How Nintendo Music Potentially Outlines the Future of Media

And so what you've ended up with, not surprisingly, is a few key players that happen to own the majority of the IP that is kind of a must have in this industry to have a product offering and a handful of distributors that have gotten scale on distribution of great user experiences like a Spotify, Amazon, a YouTube, whoever you might want to think a... See more

But we could create a better deal: These organizations could invest in artists rather than owning them outright.

Music studios could invest in musicians and Spotify could invest in podcasts, giving those artists the capital they need to distribute their work on a grand scale, but the artist could retain majority ownership and creative control over ... See more

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.

If you want to sell music, you must love those songs. If you want to succeed in journalism, you must love those newspapers. If you want to succeed in movies, you must love the cinema.

But this kind of love is rare nowadays. I often see record labels promote new artists for all sorts of gimmicky reasons—even labels I once trusted such as Deutsche Gr... See more