Opinion Today: An investor might be making your playlist

Private equity is in music, now, too. And that might be tipping the scales toward older hits.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story March 19, 2024 By Suein Hwang Business, Economics and Technology Editor, Opinion There's a restaurant across the Golden Gate Bridge that's right out of a Welcome to California postcard, offering local seafood, water views, picnic tables and a wine selection. And it wasn't too long ago that my husband and I noticed that it usually also offers a soothing playlist of hits from the Reagan to Clinton administrations. As has often been the case, it left us wondering why, yet again, we find ourselves in a popular spot with a decent share of young customers that nevertheless plays an awful lot of middle-aged music. As it turns out, there is a reason everything old is new again. In a guest essay, the music critic Marc Hogan explains how the same private equity financiers who have captured so many of our industries have also quietly started to stake claims on our music, snapping up the rights to old hits and monetizing their acquisitions by pushing them back into our collective consciousness with everything from a Whitney Houston movie to a Smokey Robinson wristwatch. This couldn't be happening at a worse time for lesser-known musicians, who already have so little financial incentive to create new music in our algorithmic age. "Buying up rights to a proven hit, dusting it off and dressing it up as a movie may impress at a shareholder conference, but it does little to add to a sustainable and vibrant music ecosystem," Hogan writes in his guest essay. "Like farmers struggling to make it through the winter — to think of another industry upended by private equity — we are eating our artistic seed corn." It can be fun to reminisce with an old ditty, but there's nothing like that moment when you are grabbed by a new kind of sound or riff for the very first time. Let's hope those moments aren't fading in the rear-view mirror. Read the essay: Johanna Burai Guest Essay Same Old Song: Private Equity Is Destroying Our Music Ecosystem Private equity is cannibalizing the music industry by buying up old hits and pushing them back into our cultural consciousness. By Marc Hogan Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Here's what we're focusing on today: Editors' Picks It Turns Out the 'Deep State' Is Actually Kind of Awesome Meet the unsung heroes making our country great. By Adam Westbrook and Lindsay Crouse More From Opinion Thomas L. Friedman What Schumer and Biden Got Right About Netanyahu America's Mideast strategy depends on Israel partnering with non-Hamas Palestinians. Netanyahu is making that impossible. By Thomas L. Friedman Jamelle Bouie Want to Know What Trump Will Do? 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