List Of Top Creditors In Playlist Bankruptcy Filing
Major & Indie Labels Likely To Suffer Major Losses
(UPDATED) Documents released as part of the recent bankruptcy filings by Playlist.com show that both major and indie labels are likely to suffer major losses. While Universal Music topped the list with an unsercured debt of $16.6 million, independent labels represented by rights licencer MERLIN made the list of top 5 creditors and are owed $1.68 million.
Top Creditors Holding Unsecured Claims
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But this isn’t like the old days, when a retailer of physical CDs would go bankrupt. In that model, the label was permanently out the wholesale costs for the physical CDs which had been shipped, and in the case of a small indie, there might not be money to have more manufactured.
These claims for unpaid royalties seem more like funny-money, in that the labels would have spent very little cash up front to put the “merchandise” into Project Playlist.
From an accounting perspective, it’s like all those Project Playlist files were really (retrospectively) unauthorized & unpaid downloads, right?
Anyway, the collapse of another royalty-paying service is another argument that the future of music is all pirate, all criminal, all the time.
Interesting piece – goes right to the heart of the issue of intellectual and digital “property.” If you can’t touch it how do you assess the value? How was Playlist going to make money? Is “advertising” a real value if people are basically annoyed by it and do everything they can to ignore or mute it? And where did that revenue go? Empty shell game? I don’t know if the royalty system is broke, but old overhead business models certainly seem to be.
The ONLY reason that Playlist.com got away with not paying anyone is because they have high profile investors onboard > former MTV head Bob Pittman, and executives such as MySpace Music’s Owen Van Natta and John Sykes
Its ridiculous that they are even considering raising more cash…