𝐀 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐔𝐬

𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞

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"I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness." - Al Pacino

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February 22, '01

RACONTEUR

Doug Morris, current Chief Excutive Officer of Universal Music Group, pondered the view of Manhattan's skyline from the floor-to-ceiling window of his corner office. Given any day, he was solely concerned with the advancement of the company and today was not any different.

Turning to his mahogany desk, he approached his seat to study the business model on his desk. It was of a new-ish streaming service he'd come up with for UMG, PressPlay, which (for $9.95/month) allowed for 250 streams and 20 temporary downloads while offering limited CD-burning capabilities at higher price points than the ready-to-buy CDs in-store.

Translation: it was a terrible, terrible model.

It was so terrible that it was, in fact, failing and Morris was catching much flack for the monstrosity. PressPlay was supposed to be Universal's response to Napster as a legal streaming site that would overthrow the pirating nuisance, but for some reason Morris couldn't grasp, it wasn't working.

His mind wandered to how someone else, under most of Napster's noise, had done a pretty good job of holding a loyal and happy clientele without alerting the authorities of his existence: Michael Godforsaken Jackson.

His business was piracy too, well, any streaming service not compensating the rightful owners to the music were pirating, but he'd still kept low enough under the law's radar to operate & generated enough money by restricting the usage to people strictly in the Tri-State area: New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Morris knew Michael could've expanded if he wanted to, but then he'd get caught and stop making money. The best businessmen know their limits.

Kid's too smart, Doug said to himself, fiddling with his pen.

Before striking a deal with him, Doug had thought of striking VibesLoad down. Michael Lynton from Sony had proposed it to him first during their encounter at the Ritz some time before. Initially, Doug had agreed. Plus, he thought Vibesload was a stupid name for a company, but then again, he had no room to speak after PressPlay had been renamed PressStop in a copy of The Wire due to it's failure. Admittedly, not his proudest moment.

Still, Doug was almost ready to strike the company down when a thought occurred to him. He'd spent all this time, blew through quite the budget, suffered countless verbal beatdowns and pressure from the board for the failure of PressPlay when someone else had it all figured out and it was profitable? He would be stupid to destroy something so perfect.

It was even more perfect when a certain Sean Taylor approached him with an exec from Apple about a deal with Michael. A meeting ensued. He didn't get to acquire the streaming company so it hadn't really gone quite as he wanted, but he'd learned something: he could have it.

Michael was like him, in a shrewd business mogul kind of way. He was hungry for more and had the balls to face tough decisions head-on. He'd sell his company down the river if it made him more money for years to come. Plus, he was right not to sell VibesLoad at that meeting; it was a gross undervaluation of the company and Doug didn't feel like sharing it with Sony or Apple, but he really did need a way to acquire the company. Stat.