American Economist Tyler Cowen called Sony and Bertelsmann's plan to combine their struggling music businesses "a desparation merger in a fading industry."
Unwilling to heed cries of outrage from their paying customers and warnings from industry analysts, it appears music execs are reaping the results of targeting consumers with threats and lawsuits and unconvincingly trying to blame online music for their poor performance and inability to innovate.
"...the fact is that big music firms are in deep trouble because sales are falling fast; merging is one of the few things they can think of doing."
Merging is not likely to help. If the RIAA is any example of group thinking in the industry, this is a situation where two heads are not going to be better than one.
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