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Warner Music CEO Says War With Consumers Was Wrong
l2718 writes "Edgar Bronfman, CEO of the Warner Music Group, has publicly framed the music industry's failure to accommodate file-sharing as an 'inadvertent' war on consumers. I'm left wondering how you can file a series of lawsuits inadvertently. 'We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding ... By ... moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won.'"
Ah, but he's not apologizing for the lawsuits -- he's apologizing for not releasing DRM-riddled restrictively-licensed music fast enough, which he thinks is what forced consumers to share music illegally.
Exactly. The bottom line is this article isn't saying anything like what's being implied in the summary; in fact, just the opposite.
His "war" with consumers, from his perspective, is that the music industry wasn't offering consumers what they wanted, so they went out and took it. But if you read the rest of his comments, the problem is he still isn't understanding just what it is that people want. He thinks that DRM-free music is just being used as a means to an end rather than being an end in itself. He thinks that if the record labels just give everybody music pre-made in the formats that they want, even if it comes saddled with DRM and even if consumers need to buy the same music over and over, that they will buy it as long as it's easy and convenient enough for them to get it.
He's totally missing the point, which is that if I have a CD, or a DRM-free digital download, I buy the music once and can then put it anywhere I want to. I can listen to it, my wife can listen to it, I can make a ringtone out of it, I can put it on my iPod or make a mix CD. His idea is still to sell you multiple copies of the same tracks in all these different places, and he thinks where his company went wrong was in not doing that early enough. That's just as wrongheaded as Warner ever has been.
And he says absolutely nothing about the lawsuits, which he will no doubt continue supporting.
Well, what do you expect? Read Bronfman's entry on Wikipedia. He was the heir to Seagram's Liquor. His whole life has been carried along by family connections. Highlights from Wikipedia:
- "He was particularly active in school theatre, an interest his parents supported by donating to construct The Ann and Edgar Bronfman Theatre during a 1967 expansion at The Collegiate School, the prestigious private school in Manhattan which Edgar Jr. attended."
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"The summer before his final year of high school, in 1972, he was a credited producer on the film, The Blockhouse. Despite his inexperience, Bronfman's involvement was accepted because of his connections and access to financing."
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"By 1994 he became the Chief Executive Officer (of Seagrams), where he began a move away from the traditional liquor business and into entertainment.
The first step in this diversification was the widely criticized sale of Seagram's stake in DuPont."
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"Bronfman, Jr., then led Seagram into a disastrous all-stock acquisition by French conglomerate Vivendi in 2000."
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"Seagram's for all intents and purposes ceased to exist."
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"On February 27, 2004, Bronfman finalized the acquisition of Warner Music Group and he has served as Chairman and CEO of the music company since that time."
He didn't build up Warner Music, or move up within the company, or come to it from success elsewhere. He bought the thing with inherited money, after a long career as a failed executive.