Did Andy Lack set Sony up?<\/p>\n
My e-mail box is starting to fill, my phone is starting to ring.\u00c2\u00a0 Insiders
smell something fishy.\u00c2\u00a0 Or, as Woodward and Bernstein used to put it, FOLLOW THE
MONEY!<\/p>\n
Andy Lack is an outsider.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s new to the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t add up
to him.\u00c2\u00a0 All this pay for play.\u00c2\u00a0 All this money to fly acts to perform at
radio station shows.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody else is making money but SONY!<\/p>\n
Thus you have the deal with Yahoo Music.\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s get paid for streaming videos
on the Web.\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t it funny that Andy Lack led the charge on this, and not
some indentured music business savant?<\/p>\n
When business as usual is questioned in the music industry, the executives
close ranks.\u00c2\u00a0 Say it’s all about the music.\u00c2\u00a0 They compliment each other.\u00c2\u00a0 Say
SURE there are abuses, but he who has the best music wins.<\/p>\n
But Andy Lack was never part of this cabal.\u00c2\u00a0 And he can’t stand what he sees.
\u00c2\u00a0So he approaches Eliot Spitzer, as a weird kind of snitch, someone new to
the industry, who can plead ignorance and innocence, who wants HELP cleaning up
not only the business, but his company’s balance sheet.<\/p>\n
Look at the Attorney General’s statement.\u00c2\u00a0 Why does it cover so many heinous
activities?\u00c2\u00a0 Did they get this information as a result of subpoena, or did
Andy Lack COUGH IT UP!\u00c2\u00a0 Helping the AG formulate a new roadmap that would lead
his company to profitability.\u00c2\u00a0 In one fell swoop, no cash changes hands, no
equipment, there are no independent promotion men, no free radio shows…<\/p>\n
I mean who else would cooperate to this degree?\u00c2\u00a0 Can you see Jimmy Iovine
saying INVESTIGATE ME?\u00c2\u00a0 Let me tell you how I got Suge Knight to extract Dr. Dre
from his contract?\u00c2\u00a0 How I broke Limp Bizkit?\u00c2\u00a0 No, you’re gonna have to PRY it
out of Jimmy.<\/p>\n
And it’s not only Jimmy’s character, he’s a member of the brotherhood.\u00c2\u00a0 You
don’t rat on other soldiers.<\/p>\n
But Andy Lack.\u00c2\u00a0 He owes no loyalties.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s not bothered a whit by decades of
music history.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s just on a mission.\u00c2\u00a0 To make Sony Music’s, now SonyBMG’s,
balance sheet look good, so he is handsomely paid and can get out of this
crazy, fucked up business.<\/p>\n
Ten million?\u00c2\u00a0 Why would the AG settle for such a low figure?<\/p>\n
Only if Sony cooperated.\u00c2\u00a0 Only if Andy Lack delivered what they wanted on a
silver platter.\u00c2\u00a0 Only if they could insure that in the future, certain
activities would truly be eviscerated.<\/p>\n
We may be at the dawn of a new era.<\/p>\n
At this point, Andy Lack has more power than the lifers at his company.\u00c2\u00a0 And,
he’s got the law on his side.<\/p>\n
NOW is it about good music?<\/p>\n
NOW do the indie labels make inroads?<\/p>\n
Maybe it’s not even about Universal dominance.\u00c2\u00a0 Yup, that’s Doug Morris\/Zach
Horowitz’s plan, to dominate, to sue you into submission, to carry a big
stick.\u00c2\u00a0 But maybe Andy Lack’s plan is just to make money.\u00c2\u00a0 To level the playing
field so his company can compete without resorting to heinous, COSTLY activities.<\/p>\n
There’s a story here.\u00c2\u00a0 This all doesn’t add up.\u00c2\u00a0 How the AG knows SO much and
the penalty is so low.<\/p>\n
Maybe, Andy Lack is the hero in all this.<\/p>\n
Wouldn’t that be a laugh.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Did Andy Lack set Sony up? My e-mail box is starting to fill, my phone is starting to ring.\u00c2\u00a0 Insiders smell something fishy.\u00c2\u00a0 Or, as Woodward and Bernstein used to put it, FOLLOW THE MONEY! Andy Lack is an outsider.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s new to the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t add up to him.\u00c2\u00a0 All this pay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-1C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}