Lyor might be pilloried, but he’s doing better than Jimmy. How can that be?

A drum roll please… The label with the greatest market share of current product year to date is…ATLANTIC RECORDS! Hell, if you include catalog, Atlantic is #2 to RIGA. Jimmy’s got 7.45% of the overall market, including catalog, and Atlantic 7… (As for market share of current, Atlantic’s got 7.73% and IGA 7%.)

Staying in the current realm, Monte and L.A. Reid are right behind Jimmy, with 5+ each. Then comes Warner Brothers, with 4.76%.

Then comes Barry Weiss with 4.37%.

The man with the golden ears? The irreplaceable Clive Davis, the most successful man in the record business, lording over Alicia Keys and the "American Idol" champs? RCA Records comes in seventh, with 4.33%. Then, Rick Rubin’s Columbia, with 3.74%, Disney with 3.72%, Capitol with 2.08% and Epic, with 1.88%.

What have we learned from the above? That someone is smart somewhere. Turns out Lyon should have kept his job, Clive needed to be demoted, and change was needed at Columbia and is still needed at Capitol and Epic.

Universal is still big kahuna, with a 34.04% share of new product and 31.24% of the entire market. Sony/BMG comes next, with 20.56% of current and 21.71% of total product. Then comes Warner with 20.16% and 20.64% respectively. Then, Indies with 13.85% and 14.21% respectively. And bringing up the rear, EMI with 7.16% of current product and 8.8% overall.

Shit, what was Guy Hands thinking? He’s boxed into a corner, with no market share. He’s got to be praying for a merger with Warner, obviously he can’t make his numbers on catalog alone. Maybe he should just shut down new music development and become a catalog and publishing house.

Sony/BMG is FUCKED! Who do we blame? Mr. Root kit, Andy Lack? Who engineered this merger that has not worked? Or, the Bertelsmann guys, whose hands have not been on the wheel, intimidated by Clive Davis, getting press, but no dollars? God, so many people have been fired on the Sony end, can the company even recover? And with Rick Rubin running the operation from a distance…

And if Warner has increased market share this much, a real comeback, and reports shitty financial numbers, doesn’t that tell us…it’s almost impossible to make it in recorded music today? That change has to come from more than market share increases? Maybe Lyon should be demoted to head of Atlantic and they should bring in a real thinker… A revolutionary, a young guy who truly understands tech and the future.

Speaking of which, what has Rick Rubin actually done so far?

And if Warner can garner two thirds of Universal’s market share, how vulnerable is that company? Does someone need to get a pay cut at Universal? Is the company just coasting? How come Warner could make such market share increases, and they couldn’t? Is Universal General Motors, the lumbering giant getting ready for a fall? Missing out on trend changes? Can the Pussycat Dolls truly save Universal, or do they need to sell more product by small acts, be less about marketing blitzes and more about the street?