One of the the biggest music stories of this past year is Universal Music Group going public for...billions. If the question wasn't already answered over the past decade, the Majors are back baby. But what does Universal’s ever-inflating valuation tell us about the music business and it's future? What future does Lucian Grainge, CEO of UMG, envision and are all our listening habits and the culture of music guided by his hand? To understand how we got here, Sam and Saxon go back in time to when the label was just the glimmer in a glass of a CEO's Seagram’s whiskey (no, literally). We explore how Universal grew to industry dominance, from the frothy tech boom of the late 90s to the equally frothy tech boom of the late 2010’s, and puzzle through what its Roblox-chain-panopticon stranglehold on the industry holds in store for artists and fans and gamers and Tik-Tok and Peloton riders and...basically anywhere that anyone listens to music now.

Get full access to Money 4 Nothing at money4nothing.substack.com/subscribe