Don’t cease the music (… and my £2 billion fund)

Don’t cease the music (… and my £2 billion fund)

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O

N the fifth flooring of United Home subsequent to Notting Hill Gate Tube station is a music trade workplace that doesn’t appear like any you may need seen earlier than. Positive, there’s the grand piano within the foyer “which used to belong to Annie Lennox” anybody who walks in is informed. There’s the odd Fender guitar mendacity round, plus amps and huge audio system. However there isn’t a lot music enjoying. Odder but, half the ground appears to be like like a name centre with employees bashing the telephones. “Welcome to the way forward for the music enterprise,” says Merck Mercuriadis, as he greets me.

Mercuriadis, 59, is a music man right down to his trademark black Prada. He used to handle Elton John, Beyoncé, and Weapons & Roses. However that was within the good previous days when file corporations pumped out first vinyl, then CDs, which had such a excessive revenue margin that executives rocked up for work on the crack of lunch, headed off to the Groucho Membership at 6pm, and nonetheless pulled six- or seven-figure salaries. Streaming companies — at first unlawful — overturned that life-style and threatened to take down all the trade. Revenues fell so sharply that some large names virtually collapsed, notably EMI.

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