J Larsen

I'm also not sure it matters. If EMI decided on BN for those artists, don't you think there was a reason why?

I mentioned Angel somewhere - possibly in a different thread - no worries - just saying I'm right there with you.

I did...

That's mostly true, though Fantasy have issued material like the first 2 Mar-Keys LPs and Albert King's first Stax LP, that I can mention off the top of my head. However, the big selling Stax material mostly came after 5/68 - Ike Hayes, Johnny Taylor, Staples, Soul Children, Little Milton, Albert King, Dramatics, Rance Allen. That's interesting - can you explain a bit more please? Fantasy's model was, AFAI can tell, was more geared towards offering a large number of low-selling titles (yes, they had some big sellers, but also hundreds that I wouldn't be surprised to learn sold under 1000 copies each). I would guess that BN's inventory turnover was much higher than Fantasy's. This is a highly irrelevant and speculative tangent on the thread, but all I'm saying is that I'd be happy to trade you the market value of Fantasy for the market value of BN. We'd both be well off, but I think I'd end up slightly better off. And I completely agree with Guy's take on the brand value, btw.

It's more rational to think in terms of customers buying some shares in Mosaic, should EMI want to sell their 50%. MG I don't remember where I heard this, but I seem to recall that the price EMI paid for that stake was surprisingly high.

I agree - that was sort of what was in my mind originally, though I didn't come out and say it directly.

That is my understanding. Edit: according to Wiki, the pre 5/68 recordings belong to Atlantic, and the later recording belong to Fantasy. Another consideration is that, IMO, Fantasy clearly had a higher cost structure which would tend to lessen its value, even if its sales were comparable or stronger than BNs.

Just a guess. It seems to me that BN has higher per-unit sales and are seen as having a more accessible, less intimidating catalog than Fantasy. Could be wrong. In any event, the lower the price of BN, the less likely TF is to bother finding a buyer.

Here is a better (imo) article: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...&refer=home

This is rather poor journalism - Cuban is not the man behind this, but rather one person who has expressed an interest in purchasing a team from the man behind the USFL. I actually think the league is a pretty good idea - they have a plan for getting good players, good coaches, and an instant fanbase by placing teams in major markets like LA that have been abandoned by the NFL. The idea of selling shares in each team to its fans is also a great one. Also, it is pretty ingenious to exploit the ban on the NFL broadcasting on Friday nights, which was originally designed to protect high school (!) football.

Is slashing the ancillary division necessarily a bad outcome? Said differently, presumably the Blue Note catalog has some value (however small) to somebody. Wouldn't TF try to maximize their return by selling the unit to somebody rather than throwing it away? They may not get much for it, but at the right price someone should be interested, and presumably the outfit that would pay the most is one that plans to do something productive with it (...like sell re-re-re-re-reissues of Blue Train ). I raised this point earlier (perhaps on a different thread, though). I'm guessing that BN is worth about $100mm based on the selling price of Fantasy - the thing is that that is kind of a petty amount of money for TF - I doubt they'd put a lot of effort into finding a buyer (unless they just decide to sell of assets piecewise, which I suppose is possible but would still probably entail a few dark years). I'm also hard-pressed to think of a likely buyer with the hundred mil - Concord would have been the obvious candidate, but they just blew 90 on Fantasy. Who else is out there? Of course, at the end of the day this is all pure speculation and we'll find out what really happens all too soon - I'm just saying that if it's a choice between buying a relatively obscure title this summer or waiting until xmas, do it this summer....

In that case, keep an eye out for Supernova and Odyssey of Iska as well. All Seeing Eye is one of the best of the "out-ish" BNs.

I haven't heard it yet but I assume we should add Coltrane Time (under Coltrane's name in the reissues) I'm surprised you haven't heard it, and you should get it just because - but it is a bummer of a session.

That's not the strategy that private equity firms like TF take. They are typically looking for a quick flip rather than trying to build a long term plan for success. This usually means, among other things, cutting back or eliminating low-return operations (which the BN reissue program, which is essentially a large catalog of relatively low-sellers, is certainly an example of).

Love Call might never come back into print (except as a digital download). Disturbing to think that selling BN to Concord would be a GOOD outcome, but it may come to that. Guy I doubt Concord has the cash after that big wad they just blew on Fantasy - wasn't around $100 million? Though they control a smaller catalog, I suspect that BN would command an even higher price.

For the first time, I'm skeptical that we will be getting RVGs of Love Call and NY is Now (unless EMI sells BN to Concord).

Whoops - that said ripping and burning. What I said above obviously only applies to burning. Ripping is trickier, but they may be doing something like looking at total capicity of all in-use MP3 players, total capacity of all in-use personal computer internal and external harddiscs and market research into how people use their harddisc storage, total GBs of music known to have either been downloaded illegally, purchased legally or legally copied from one's own cds, and then estimated the "socially ripped" MP3s as the residual. Just a guess, but I bet I'm not too far off.

Complete Navarro/Dameron sessions.

I'd guess that they looked at music cdr sales, data cdr sales, and market research into how data cdrs are used.

If they needed to dip into the capital markets back then, I doubt that they can afford to buy themselves back now. Is it a 50% stake in just profits or also in control? It is possible to have one without the other...

I have some relatively high-level connections to Terra Firma. I probably can't find anything out, but I will try. However, I do expect the worst. Part of the MO here is to slash the "ancillary" divisions of the company. Good thing BN got so much reissued when it did. Isn't Angel also part of EMI? Yikes...

So in 1966 if you had put Jimmy Smith, Trane, Miles, Getz and a drummer together in a quintet, the readers of Jazz Magazine would have been pretty happy!

No, I didn't know offhand - it just visually looked like the same list and I couldn't find the other thread quickly.

Am I crazy or did we just discuss the exact same poll last week? (Yes, I know, not mutually exclusive, ha ha ha.)

Someone helped me out on this one a long time ago - great stuff!