Fortune's Fool by Fred Goodman

Fortune's Fool by Fred Goodman

Fortune's Fool tells the story of how the music industry has met its worst crisis, the Internet Age. When Edgar Bronfman, Jr, bought Warner Music Group from Time Warner, his track record consisted of dissembling the family business, Seagram. The resulting Universal-vivendi deal collapsed in less than two years, taking much of the Bronfman fortune with it. When he and his equity partners bought Warner, they turned a profit in just 14 months, but their problems, like those of the business as a whole, were just beginning. As soon as Edgar Jr. went to work at Seagram, he began move the company into entertainment business, financed by his sale of Seagram's 150 million shares of Dupont. That decision ruptured the board and the Seagram family, ended the 75 year history of Seagram. When Edgar Jr bought MCA from Masushita and then merged disastrously with Vivendi, and lost $3 billion, the failure nearly ended his business career. But in the fall-out of the Time/AOL merger, Bronfman was able to rescue the once storied Warner Record Group and reinvent its flagging Atlantic Records as the industry's most successful Internet label. At the same time, CD retailers were disappearing, and though Warner made aggressive deals with technology companies, there was no workable mass solution. By 2007 Warner's stock, which once traded at $30, was at $7 and falling. With access to not only Bronfman, but all the major players, Fred Goodman shows through this revelatory history and analysis that the labels' long strategy of rewarding chart success and market share turned out to be innately destructive when it came time transform the business model. Edgar Jr , the Warner labels and the industry face a final challenge from the Internet that will either save them or make them extinct: developing a recording product or service that is superior to what is already available for free.

"Fortune's Fool is a worthy follow-up to Goodman's classic, The Mansion on the Hill, and confirms his reputation as one of the most incisive observers of the music business"

--Peter Biskind, author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced Hollywood
"The compellingly told story of the Seagram heir’s music-business adventures at Universal and Warner Music, and what went terribly wrong....Deftly balanced and well-sourced—one of the most solid music-biz bios in recent memory."

--Kirkus Reviews
“Deeply researched, engagingly written… Mr. Goodman is clearly persuaded that Mr. Bronfman is savvier than most of his music-industry peers… The music industry’s radical trajectory over roughly the past 25 years [is] neatly traced by Mr. Goodman… The woes of the music business have been chronicled elsewhere, but Mr. Goodman keeps things lively with fresh anecdotes.”

--The Wall Street Journal
“His book is full of colorful anecdotes and astonishing quotes from his subjects … Fortune’s Fool is a great read.”
--Devin Leonard, The New York Times
"An insider's perspective on an industry in flux."
--Flagpole

Fred Goodman is a writer specializing in the music and entertainment business. From 1987 to 1990 he was a senior editor at Rolling Stone, where he is now a contributing editor. He has written for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, GQ, M, and The Village Voice. He lives in White Plains, New York.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780743269988
ISBN 10	0743269985
Title	Fortune's Fool
Author	Fred Goodman
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Year published	2010-09-16
Number of pages	336
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.