Universal Music Group: The Gatekeepers of Music

If the future role of a media company mimics that of record labels, then we start to see a significant shift from these institutions to attribute more of their value as operators and begin to diversify their business of being just a brand.

Today's consumer subscription leaders are aggressively expanding the definition of what it means to serve their customers — Peloton's lofty vision in its S-1 and Daniel Ek's reframing of Spotify as an all-encompassing audio platform are the two most notable examples.

He shared on this memo that a digital-only recorded music company will be a much more profitable one after one-off restructuring costs. It will have lower revenue and higher margins. Its revenue will be very stable and grow with the overall digital music market growth. It will be a much more valuable company with its revenue base solidly coming fro... See more

The music industry is one that has never ceased to have a need(s) for revamping and improvement. It is interesting to see that Goldberg, and I am sure many others, had the vision for a better future back then. Today, we are still grappling with ways to allocate more resources to music creators and incentivize fans but is not an easy task.

One idea suggested by Royal is that the label’s opinion — and the radio station’s — is about to matter a lot less. All of a sudden, if you can grow a big enough social following, you can make a living off whatever music makes you happiest. This is somewhat true today, of course, but primarily to musicians who can live off touring and streaming reve... See more

When the distribution technology changed with the internet, there was going to be the great unwind, and then the great rebundle, in the form of Google and Facebook and Twitter and all these new bundles. I think music is a great example of that. It made sense in the LP and CD era to put eight or 10 or 12 or 15 songs on a disc and press the disc and ... See more