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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

#171

Post by bsder »

wiseleo wrote: post #156

It will be industry-wide game over when they grab Max Martin and Lukasz Gottwald https://nypost.com/2015/10/04/your-favorite-song-on-the-radi... I think the goal is to launch the next ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and basically charge astronomical rates for songs people want to hear. Songwriters will love it and artists will have no choice. This is pretty much a confirmation: "Along with owning a bigger chunk of the publishing mar…

It's unsurprising though.

There was a leaked Sony memo that showed that most of profits come from back catalog and most of their losses are from new artist development.

The memo: https://sriramk.com/memos/goldberg-music.pdf

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

#172

Post by teh_klev »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #5

Not a bad idea. Finding avenues to rent-seek seems to be the winning strategy, especially with all the cash floating around looking for returns.

If you read to the end of the article:

He’s considering launching a songwriter’s union, something akin to the Screenwriters Guild, that would give songwriters more leverage to extract better deals from the industry’s power brokers.

Is that such a bad thing?

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

#173

Post by MaxGabriel »

doh wrote: post #168
wiseleo wrote: post #156

It will be industry-wide game over when they grab Max Martin and Lukasz Gottwald https://nypost.com/2015/10/04/your-favorite-song-on-the-radi... I think the goal is to launch the next ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and basically charge astronomical rates for songs people want to hear. Songwriters will love it and artists will have no choice. This is pretty much a confirmation: "Along with owning a bigger chunk of the publishing mar…

> I think the goal is to launch the next ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and basically charge astronomical rates for songs people want to hear. Songwriters will love it and artists will have no choice. In US, for mechanical royalties, the rates are set by government. So yes, they could charge whatever they want for live and synch, but that would have much smaller impact on the general population.

For anyone else who didn’t know, synchronization rights let you use the music for TV, movies, commercials, and some more things

https://entertainmentlaw.uslegal.com/music-industry/synchron...

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

#174

Post by peteretep »

wiseleo wrote: post #156

It will be industry-wide game over when they grab Max Martin and Lukasz Gottwald https://nypost.com/2015/10/04/your-favorite-song-on-the-radi... I think the goal is to launch the next ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and basically charge astronomical rates for songs people want to hear. Songwriters will love it and artists will have no choice. This is pretty much a confirmation: "Along with owning a bigger chunk of the publishing mar…

> It's a public company. I might want to buy some stock in it when I can.

Why, what’s the information advantage you have over the market?

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

#175

Post by sigstoat »

narrator wrote: post #169
jrs95 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western Liberalism increasingly seems to just be a system by which you establish global feudalism. I guess it's good for a few generations. Hard to argue it's even good now though because even though we're wealthier than ever we're increasingly unhappy and mentally ill.

If you have a billion dollars in the U.S you can park it in treasuries and make millions and outsource the income generation to the government's tax collectors. Meanwhile, in China, the government just prints money electronically when they need it and billionaires have to be clever about where to park their billions to earn a decent return. That need to be clever contributes to creating useful capital that increases…

> instead of just adding to the interest bill on the national debt.

the billionaires are lowering the interest bill as they compete to purchase treasuries. (the money is borrowed from whoever will accept the lowest interest for it. see https://www.treasurydirect.gov/instit/auctfund/work/work.htm under "Bidding".)

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

#176

Post by redis_mlc »

dangus wrote: post #60
nickthemagicman wrote: post #49

This doesn't bother me one bit. I think he's making a mistake though. Taylor Swift, Timbaland, and Bruno Mars are all arguably homogenous music made by marketing groups for middle American focus groups. They are endlessly replaceable, rather forgettable, artists and will be lost to history by the 'next big thing' that sounds just like it or very similar in a year or two. It has more in common with pop fashion than or…

This gives me the impression that you didn't quite get what the article was about, and I'm not supposed to suggest that you didn't read it but let's just say I have my suspicions. This company is often buying songwriter's catalogs, not just specific public-facing artists that come and go. And while you may not remember the artists names, these songs often end up in commercials and other adaptations that generate reve…

> The importance of the songwriter over the artist has been growing, all of this was mentioned in the article.

That has always been the case in the USA.

The band's songwriter buys a mansion, and the rest rent apartments.

The Go-gos (writer Jane Wiedlin), Twisted Sister (writer Dee Snyder) and Smashing Pumpkins (writer Billy Corrigan) broke up over that, and prolly a majority of other bands.

Songwriter Diane Warren is prolly a billionaire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_written_by_Diane...

What's interesting is that above even that is owning publishing rights, pioneered by Frank Sinatra. He produced his own albums, then after he mastered he shopped for a distributor.

Almost no US musicians bothered to retain publishing rights, aside from Steve Vai, Frank Zappa and a few other hard-asses. I tell Youtubers to "own your publishing."

Source: in the biz.

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

#179

Post by pascalxus »

peteretep wrote: post #174
wiseleo wrote: post #156

It will be industry-wide game over when they grab Max Martin and Lukasz Gottwald https://nypost.com/2015/10/04/your-favorite-song-on-the-radi... I think the goal is to launch the next ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and basically charge astronomical rates for songs people want to hear. Songwriters will love it and artists will have no choice. This is pretty much a confirmation: "Along with owning a bigger chunk of the publishing mar…

> It's a public company. I might want to buy some stock in it when I can. Why, what’s the information advantage you have over the market?

I don't know why this is being downvoted, this is an excellent question. it's commonly known that companies/stocks are priced using all available information thus an advantage the company may have is already priced in, hence why some highly successful companies trade at very high PEs.

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

#180

Post by [deleted] »

bitL wrote: post #149
lotsofpulp wrote: post #5

Not a bad idea. Finding avenues to rent-seek seems to be the winning strategy, especially with all the cash floating around looking for returns.

Everybody should read about Tibetan society in the early 20th century to understand consequences of extreme rent seeking... Hell has many forms.

[deleted]
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