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Comment by colordrops | Hacker News Reader

So why don't they keep the shares of they are so optimistic?

My guess is they probably made the investment in the first place to make sure they were onboard if/when music streaming took off. Now that it's well established, and there are competing services, they are probably better off by not playing favorites and being able to squeeze Spotify when negotiating licenses without harming their own investment (similar to what the movie industry is doing with Netflix).

What stops Spotifyfrom trying to fight back with more tools for recording artists? Find out what artists need and allow them to self publish on Spotify? I imagine recording an album is orders of magnitude cheaper than just the production cost of Westworld or black mirror.

I mean just following the Netflix route in general. Is Spotify already doing this?

Publishers do more than deliver music to the audience. They do market research, facilitate collaboration, fund production, and they promote the music.

Even if musicians can reach the audience directly, which they already could for some time now, they benefit a lot from a publisher that creates opportunities and handles business while they focus on making music. Too many good indie musicians are just a publisher away from success.

There are also many publishers who are horrible people, lock people into huge contracts where they basically kill the artist off by forcing them to produce crap. There is a need for another change in the music industry, removing the need for the big publishers and handing power back to the creators.

I agree we need new tools to replicate the other tasks that the producers do apart from funding production / studio time. The question becomes if we have reached a time when having a good twitter/snapchat/facebook profile is enough to promote an artist.

Then there is the question of what an artist/creator actually needs to earn to be successful. Is it enough to live on, provide for your family, and let you save for retirement? Does your goal really need to be to become a mega-star making millions?

Its my opinion that if we reduce the expectancy of the artist/creator to more of a "standard" earning level, then there might not be as much need for the big producers? It might also make artists happier by giving them the option of being creative without as much control of outside forces.

>Too many good indie musicians are just a publisher away from success.

But with the GP argument one could say an algorithm away...

Yeah. The real trick (at least in the US) is to get your music on the radio (see https://qz.com/1094963/radio-survived-the-tape-cd-and-ipod-i... for an example). People still seem to look for new music on the radio here, and a publisher can make that happen much easier than Spotify can.

Potentially for immediate liquidity to invest in multiple new assets? I assume they made quite a bit of profit on their initial Spotify investment.

What purpose does it serve. Any investor looking to invest in WMG isn't going to do so because they own some spotify. If someone wants to invest in Spotify they will go buy some spotify stock. It doesn't serve investors to have some of their capital tied up in an unrelated stock. The normal reason for having stock in another company is in order to get favourable terms in a negotiation - which I do think could be useful here, but isn't always the case.

They have access to investment opportunities with a higher expected return and they are therefore rebalancing capital. Spotify is now a large, public company with attendant growth expectations. Most substantial corporations can allocate capital more effectively than leaving it in a publicly-traded equity.

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