One of the things the Hipgnosis guy believes is that artist managers should be paid their percentage in perpetuity for songs/albums released during the term of their contract, so if you like music at all then you should be approx. 1000% more concerned about what he's doing.

He has stated his intention is to acquire somewhere around 20% of the profitable canon (which he's going to be able to do), then assign a lower number of titles to a higher number of employees to up the revenue of each title. This is pub co approach but streamlined to strip mine.

There is *only one* way to up the revenue of each title he owns and the cost of that is quite seriously the future of music. Hope y'all like Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time because you're about to be crushed by it and movies about only it.

He is betting music's past is more profitable than its future and backing the bet with the consolidated profits earned by music's past and taking on none of the risk of trying to provide it a future. This is not hyperbole. This is his business plan.

The future of music would be competition for what he owns of the past. Any artist/writer who does manage to win a share of the market against his aggressive exploitation of the past, he will attempt to acquire. This is the most capitalistic endeavor this business has ever seen.

The entire point of Your Favorite Band Sucks has always been to fight the ideology which has allowed this situation to arise.

Last thing on this: every ounce of the mainstream coverage this company has received treats it as an interesting business gambit and even the music sites have absolutely failed to even begin unpacking the ramifications laid out in this thread. This is coming and nobody sees it.