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Apple Plans to Purchase Universal Music

Posted by pudge on from the ringo-might-be-displeased dept.

mrbiiggy writes "Apparently Apple has been plotting to purchase Universal Music for $6 billion, reports Spiegel Online (read the Google translation). Who knew Apple even had that kind of cash? (The L.A. Times is also reporting this, free reg required.)"

4 of 584 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Dear god, bring back Sculley and the Newton by redragon · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "Hey lets waste a ton of money while were barely profitable to buy into an industry that everyone _knows_ is dying..."

    Unless of course, they're looking to PROVE that the other record labels are full of sh*t, by building a new buisness model that will be successful. This way they get a boat load of artists and music that they can use to prove their point.

    The Record industry is dying not because people don't want music, but because the old means of production and consumption are dying. If Apple can figure out a new means that the average person likes and uses, then they'll make a BOATLOAD of cash. The record industry made a lot of money in the past, because it worked. It doesn't any more. That doesn't mean it's broken and can never come back. Heck, if anyone can come up with a good solution, Apple is it.

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    - Sighuh?
  2. maybe it will be like... by interactive_civilian · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ihatewinXP said:
    "Hey lets waste a ton of money while were barely profitable to buy into an industry that everyone _knows_ is dying...
    Who knows what could become of this. Kind of reminds me of the time when some guy came back to a company that "everyone knew was dying" and completely turned it around into a profitable (despite the incredibly low market share) company by cutting out projects that were bleeding it dry and focusing on things that would get it back together...

    seems like just the guy to perhaps "think different" and turn around (and hopefully improve) another industry that "everyone _knows_ is dying".

    Anyone remember his name? I think it was Steve something-or-other...

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    "Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
  3. Re:shut up about .ogg by drunk_as_in_beer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Rather than adding actual features music fans might find compelling enough to switch all their probably-already-ripped digital music to .ogg, they imitated rather than innovated. It's a fine quality audio compression format, but there's nothing interesting whatsoever about "Ogg" other than legal patent ideology, and that's simply not interesting whatsoever to 99.99% of the music-listening public.

    What's there to innovate? It's an audio codec. It sounds better at lower bitrates than mp3. What more do you need? What features are you talking about? The music-listening public doesn't care about features, they just want their songs, and they want to be able to burn them to CD, play them on their portable digital music players, they want to pay as little as possible for it, etc.

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    --Drunk as in Beer
  4. Re:"Didn't know they had the money" by MachineShedFred · · Score: 5, Insightful

    These figures you have stated show how undervalued the company is.

    If the market cap is $5.1B, and they have $4.4B in liquid bank assets, that means the Tech and patent portfolio, "Apple" brand, outstanding accounts receivable, Plant, Property, and Equipment are only worth $700M.

    Go get the stock now... the Mac OS is probably worth $500M in development and marketing alone.

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