The Trichordist

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A common criticism of both public and private companies that waste the stockholder’s money is “where was the board?”  The company’s board of directors are charged by stockholders with providing the first line of oversight over a runaway executive team that act against the company’s interest.

If the board fails in its role, one of the ways that individual stockholders can call executives and board members to account is by attending an annual meeting.  Most of the attending stockholders have already voted by proxy (often by proxies given to vote in line with recommendations of the company’s board of directors–who are usually a slate approved by the company’s senior management.  Unfortunately for the attending stockholders, given the proxy system, voting at an annual meeting is quite the kabuki dance as…

You’ve probably heard that Apple and the major labels are being “investigated” over Apple Music by the Department of Justice, the European Commission as well as State attorneys general for New York and Connecticut.  Understand that the way most of these investigations get started is that someone complained, most likely subscription service monopolist Spotify and Internet monopolist Google in this case.  That would be the same Google that has a Spotify board seat.  (Remember, Kara Swisher reported in Re/code that Omid Kordestani, chief business officer of Google, joined the Spotify board, and a former YouTube product head Shishir Mehrotra left Google to become a special adviser to CEO Daniel Ek and the company’s management.)

So why might Spotify and Google complain to antitrust authorities?  For one reason, Google knows every single one of them and Google’s General Counsel Kent Walker has them all on speed dial (that would be the Kent Walker…

In a crescendo of antagonism starting with the Sony Pictures hack that leaked confidential documents demonstrating that the film studios have had it with Google, Google’s lawsuit against a state attorney general seeking to stop his investigation of Google’s bad behavior and the leak by somebody of the Spotify agreement with Sony Music, the New York Post reports that YouTube (Google’s wholly-owned subsidiary) is going to the MIDEM conference this week for the purpose of attacking the record company/artist relationship.

I find this to be particularly bizarre given that Google has also formed a massive coalition fighting against artist rights in league with familiar faces like Pandora, the National Association of Broadcasters, the Digital Media Association (DiMA), the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and a host of others.  After doing that, YouTube’s attack on labels at MIDEM is triangulation of the first water particularly…

In a crescendo of antagonism starting with the Sony Pictures hack that leaked confidential documents demonstrating that the film studios have had it with Google, Google’s lawsuit against a state attorney general seeking to stop his investigation of Google’s bad behavior and the leak by somebody of the Spotify agreement with Sony Music, the New York Post reports that YouTube (Google’s wholly-owned subsidiary) is going to the MIDEM conference this week for the purpose of attacking the record company/artist relationship.

I find this to be particularly bizarre given that Google has also formed a massive coalition fighting against artist rights in league with familiar faces like Pandora, the National Association of Broadcasters, the Digital Media Association (DiMA), the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and a host of others.  After doing that, YouTube’s attack on labels at MIDEM is triangulation of the first water particularly…