Yesterday marked the official closing of Time Warner's
Such cuts, should they happen, were widely expected as far back as late November when the deal was first announced. Several key Warner Music executives were reportedly quick to step down upon the deal's closing, and Bronfman's team is not expected to waste time in cutting as much as 20% of its new company's workforce in trying to generate as much as $300 million in cost savings.
The line on the music business tends to incorporate themes like "bloated" and "dinosaur," as applied to everything from CD prices to marketing budgets to organizational structure to the handling of digital music and on and on and on. (The standard comeback seems to deal primarily with illegal musical file swapping as having decimated the industry.) If you believe that, then you've gotta believe Bronfman is on the right track here -- artistic concerns notwithstanding.
I'd tend to agree. The number of major labels is potentially poised to shrink further. A deal between Sony's
This uncertainty buys Bronfman time, though one wonders what may be brewing in the boardrooms of Vivendi Universal
There doesn't seem to be much more room for major consolidation, though Comcast's
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Fool contributor Dave Marino-Nachison doesn't own any of the companies in this article, though he does own all of Lamb's albums. He can be reached via email.