April Fools Business Joke: "Apple to Buy Spotify"-- Rant about Corporate Monopolies...
Last edited Sun Apr 5, 2015, 12:49 PM - Edit history (2)
[The]April Fools: Apple to Buy Spotify
by Bob Lefsetz - April 5th, 2015, 11:00am
The price?
A COOL TEN BILLION!
It had to happen. Apple’s stock rises when it has a monopoly. And despite all the iPhone profits, Android has greater worldwide market share. This is not the iPod revolution, wherein a seamless hardware/software combination, of iPod iTunes and FairPlay DRM, ensured that no other player could gain traction. Hell, Apple is losing traction every day in music. And if you believe that Jimmy Iovine can pull a rabbit out of his hat, you believe Jay Z is gonna turn Tidal into a raging success.
That’s right, Jimmy was left out of the negotiations. Tim Cook is still pissed about the U2 fiasco, wherein Iovine paid back the has-been stars and Apple ended up with egg on its face. Apple is a bigger brand than U2, and Cook feels like the company got hijacked, so therefore, just like David Geffen was left out of the MCA/Matsushita negotiations, Jimmy had no part in this purchase, it’s news to him.
Actually, credit Scott Forstall. You remember him, right? Mr. Software, Steve Jobs’s right-hand man? Forstall was agitating for a music streaming service so loudly that he got fired. But after promoting Jony Ive and closing ranks Cook had a chance meeting with Daniel Ek at the San Jose airport, while their respective jets were being gassed, and Cook realized the error of his ways. He couldn’t bring back Forstall, but he was man enough to recognize he’d been wrong, as Steve was too, files are history, streams are forever.
So the seed was planted YEARS ago! That’s why Spotify has never gone public. Projects at Apple take as long to develop as movies at Pixar and while you were looking for an Apple TV set and deriding Jony Ive’s Watch, Cook was positioning the company to win, and win big.
That’s right, now Apple’s going to own streaming music, no one else will be able to compete, it’s monopoly time all over again.
So what’s the first lesson here?
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MORE of an interesting April Fools Fun Rant about Apple increasing it's Empire--Books & TV are next according to the writer at:
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/
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