“Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s Warner Music Group, once derided as an awkward investment in a troubled industry, is starting to gather a little steam,” Sandy Brown reports for TheStreet.com. “Bronfman’s $2.6 billion buy of the Time Warner music division last year, along with a group of private-equity hard chargers, was written off as little more than a vanity play for a self-professed music fanatic cum media mogul. After all, the music industry has been hit by rampant piracy and declining retail sales, trends the industry has been unable to contain. But the tables may be turning. Described as a noncore asset at Time Warner, Warner Music now looks like a play on a management group that saw the time was right to get into an industry in transition.”
“Part of the reason for the uptick may be what Bronfman has said recently regarding file-sharing, industry pricing and pay-for-content as it is distributed on newer platforms,” Brown reports. “‘We are really the arms suppliers to a significant series of wars going on,’ Bronfman said at a recent conference. He noted what he called the device wars, ‘as Sony, Samsung and others come after Apple’s dominance in the device space,’ as well as content distribution wars among telcos, cable, broadcast and others. Plus, Bronfman said, there’s ‘opportunity for penetration on existing platforms like mobile, where, despite drastic changes we’ve seen in digital, we have yet to sell a single song.'”
Brown reports, “Bronfman would like to change the balance of what the music labels get paid for and what they give away. He says that 20 years ago the industry gave music to MTV and made that business successful, and that has more recently been the case where iPods are concerned. ‘We’re selling our songs through iPods, but we don’t have a share of iPods’ revenue,’ he said. ‘We have to keep thinking about how to monetize our content for our shareholders where we’ve been creating value for so many other streams.'”
“Though Bronfman and his group have seemingly put Warner Music on the right track, some investors still think Time Warner made the right choice in bidding adieu to the music business,” Brown reports. “The challenge for Bronfman is to prove those problems aren’t too big to overcome.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Wethinks Middlebronfman has popped his cork. Now the greedy @#$%&! wants a share of the hardware revenue, too? Did the record labels get a cut of turntable sales for umpteen years? Did Sony pay Warner Music a percentage of each and every cassette Walkman they sold? For the love of Jobs!
From Middlebronfman’s iPod voice recorder: “Note to self: don’t forget to call the iPod case and accessory makers, we deserve a cut from them, too. And the headphone and speaker makers. Oh, and those guys that make the chips inside iPods, too. And copper smelters! And the plastics makers!! And the LCD screen makers!!! And, and, and… more later. Money, money, money! Ah-hahahahaha!!! (singing) money, money, money, money!“
We hope that someday Steve Jobs is the one who eliminates the middlebronfman and allows the artists to go directly to their fans via iTunes; no more outdated ideas like making an album a year (you write a song, record it and release it via iTunes whenever the creative urge hits) and no more greedy, waste-of-space middlebronfman types always getting in the way with their stupid money-hungry ideas and disproportionately outsized takes.
[Note: MacDailyNews coined the term “Middlebronfman,” a combination of “middleman” and “Bronfman,” in an article on Monday, October 03, 2005 with the sentence, “Eliminate the middlebronfman.” Full article here.]
