Musicians have experienced ownership consolidation in almost every part of their business for the past 25 years. It’s very hard for us to find instances where that consolidation has worked out for the benefit for musicians or listeners, and we hope that regulators look at this closely. | | | | Take that! Wolf Alice's Ellie Roswell at Electric Picnic, Dublin, Sept. 4, 2016.
(Kieran Frost/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Musicians have experienced ownership consolidation in almost every part of their business for the past 25 years. It’s very hard for us to find instances where that consolidation has worked out for the benefit for musicians or listeners, and we hope that regulators look at this closely.”
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| | rantnrave:// From a business standpoint, SIRIUS XM's agreement to acquire PANDORA seems as sensible as it has been inevitable since the satellite radio co bought a 19 percent stake in the streaming radio co 16 months ago. Sirius wants a piece of the streaming market, aka the future of music, as well as the digital audio ad market, aka the future of paying for the future of music. Pandora wants a bigger corporate footprint to compete against the twin behemoths SPOTIFY and APPLE MUSIC, not to mention the other behemoths AMAZON and ALPHABET. It isn't safe for an independent music service to be walking alone in the dark anymore. Both are innovative music companies whose futures are anything but guaranteed. Both presumably are stronger post-deal than pre-deal. (Full disclosure: REDEF CEO JASON HIRSCHHORN is on the PANDORA board and is a bigger fan of Sirius' HOWARD STERN than you are a fan of anything or anyone.) Musically, the deal comes at a time when it seems the entire music business is engaged in a multiplayer chess game. Spotify tunneling under labels to get to artists. Spotify shaking up its playlist strategy. Apple Music potentially turning into something wider and deeper. Apple completing its purchase of SHAZAM. SONY in the middle of acquiring EMI MUSIC PUBLISHING. Most of the industry, including Pandora but most definitely not Sirius, fighting to push the massive MUSIC MODERNIZATION ACT through Congress. Label negotiations on the horizons for multiple services, Pandora included. The RINGER's VICTOR LUCKERSON sees a music vs. tech war playing out and posits, "For record labels, SiriusXM’s acquisition of Pandora is the latest worrying sign that they will eventually be subject to the whims of tech platforms rather than the other way around." The FUTURE OF MUSIC COALITION's KEVIN ERICKSON warns about the general danger of continuing consolidation; but in the same piece, by SLATE's APRIL GLASER, music biz muckraker DAVID LOWERY says a strengthened Pandora could be a crucial alternative to artists "deeply dependent on revenues from Spotify and Apple Music." It could also, Lowery warns one paragraph later, leave artists in the clutches of another sprawling behemoth, with Pandora, Sirius and LIVE NATION sharing the same chairman, GREG MAFFEI. "Or not," he adds. The chess game still has a way to go, and it isn't clear, as of yet, who's playing black and who's playing white... Step aside, JOHN CUSACK. ZOË KRAVITZ will star in a HIGH FIDELITY series for Disney's upcoming streaming service... The murders of JAM MASTER JAY, SAM COOKE and VICTOR JARA, and journalist RIAN MALAN's quest to find the trace the authorship of "THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT," will be among the subjects of the upcoming NETFLIX music doc series REMASTERED. The first episode, dropping Oct. 12, looks into the mysterious, non-fatal, 1976 shooting of BOB MARLEY... Spiders from MARS apparently are a thing, according to science... Fare thee well, CHARLIE ROBISON... RIP MADELEINE YAYODELE NELSON and RONNIE MOIPOLAI. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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