Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis Book PDF, ePub eBook

Join our eBook service for unlimited books & audiobooks. Get a free 7 day subscription! ↓↓↓↓↓


Book Descriptions:
In 1999, when Napster made music available free online, the music industry found itself in a fight for its life. A decade later, the most important and misunderstood story—and the one with the greatest implications for both music lovers and media companies—is how the music industry has failed to remake itself. In Fortune’s Fool, Fred Goodman, the author of The Mansion on the Hill, shows how this happened by presenting the singular history of Edgar M. Bronfman Jr., the controversial heir to Seagram’s, who, after dismantling his family’s empire and fortune, made a high-stakes gamble to remake both the music industry and his own reputation.

Napster had successfully blown the industry off its commercial foundations because all that the old school label heads knew how to do was record and market hits. So when Bronfman took over the Warner Music Group in 2004, his challenge was to create a new kind of record executive.

Goodman finds the source of the crisis in the dissolution of the old Warner Music Group, the brilliant conglomerate of Atlantic, Elektra, and Warner Bros. Records. He shows how Doug Morris, the head of Atlantic Records, rose through the ranks and rode the CD bonanza of the 1990s to enormous corporate and personal profit before becoming embroiled in an ego-driven corporate turf war, and how all of Warner’s record executives were blindsided when AOL/Time-Warner announced in 2003 that it wanted nothing more to do with the record industry. When the music group was finally sold to Bronfman, it was a ghost of itself.

Bronfman built an aggressive, streamlined team headed by Lyor Cohen, whose relentless ambition and discipline had helped build Def Jam Records. They instituted a series of daring initiatives intended to give customers legitimate online music choices and took market share from Warner’s competitors. But despite these efforts, illegal downloads still outnumber legitimate ones 19–1.

Most of the talk of a new world of music and media has proven empty; despite the success of iTunes, even wildly popular sites like YouTube and MySpace have not found a way to make money with music. Instead, Warner and the other labels are diversifying and forcing young artists to give them a cut of their income from touring, publishing, and merchandising. Meanwhile, the average downloader isn’t even meeting forward-thinking musicians halfway. Each time a young band finds a following through music websites, it’s a unique story; no formula has emerged. If one does, Warner is probably in a better position than anyone to exploit it. But at the end of the day, If is the one-word verdict on Bronfman’s big bet.

Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis by Fred Goodman

From reader reviews:

Paul Ring:

Book is to be different for every grade. Book for children till adult are different content. To be sure that book is very important normally. The book Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis was making you to know about other knowledge and of course you can take more information. It is extremely advantages for you. The book Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis is not only giving you much more new information but also being your friend when you feel bored. You can spend your personal spend time to read your reserve. Try to make relationship using the book Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis. You never sense lose out for everything in the event you read some books.

Frances Hayes:

Do you among people who can't read gratifying if the sentence chained in the straightway, hold on guys this aren't like that. This Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis book is readable simply by you who hate those straight word style. You will find the facts here are arrange for enjoyable studying experience without leaving actually decrease the knowledge that want to give to you. The writer associated with Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis content conveys objective easily to understand by many people. The printed and e-book are not different in the information but it just different by means of it. So , do you even now thinking Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis is not loveable to be your top collection reading book?

Rita Merritt:

The publication with title Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis has lot of information that you can discover it. You can get a lot of profit after read this book. This specific book exist new expertise the information that exist in this publication represented the condition of the world now. That is important to yo7u to be aware of how the improvement of the world. That book will bring you within new era of the syndication. You can read the e-book on your own smart phone, so you can read that anywhere you want.

Susan Larabee:

Your reading 6th sense will not betray an individual, why because this Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis guide written by well-known writer whose to say well how to make book which might be understand by anyone who all read the book. Written with good manner for you, dripping every ideas and writing skill only for eliminate your current hunger then you still skepticism Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis as good book not simply by the cover but also by content. This is one e-book that can break don't ascertain book by its handle, so do you still needing an additional sixth sense to pick this specific!? Oh come on your studying sixth sense already alerted you so why you have to listening to an additional sixth sense.