distribution.

> as Napster, Pirate Bay and now Spotify have shown, distribution really is trivial

Spotify is a multi-billion dollar company. I’m not sure what it does is trivial.

On buying proven content, that still increases competition on the buy side for that content. The decoupling of distribution and content acquisition still happens, and makes the top end of the market pricier. That, in turn, means more money to the lower end, et cetera.

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

#94

Post by shi314 »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #44
jahewson wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the things you do have to be world-class all-time greats in order to be worth doing?

If they are accessible, then yes, and I don’t see why that would be controversial. Normally enjoyment of the art making process for amateurs is just that, enjoyment of the process . If I want to enjoy literature, I’ll read the work of professional writers. If I want to enjoy the task of writing, I’ll write myself. For most people, art making as a hobby is occasional, simply by the time & resource limits of regular jo…

I personally would have a not so great food with room for improvement everyday rather than to eat similar delicious food every day. Improvement makes a mundane thing not-so-mudane while no improvement makes a not-so-mudane thing look mudane. Anyways, different people have different preference.

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

#95

Post by Animats »

neilwilson wrote: post #82
TomMckenny wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems that's the way society ended up being structured. Perhaps we will all end up selling houses to each other and no one will have to make anything at all! I swear, even the Aztecs had a less destructive system.

We need about 1% of people to grow the food and perhaps 9% of the people to make stuff we need. The other 90% then have to convince the 10% that do the actual work that they are worth the time to produce a surplus for. IP barriers are one way of doing that. Even farmers like pop songs.

Close. About 1.4% for farming and under 13% for all other tangible goods.[1]

Take a close look at that table. It's really important. Growth areas: Health care and social assistance, educational services, leisure and hospitality, and construction.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-...

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

#99

Post by Orou »

tomrod wrote: post #84
umvi wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like the old aristocracy days except for instead of the elite owning physical property and renting it out to the peasants, the elite own intellectual property and rent it out to the peasants.

Feudalism is one of the standard memes of history, as per David Brin.[1] The essay is well worth reading, as well as the thesis that a new meme ("otherness") arose within Western Liberalism. In my mind Otherness is a saddle point, and worth investing in to protect.[2] [1] http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/dogmaofotherness.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Great read, thanks for linking.

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

#100

Post by cgriswald »

1123581321 wrote: post #80
cgriswald wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of my point. Getting airplay and being in adverts helps keep his song in the public mind which generates income from the song. He may see it as passive income, but people are doing things to keep that income going. I'm also guessing he didn't start out eight figures in the hole by purchasing his songs from someone else.

Passive income typically refers to whether the owner of the income-generating asset needs to put in a significant amount of regular effort to generate the income, not whether anyone in the value chain does.

The question wasn't about whether anyone in the value chain gets passive income, but whether the songs generate revenue 'by sitting on them.' If you're going to invest in either silver or songs with the intention of doing nothing, which are you going to invest in? The experiences of a 70's pop star getting royalties are not equivalent to what Mercuriadis will have to do to produce revenue from his investors' investments.
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