Records and Bankers

One of the last four major labels was just bought for next to nothing by Citigroup.  

EMI, which controls the master recordings of everyone from the Beatles to Maria Callas to Herbert von Karajan to Radiohead (before In Rainbows), had been bought by a group of bankers called Terra Firma in 2007, partially needing to sell off its $2.5 billion in debt to make their deal work.  When we hit the economic downturn, they couldn't pay their bills, and Citigroup moved in.  As this article (http://www.gpb.org/news/2011/02/04/citigroup-takes-over-emi) describes, it's like Terra Firma bought a house (EMI), but they couldn't pay the mortgage (sell the debt) and so Citigroup is foreclosing (taking over EMI).  It hopes to hold onto EMI as an asset until it can be sold for a profit.

This is the sad state of the music industry today.  This is directly from the article:

"They've got the original product," Martland says. "And people who are interested, whether it's Pink Floyd or the Beatles, want a top-class version, and they'll pay for it."

"The fundamental problem may have been [that they were] the only standalone big music company left in the world," Martland continues. "If you look at all the other surviving major record companies, they are a part of big ventures."

Of the other three major labels, Warner Music Group is owned by a group of private investors led by Edgar Bronfman Jr.; Sony Music Entertainment is owned by Sony Corporation of America; and Universal Music Group is owned by Vivendi SA, a French media conglomerate.

So where is the music?  

I believe it's in the hands of fans and musicians again.  And they are more daring musicians, with more interested fans than a major marketing or banking company could possibly handle.  

We have to throw the thieves out, not necessarily the file sharing populace, but the executives and bankers who take all of the money an artist would make even if they could sell those tracks or albums.  By patron-funding artists to make art up front, file sharing is no longer the threat it once was, it's a legitimate distribution channel.  

This is the great disintermediation.   And from where I'm listening, it sounds good.