base talk Is UMG's hold over the music industry suspect?

[RideOrDie]

2 minutes ago, Abracadabra said:

Hasn't Lana been signed to Interscope/Polydor since BTD?

yes, but she had a separate songwriter's publishing deal with Sony. so Universal distributed her music but they didn't have any specific deal with her as a songwriter until 2023. her situation was a bit unusual

[Kristie Kuwa]

I pity those who believe streams aren't rigged.

 

Best example:

 

Die With A Smile the most streamed song during NYE and maintaining that hold over christmas? ***** WHERE?

 

You can't convince me that there aren't farms located somewhere or some shady business going on. 

And this has nothing to do with anger on my part, but I just refuse to believe a song is pulling 9-10mio streams consistently over the span of 2+ months. Like cmon now

[Solaria]

29 minutes ago, RideOrDie said:

they seem to be doing something right. they really do care and put in the time and money into their artists. lana was with sony all her career until 2023 when she switched to universal, i doubt she would have done that unless she felt like it was a good deal. 

warner is the worst, horrible never ending mismanagement and mistreatment of their artists. 

Omg what is the tea sis DM me.

[HarleyWin]

Give it up, Aubrey. Get off ATRL and take your a** to court.

[Eternium]

5 hours ago, Popboi. said:

They have the biggest artists signed, of course their shares are higher than other labels  they invest WAY more than Sony on artists and record deals, and are much more consistent than Warner.

I'm sorry, but the lack of critical thinking has me screaming. Like, girl, why do you think the biggest artists signed with them in the first place? 
 

K-pop is the perfect example - HYBE literally bought BTS's way into becoming a well-known group, practically stealing EXO's spot as the top act by inflating streaming and sales records and paying for awards. BTS ended up being a great investment and HYBE secured massive talents like MHJ (she launched NewJeans for them) and a ton of trainee talent (including Sakura, an artist who already had a massive Japanese fanbase). If you use payola to make your artists look bigger then it drives in new artists who want to follow in those artists' footsteps, giving you a monopoly.

 

Why do you think they would bother paying for so many streams of, say, Drake & Future's "Good Life" song? 

4 hours ago, sugarysunflower said:

UMGs board and voting power is controlled by three billionaires; like 60%+ comes from: 

 

• Ma Huateng of Tencent (Concerto Partners)

• Vincent Bollore of Vivendi / Bollore 

• Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital

 

You think these guys don't coerce with Daniel Ek and Martin Lorenzton in private? Who likewise have like 73% voting power at Spotify. Of course they're gonna cut them a deal, it's a win-win for everyone. The American market, the Chinese market, the French market, the Dutch market, the Swedish market and for themselves. 

 

Sony Music is just controlled by institutional investors and part of a conglomerate with other entertainment and technology assets. I'm sure they're happy with their signed artists tbh - Sony always has a good reputation for most of their leading labels, except RCA. And Japanese companies are less likely to take risks nowadays. 

 

WMG is controlled by Len Blavatnik, and WMG has always been the smallest of the three anyways. How do we not know that WMG concentrates it's efforts elsewhere like Pandora, Apple Music, Tidal etc.? 

Wow, this really caught me off guard to see the amount of information in both of your posts. Thanks for sharing.

 

It's funny to me that stans of Western artists never consider a record label's role in making an artist big.

5 hours ago, unclefloprry said:

Yep, it's obvious. 
 

But I think Columbia is even worse, almost all the radio and streaming records suspiciously belong to that label.

 

and they taste their streaming farms every first day of the month 

Columbia confounds me because they've been caught with payola so many times, but nobody does anything about it  

 

https://www.nytimes.com/1973/06/06/archives/columbia-payola-put-at-250000-sum-reported-given-yearly-to-black.html

 

https://www.foxnews.com/story/payola-shocker-j-lo-hits-others-were-bought-by-sony.amp
 

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/tidal-fake-streams-criminal-investigation-underway-over-potential-data-fraud-in-norway/

[dumbsparce]

You guys pay attention which label the music you listen to is under? 

[Eternium]

2 hours ago, Kristie Kuwa said:

I pity those who believe streams aren't rigged.

 

Best example:

 

Die With A Smile the most streamed song during NYE and maintaining that hold over christmas? ***** WHERE?

 

You can't convince me that there aren't farms located somewhere or some shady business going on. 

And this has nothing to do with anger on my part, but I just refuse to believe a song is pulling 9-10mio streams consistently over the span of 2+ months. Like cmon now

At least 1 in 10 streams are fake. And those "real" streams include things like playlists on commercial real estate where people might not even be listening.

https://www.complex.com/music/a/tracewilliamcowen/10-percent-of-music-streams-fake-analysts-report

1 hour ago, HarleyWin said:

Give it up, Aubrey. Get off ATRL and take your a** to court.

He can't because he knows he'd get outted for using fake streams. His song with Future got caught using fake YouTube numbers.