Abstract:

The long-term effects of the digitization of music and video have not yet been fully comprehended. When digital media was introduced in the mid 1980’s by the Philips Corporation, the proverbial Genie was let out of the bottle. What has been certain is that major areas of business on a global scale have been brought into question. Copyrights, publishing rights, usage rights, and business models have all been changed and continue to evolve as an antecedent to digitization of intellectual property. E-commerce, social media, consumer electronics, and “peer to peer” communications have been the greatest benefactors of this technology.

As a result of the legal, ethical and consumer-related discordance with downloading of sound and video, corporations in an attempt to secure their rights are consolidating ownership of social media, online music distribution and other intellectual properties. Music corporations, publishers and other entertainment media properties are shifting stewardship and ownership of creative corporations to becoming intellectual property holdings of Mutual Fund Portfolios, Multi-National Media News Corporations, and Hedge Fund Holdings.

Consequently the exploitation of these intellectual properties is becoming the cornerstone of new business models for e-commerce and other social media websites in a global market. Further, in an attempt to secure sources of income produced by intellectual property (IP), several corporations have begun to purchase the rights to high traffic web portals that utilize music and video as their predominant or secondary feature for developing and maintaining site traffic.

In an attempt to control the IP from social media websites that use music and video content, corporations are buying and leveraging successful and or high traffic sites to bolster their control and profits from these sites. An outstanding example would be Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. purchasing MYSPACE.com for $580 Million in 2005. Within six months of this purchase News Corp. began to divide content control of the website to brand managers within the new corporation. MYSPACE.com boasted over 250k bands and artists that provided free music to visitors. News Corp. has been able to utilize this aspect to carefully target music fans with advertising revenue and marketing campaigns.

Exemplary, is the case with EMI’s music catalogue and the private equity firm Terra Firma. Citibank which provided the venture capital to Terra Firma to acquire EMI’s exquisite catalogue did not foresee the devastating downward trend in the global marketplace that came as a result of the mortgage meltdown. Terra Firma now finds that their company is “upside down” and they will have to short sell their EMI catalogue or relinquish control of the holdings to Citibank.

What this demonstrates is that music publishing and other IP properties can now be seen as commodities and packaged the same way mortgages have been packaged, and in my view will be no more than bundles of IP that are managed, marketed and exploited for the percentage gains of a mutual fund, hedge fund, or divisional brand within a corporation.

My paper will discuss all of my research and findings in detail and with clearly focused data show this growing trend within corporate consolidation of media and entertainment “product” that expresses itself in the form of intellectual property.

Keywords:

Social Media, Business, Copyright, Trends on Wall Street, Technology.