NYT on WMG

TODAY’S READING ASSIGNMENT: In a solid piece headlined “Bids for Warner Suggest Faith in Industry’s Future,” Standard & Poors analyst Tuna Amobi tells N.Y. Times reporter Ben Sisario, “We’ve been a little surprised by the robust mess of this auction, given the well-chronicled problems of the music industry. It seems that the company is open to all kinds of scenarios.” As Sisario points out, while Warner and EMI’s publishing divisions are solid investments, whoever ends up with Warner’s recorded music assets will most likely want to combine it with EMI’s corresponding division, and remove hundreds of millions of dollars in operational redundancies. That would reduce the number of major global record companies from four to three, and, some say, the savings might be enough to make a combined Warner-EMI label group profitable. Stop us if you’ve heard this plotline before… (4/11a)