‘True independents will become rarer and more valuable going into the next decade.’

Weeks later, BMG and Concord announced a merger to create a combined entity valued at [around $15 billion], positioning itself as “the leading independent music company in the world.” Two groups make up most of the full-service indie sector’s client base: independent labels and catalogs owned by private equity firms. Labels need agile teams who can control the end to end pipeline, develop tools that actually accelerate their business, and can action requests as fast as possible. There’s a need (arguably an obligation) for true independents to exist at the distribution level in order to maintain competitive health. My bet is that true independents will become more rare and more valuable going into the next decade.