Friday, January 15, 2010

Beatles Bailout EMI As Usual


What's a bailed out bank doing in the recorded music business? During the high flying days of banking, Citigroup loaned Guy Hands' company, Terra Firma, billions to purchase EMI. Neither company knew anything about music. As you can guess, things went south. The banking crisis and the music business collapse makes this loan look questionable.

Citigroup wants to get their money back. Selling EMI to Edgar Bronfman and his Warner Music Group is the easiest way to accomplish that. But that leaves Guy Hands and Terra Firma out in the cold. Seems Hands and his company wants to hang on and get better terms. So to continue to repay the huge debt, EMI had to meet certain monetary considerations set by Citigroup.

It seems EMI's recorded music division just squeaked by, and barely passed the bank's financial status test, so they can continue to operate for now. So as it has in the past, the Beatles catalog bails out EMI. This Robert wonders how long can this go on? So does the patient Mr. Edgar Bronfman.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Web 2.0 Eats Its Own



Imeem, the popular music site, didn't even defend itself in court, and they lost big.

U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin has fined the music site $1.77 million for copyright infringement. It seems The Orchard wanted Imeem to pay $150,000 per instance of infringement.

Imeem sold some of it's assets to MySpace, and folded. Imeem executives blame the lawsuit for shutting the doors.

How sad, the Web 2.0 music sites are eating their own. Please note The Orchard used copyright law just like the big boys. This Robert wonders if The Orchard is going to see any of this $?