Chronicle of a Sale Foretold
Plus a ride on the Millennial Nostalgia Tour
Looks like the party is finally over at Hipgnosis Song Funds. While the Merck Mercuriadis + Nile Rogers fronted investment opportunity did booming stock-market-finance-stuff in the interest-rates-before-times (and yes, the need to drop in that many connected descriptors is very much a reflection of how weird things got for a minute there), the situation has been a lot tougher since the economy returned to anything resembling earth. And now—after suspended dividends and board battles and falling stock prices and a period of just THROWING money at Neil Young—the game is up. The company, which had already more or less cut ties with its Blackstone-funded and Mercuriadis led management group, has sold itself to Concord Music Group, a major independent IP owning Corp. that is itself…owned by the Michigan Retirement Fund? Which I guess we support, if only because the over-the-top flash of Hipgnosis ultimately falling under The Iron Mitten is pretty funny. Didn’t see that coming, but (not to toot our own horn) basically called everything else.
We’ll almost certainly dig into all of this further for a future episode, but what’s initially fascinating is that for all of the heat and light produced by Merck + Co, the whole enterprise—and the sea of copycats it inspired—falls without having really changed much of anything…besides making the major labels spend a lot of money defensively and proving (once again) that it is possible to convince folks that almost any makes-no-sense business plan is worth investing in if you just yell “Innovation! Undervalued! Sync! Growth!” at them while wearing a nice suit with sneakers. Really, the biggest impact might have been giving some veteran artists a LOT of money. Good on you Mark Ronson. Good on you.
In other news, we were intrigued by Pranav Trewn’s recent article about the “Millenial Nostalgia Circuit” recently published by the (always great) Passion of the Weiss. We dig in and try to figure out if we’re just getting old, or if…there are some music-biz and general-political-economy dynamics that might be pushing bands to rehearse their (increasingly long-past) triumphs on stage. A reduction in inter-generational spaces? A long-term result of the turn towards touring? The commodification of experience via social media? Yes.
You can listen to that hear(Itunes), hear(Spotify), or hear(Podbean)
Department of Actual Music
Saxon: I saw Underworld last month and…you should too.
Sam: The Vast Internet Discussion of Cindy Lee has me returning to some long-forgotten favorites, including this slice of mid-ought’s pysch-pop that I definitely bought for a buck because of the cover. Probably, but not definitely, at Rockit Scientist records when it was on Saint MarksI gu. RIP. A lovely mixture of vintage vibes—souped up by the belief that this kind of stuff could still get on the radio.
Sam + Saxon