Related articles:
Apple’s iTunes Music Store dominates as digital music sales more than triple – October 03, 2005
Dvorak: record companies’ biggest concern about Apple’s iTunes is clear and accountable bookkeeping – September 29, 2005
In 99-cent fight with ‘Looney iTunes’ labels, Apple CEO Jobs will get whatever Jobs wants – September 29, 2005
Warner music exec discusses decapitation strategy for Apple iTunes Music Store – September 28, 2005
Warner CEO Bronfman: Apple iTunes Music Store’s 99-cent-per-song model unfair – September 23, 2005
Analyst: Apple has upper hand in iTunes Music Store licensing negotiations with music labels – September 23, 2005
Steve Jobs plays high-stakes poker with greedy record labels – September 22, 2005
Record labels accuse Apple CEO Jobs of ‘double standard’ as they seek to force iTunes price increase – September 21, 2005
Apple CEO Steve Jobs to repel ‘greedy’ record companies’ demands for higher iTunes prices – September 21, 2005
Apple CEO Steve Jobs vows to stand firm in face of ‘greedy’ record companies – September 20, 2005
NYT’s Pogue to record companies: it’d be idiotic to mess with Apple iTunes Music Store prices – August 31, 2005
Apple CEO Steve Jobs prepares for pivotal fight on digital music prices – August 28, 2005
BusinessWeek: Apple unlikely to launch music subscription service – August 15, 2005
Record labels to push Apple for higher iTunes Music Store prices in 2006? – August 05, 2005
Study shows Apple iTunes Music Store pay-per-download model preferred over subscription service – April 11, 2005
Record labels look to raise iTunes wholesale prices, music industry fears Apple’s market domination – March 05, 2005
Report: Apple CEO Steve Jobs ‘angered’ as music labels try to raise prices for downloads – February 28, 2005
Report: Music labels delay Euro iTunes Music Store fearing Apple domination – May 05, 2004
Greedy Big Five music labels looking to jack up iTunes songs to $2.49 each? – April 22, 2004
It’s just business, friends. The music execs don’t like having to rely on Apple to distribute their music – I wouldn’t want my livelihood to depend on someone else, either. The best scenario for them would be to distribute their music from their own websites but using a common DRM owned by the RIAA, which is playable on a range of cheap players. Right now Apple has them by the ba##s and they realize it. I think they’re just waiting for the tipping point where the majority of music sales are from online sources before they make their move.
Hairsplitting. “iPod stream” or “iPod sales” doesn’t make a bit of difference as to what he actually meant. One “interpretation” is no more valid than the others.
What it comes down to is simply that he wants more money. “He’s trying to use it to show that music has a high value, which he does not feel his company is receiving.”
I’ll agree music has value. But, his company is receiving value. It’s just not what he wants.
And, I will say that it isn’t the music that necessarily adds value to the iPod, but it’s the iPod that makes the music more valuable. By making all the music I have much more readily accessible to me, when and where I want. Music doesn’t have and can’t add those values.
It would be greedy if he had a case.. but it shows just how pathetic their business model is that they’re grasping for ‘revenue owed’ out of thin air because the money they’re making off digital music is so meagre.
Is that Apple’s fault?
No. They make about 70 cents revenue off 500 million songs on iTunes…
So what are they griping about?
Jealousy.
This notion that it is the record companies content on iTMS that is driving demand for iPods is the biggest load of cr@p since the “world is flat, i tell ya”.
Down here in (under-privileged) Australia we have no iTMS yet apple has sold over 1 million iPods in a population of only 20 million people.
We have also had WMA download sites for a year or two but no one is buying WMA players.
Any journalist that can’t debunk bronfman’s theory is either on the pay roll or drugs.
Why should anybody be surprised that Bronfman wants a share of iPod revenue? There is already a precedent for such an atrocity – the labels get a share of blank cd sales revenue.
mw: “every” – how appropriate
Let me make it perfectly clear:
My job is to make money for my stockholders.
I want a cut of revenues from the sales of all devices (ipod, zen, turntable, victrola, whatever) used to play MY music.
Then, when I get that, I want a cut of the consumer’s ears too. After all, you need ears to listen to MY music. How to get revenue from ears? We don’t know yet, but we are working on it.
The only thing i have to say to you is that the prices will inevitably go up.. and I will admit to repeating this and only this.. “Apple stock will not be oil proof forever and the economy today will be far better than tomorrow.. the economy is tanking”…
If apple reprices we have to renegotiate.. we did not blindly sign a contract.. We (the labels ) could go quietly into the night and let this happen on its own.. or address issues that could keep my label, my artists and apple afloat longer..
Even Steve Jobs can deny this.. no one can deny numbers and the numbers show that no company can be oil proof. Microsoft is a cash cow for god sakes and its feel the burn of oil prices.. apple will come down and prices will go up.
Make what you want for my argument.. but this prediction will come true.
Wake up.. please wake the F@ck up!
I am going to as many posts as i can to remove the foul odor the reality distortion field is causing on the environment!
That’s bullshit, actors don’t ask for revenue from television set manufacturers and gas stations don’t ask for revenue from automobile manufacturers. Fuck you! Make better music and maybe people will buy your garbage. Also appealing to the right audience helps, rapping about being a thug isn’t going to land you paying listeners.