As we mentioned previously on the RouteNote Blog, Warner Music is up for sale. It is now being reported by the NY Post that over 20 parties have expressed an interest in acquiring Warner Music Group.
Most often named as potential bidders for all or part of either music group include: BMG, Zomba founder Clive Calder, Russian investor Leonard Blavatnik, Universal Music, Sony Music, equity firms KKR, Apollo and Providence and Netherlands-based music publisher Imagem.
Wilco is just about to say goodbye to Nonesuch Records. Wilco joined Nonesuch back in 2002 and now with their contract fulfilled they are looking to launch their own record label.
“I don’t know the name of it,” Nels Cline (guitarist) told Express Night Out. “Jeff [Tweedy] and [manager] Tony Margherita are the masterminds, so I’m just cruising with what they want to do.”
Cline noted that the band might release a 7-inch single in conjunction with its Solid Sound Festival, which the band is curating in North Adams, Mass., from Aug. 13-15. Wilco will start work on the follow-up to 2009’s Wilco (The Album) later this month.
“The process of making the next Wilco record is going to be long in terms of the writing, arranging and demoing phase,” Cline said.
“I think we’d love to make a really uptempo alienating record … but the natural course of music-making precludes that. When things start to take form naturally, you kind of have to honour that. There may be ballads … [but] you can guarantee a fair quotient at least of some form of rock.”
Warner Music Group has had mixed experiences with investing in music startups; losing out heavily on their purchase of Imeem and Lala, and their bad experiences look like preventing them from investing in any other online startups. Their spokesman Stephen Bryan, during a panel at Midem, pointed out the difficulty of trying to run a company subsidiary with opposite interests to its owner. Imeem and Lala were attracting customers with as much music as possible for as little investment (whether that be in terms of ad views or dollars paid), while WMG was concerned to make as much money for each stream or download of every song in their catalogue. A reluctance to find themselves in this ‘stuck in the middle’ position again and the money they burnt means that they profess reluctance to own any more services.
Bryan did state that they’re very happy with their relationship with Spotify, which is going from strength to strength in terms of both users and advertising revenue. The less likely WMG is to invest in new services, the better Spotify will be pleased, as Warner will be more likely to channel all their efforts into promoting their content with their part owned partner.
Big numbers fly back and forth in one of WMG’s recent SEC filings – they took a bath on the quick turnaround deal they did buying Lala and selling it again almost immediately to Apple. They will obviously have taken advantage of their brief ownership to Ctrl + C the technology involved in Lala’s service, so keep your eyes peeled for a proprietary store in the near future. Hopefully for them, the value they managed to take out of the company was equal to the $11 million difference between what they bought it for, and the $9 million they sold it to Apple for. The accounts department can’t be too unhappy at the moment, as they’ve signed cheques to the directors for nearly double their 2007 income – $14 million in various different forms, salary, bonuses etc.
Warner Music Group has not been able to finalise negotiations with YouTube so they have pulled all their music from the site. There has been a lot of reports recently that YouTube will be a major revenue stream for all 4 major labels in 2009, but obviously Warner couldnt get the ad revenues they were after.
“We are working actively to find a resolution with YouTube that would enable the return of our artists’ content to the site,” Warner said in a statement. “Until then, we simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide.”
Other sites have reported about Warner Music and YouTube non-deal, Thenextweb, Silicon Alley Insider and PaidContent.
