Stringer Struggles With Sony Stragglers
from the get-your-sack-ready dept
Howard Stringer's rough time at Sony continues, with problems at its content businesses adding to its woes in electronics. Sony Pictures is having a rough go of things, and seems to just be catching on that if it wants to turn a profit, it needs to generate more revenues from movies than it spends to make them, and apparently Stringer's plan to turn the company around by firing people didn't go high enough at its music business. Bertelsmann, the other owner of the Sony BMG joint venture, wants its CEO, Andrew Lack, removed, citing its poor results and "brusque and often unilateral" management style. What's interesting about the original article is that it doesn't make any mention of copy protection. While certainly DRM isn't solely to blame for Sony's woes, other executives in the company have cited its content divisions' insistence on DRM as a factor holding up innovation, and the recent rootkit fiasco isn't likely to help sales, either. This is all relevant because Lack has been a vocal and unflagging supporter of copy protection, blaming downloading for destroying his business rather than realizing it's been his lack of innovation and creativity to deal with technology that's damned his company. Locked-down content that people don't like doesn't seem to be working for Sony, and Bertlesmann sounds like it's getting frustrated. But will Sony change anything, other than the type of DRM its CDs use?
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Answer to last question...
Record companies aren't like that. They fought cassette recorders, they fought "digital media" (the "piracy tax" imposed on blank "audio" CDs). They will fight, tooth and nail, until they wither up and die.
More and more music creators are realizing that the old studio system is dead. They are the creative ones; they are the ones that will realize that there are better ways to distribute their music and turn a profit.
Sony will find itself, once again, Betamaxed.
How appropriate!
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You're Fired
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Re: You're Fired
Nope...nothing wrong there because we have MURDER and stuff to worry about...
dumbass.
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