Apple Bugging me all flippin' day

Apple to buy Universal

I’m likely to the last person to comment on this, but the rumor that Apple purchasing Universal has been bugging me all flippin’ day. While I’m very enthuasiastic about a potential Apple music service that makes sense (reasonably priced, easy to use), I do not see the logic behind buying a large music company (loaded w/ debt).

It appears the logic goes something like this:

A) We make very good TVs that make us a lot of money

therefore

B) We should start producing SitComs

There is a large significant difference between being a “digital media technology company” and being a “digital media” company. I can’t see how mixing such drastically different business models can be a good thing when the economy remains in a “wait and see” state.

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3 Responses

  1. Stonewall Jackson 21 years ago

    Apple will pull it off, if they do anything at all. Apple owns not one of two but two of three pieces off the puzzle: hardware and software. What they lack is the stuff which goes in between them. Considering how poorly every other media company has managed the media portion of the equation, perhaps the one with no experience may end up doing it right.

  2. Spacelegoman 21 years ago

    That’s what Sony thought when they purchased CBS Records. Now they have a profitable electronics division fighting with an unprofitable music division. The music executives are totally freaked out that Sony’s CD Recorders and MP3 players generate huge profits… as their payroll is slashed by a thousand. It’s not a good scene.

    Not that I think MP3’s are the direct cause of the recording industry’s woes, but alot of music people think they are. The main problem is that the industry had for 15 years been riding on a bubble of artificial sales as CD’s spread through society and people replaced their vinyl with high profit margin back-catalogue compact disks. Just as that bubble ended, the economy entered it’s mid-90’s boom… the industry is structurally set up to deal with those inflated levels of profitability. So now they’re fucked.

  3. Floid 21 years ago

    Only Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field could make it possible, and the sad thing is, it really could.

    Think Playstation.