Just when you thought the most toxic of information age innovations had already spread as widely as possible:
The big publishers — which are all divisions of the major record conglomerates — own far too much material to exploit it all properly, he says. Sony/ATV, for example, has nearly five million songs in its portfolio. . . . In its place, he posits a bold but somewhat vague plan called “song management,” in which leaner companies look after smaller collections of high-value hits, and each track is held to a profit-and-loss analysis to ensure its value is maximized.
Ben Sisario, This Man Is Betting $1.7 Billion on the Rights to Your Favorite Songs, N.Y. Times (Dec. 18, 2020).
The big publishers block-license their songs, which means that they don’t adjust the prices of individual songs based on shifts in the willingness of licensees to pay for them. It sounds like Mercuriadis wants to capture additional profits by pricing songs dynamically–jacking prices up during periods when buyers are willing to pay more–which is why he can afford to pay more for song rights himself. “Song management” is the tell: In hospitality, which pioneered the practice in the context of hotel rooms and airline tickets, they call it revenue management.