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Comment by latch | Hacker News Reader

So it would take all of Google's cash on hand to buy 1 player (assuming they could even pull it off). It isn't like google's market cap is something they can liquidate or even really make any significant usage of.

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Sony bought out their equal partners, Bertelsmann, for 900MM. [1]. That puts Sony Music's valuation at $1.8B in 2008. Global spending on music seems to be around $26B.[2] Although it's difficult to project a valuation from that, it's not unreasonable to assume that any of the tech giants could afford to buy a significant chunk of the industry.

[1]http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/14/business/fi-sony14

[2]http://mashable.com/2007/11/14/music-industry-decline/

If you want Sony Music you wouldn't buy all of Sony. Of course, these conglomerates may not be willing to sell off their "money-losing" record labels.

Definitely not Sony. How would they find artists to put onto minidisc/atrac/doomed-technology-de-la-décennie?

That'd be to buy ALL of Sony. Sony Music, Sony Pictures, Sony Computer Entertainment (which is mostly Playstation), and a not entirely incidental consumer electronics business. Sony might be worth more if you buy it and break it up, but this is exceedingly unlikely for a variety of reasons.

outright purchase is much less important than who can win a long legal battle. Don't sue someone who has more cash on hand than your net worth. it's dumb, especially when there's a lot of gray area around what specific license is on a particular song.

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