Well, the latest casulty of the lousy retail climate for music is Dreamworks, who've
agreed to sell their music arm to Interscope for around $100 million. Kind of sad...
I guess even Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker couldn't do miracles. They made some
good initial signings (early Dreamworks releases included The Eels, Elliot Smith and
Rufus Wainright, which gave me hope, although later signings seemed increasingly
uninteresting, at least to me). I kind of figured the jig was up when they rescued
Randy Newman from Warners but then only kept him for a single album. Mo and Lenny
definitely were NOT running Warners Mach II.

The LA Time article that mentions the Dreamworks capitulation also says
that Warner Music Group is slowly heading towards a sale TO EMI. That's
a funny one...For years, it was rumored (well, heck, more than rumored)
that EMI was trying to sell off their music division. Hmmm...

And now Sony and BMG are considering a merger? Ha! I wonder if they'd
put Clive Davis back in charge of the whole enchilada, including the labels
(Sony, Columbia) from which he was fired (for embezzlement or mismanagement
of funds) back in the mid '70s?!

Here's the LA Times article link:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-dream31oct31,1,7026062.story?coll=la-headlines-business

dap