Confession: I don’t listen to music, and until a month ago could not have named the “big 4” record labels.
While going through the financial reports of all the major radio networks (and the equity funding firms that now control them), I noticed over and over again that many of the same people who sit on the Boards of radio stations also sit on the board of Warner Music. That led to my speculation about whether Big Music is about to devour Big Radio.
So if the “performance tax” passes in Congress, and Big Music gets to bleed Big Radio of its profits, who would stand to benefit, and are people lining up to take sides? And what does that say about the chance the bill is going into law?
So [this] NY Times story pops up on my radar. It just happened to be something found in my Twitter Feed. It’s making a convincing case that Warner Music is about to take over EMI. EMI is backed by CitiGroup money and Citigroup wants out. Warner did a $500 million bond offering last week, and there was so much interest in their bonds they doubled the amount they borrowed. The gap in the performance of Warner’s vs EMI stock really started to open up at the end of March 2009.