After Sony blows out half of its investment.

This is what’s wrong with the record companies, this is what’s wrong with AMERICA! The short-term thinking.

Stockholders in Spotify all agree, its value is going up. Of course it’s the stock market, no one can predict the future. But trading is thin, because investors believe there’s such a big runway for the music streaming service.

The record companies…

They took their short term profits so they could report them on their quarterly calls and claim victory. HUH?

Look at Warner Music.

No, look at Universal Music, which may be spun off from Vivendi soon. Valuation of the company is put around the same number as Spotify, in the mid twenty BILLIONS!

But Time Warner sold Warner Music for a $2.6 billion fifteen years ago. Dumb call, made by Richard Parsons’s team which is long gone. It’s nearly impossible to get this rate of return on investment, but no one in corporate America is a builder other than the founder, they’re all custodians, looking to make their bonuses, playing to Wall Street.

Except for Jeff Bezos.

Excoriated for spending and lack of profits last decade, now Amazon is so successful critics are agitating for its breakup under antitrust laws.

Would an independent label still run by its founder blow out its Spotify holdings just after the company went public?

OF COURSE NOT!

Unless the proprietor wanted to buy something, because where else are you gonna park these funds and get as big a return?

The music business agitates against the hedge funds, the VCs, and then behaves in the same damn way. The stewards of the labels aren’t thinking about tomorrow, just today. Isn’t that how we got into this mess, the execs fighting to pull the business back to the past when the only thing that has saved it is Spotify and other streaming services, i.e. going into the future?!!

As for sharing proceeds with artists…

Give me a break.

At these royalty rates it’s like putting pennies in the cups of beggars. Assuming they account accurately, which they’ve never been able to do previously.

Rather they’ll just take the money off the table, give it to executives, and cry poor soon enough.

They could take these winnings and invest in their future. Try to break acts that don’t fit the mold, revitalize the business, but they won’t do that either.

Which is why all revolution comes from the outside, when you’ve got something, you want to protect it, people are greedy, they’re afraid of losing, whereas when you’ve got nothing, you’re willing to risk it all.