Zenith of Desire: The Hollywood Incubus

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VEVO was not yet a reality in the outside world—it would not become a reality until 2009—but the concept of a massive, owned video distribution platform, a destination rather than a dependency, was already deeply present in Marvin’s thinking. Marvin understood exactly where the internet was going to take the relationship between music and visual content.

The current structure required MTV’s goodwill; it required kissing the rings of broadcast entities that had their own corporate interests and their own leverage. Building an *owned* distribution network, a direct, unfiltered channel between the group’s visual content and its global audience, was the long-term direction.

Not today. Not this year, or the next several years. But the physical infrastructure being built *now* had to be built with that eventual destination in mind, or it would need to be painfully rebuilt when the destination finally arrived.

”The internet,” Marvin said, his voice cutting through the discussion in the particular way he sometimes said obvious things—not as a sudden revelation, but as an undeniable coordinate being established on a map.

”Everything we’re building physically, we’re also building for what the internet becomes. The video studio. The distribution infrastructure. The direct-to-fan relationships we’re developing through the labels.” He paused, his gaze sweeping the room. ”Right now, to the untrained eye, those things look like they’re for different purposes. They are for the exact same purpose. We’re building a system that functions in the current environment but doesn’t require a restructuring when the environment changes.”

The room was deathly quiet for a moment.

”When does the environment change?” Voss asked, his pen hovering over the legal pad.

”A new piece of software called Napster has just gone live. Most of the industry doesn’t know its name yet. They will. That’s the starting gun.” Marvin stated.

He said it without the slightest hint of drama, as calmly as someone pointing to a storm cloud on the horizon. ”What that software sets in motion won’t be resolved in a year—or even five. It’ll reshape this industry for the next decade. Most of the executives running Sony, Universal, and the rest of the majors won’t recognize the threat until it’s already changing consumer behavior.”

His voice remained level.

”They’ll treat it as a piracy problem. They’ll believe the answer is lawyers, lawsuits, and tighter control over distribution. They’ll spend fortunes trying to preserve a business model that’s already becoming obsolete.”

Marvin slowly shook his head. ”But this isn’t a legal problem. It’s a structural transformation. Technology has changed how people discover, acquire, and consume music. You don’t stop that with court orders. You adapt faster than the technology evolves—or someone else will.”

”How do you solve them?” Patricia Moss asked, completely captivated.

”You build the new structure faster than the old one collapses,” Marvin said, a chilling smile touching his lips. ”Which is exactly what we’re doing right now.”

He let his gaze travel slowly around the table, as though every executive represented another piece of a machine only he could see. ”The video production division. Our distribution network. Music publishing. Ownership of timeless catalogs wherever the opportunity presents itself. Direct relationships with artists instead of relationships filtered through retailers. International infrastructure that allows us to move faster than companies bound by a single market.”

He tapped the table once. ”But that’s only the foundation. ”We build world-class A&R capable of finding artists before the majors even know they exist. We invest in songwriters as aggressively as we invest in singers, because hit songs outlive hit performers. We develop producers, recording engineers, mixers, and mastering engineers who become synonymous with quality. We create recording studios that artists want to work in even when they aren’t signed to us.”

Another tap. ”We establish publishing companies that own compositions, not just recordings. We secure synchronization rights so our music lives in films, television, advertising, and, eventually, video games. We build long-term relationships with broadcasters, radio networks, retailers, and every emerging digital platform willing to license our catalog.”

His voice remained calm, almost conversational. ”Meyers Brand Works turns artists into brands rather than simply musicians. Tours. Apparel. Collectibles. Limited editions. Books. Documentaries. Fan clubs. Official merchandise. Every successful artist should become an ecosystem capable of generating revenue long after an album leaves the charts.”

He folded his hands. ”We don’t sign one-hit wonders,” Marvin said evenly. ”We build careers—careers that last decades, not seasons. We don’t chase trends. We identify them before the rest of the industry even realizes they’ve begun.”

He rose from his chair and walked slowly around the conference table, every measured step drawing the room’s attention with him.

”Nor do we build a company around a single genre, a single country, or a single generation of artists. Pop. Rock. R&B. Country. Hip-hop. Classical. Jazz. Film scores. Electronic music. Latin. Every successful genre strengthens the entire ecosystem. When one market slows, another accelerates. Diversification isn’t merely growth—it’s resilience.”

He stopped behind an empty chair, resting his fingertips lightly against its back.

”And neither will we make the mistake of concentrating everything beneath a handful of overworked labels.”

His eyes swept across the executives. ”As we grow, we create new labels and acquire existing ones. Some will specialize in mainstream pop. Others in country. Others in urban music, classical, jazz, independent artists, experimental music, film soundtracks, children’s entertainment, or emerging international markets. Every label will have its own identity, its own executives, its own A&R philosophy, and its own culture.”

He smiled faintly. ”Artists shouldn’t feel like they’re joining a corporate machine. They should feel like they’re joining a home built specifically for the music they want to create.”

He continued without breaking rhythm. ”The same applies to our recording facilities. We won’t expect hundreds of artists to compete for studio time in the same handful of buildings. We’ll build and acquire studios across Los Angeles, Nashville, London, Stockholm, Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney, Mumbai—wherever creativity flourishes. Different producers. Different engineers. Different specialties. Different Artists

A network instead of bottlenecks.”

His voice remained calm, but conviction radiated from every word with his aura. ”Every acquisition, every label, every studio, every publishing company, every distribution center, every songwriter, every producer—they’re not isolated investments. They’re pieces of a single machine designed to become stronger every time another piece is added.”

His gaze settled on each executive in turn. ”When the rest of the industry finally realizes the ground beneath it has shifted, they’ll spend years trying to protect what they’ve already lost. They’ll merge. They’ll consolidate. They’ll cut costs. They’ll react.”

His smile deepened, almost imperceptible. ”We’ll already be where they’re trying to go.”

Silence settled over the boardroom. ”We’re not going to become the largest music company in the world simply because we survive what’s coming,” Marvin said, his voice quiet enough that everyone instinctively leaned forward to hear it. ”We’re going to become the largest because every decision we make today is being optimized for the industry that will exist tomorrow. By the time everyone else recognizes the future, we’ll already own a meaningful part of it.”

The room fell completely silent.

No one reached for a notebook.

No one interrupted.

Even the faint hum of the air-conditioning seemed unusually loud.

The executives exchanged brief glances, each seeing the same thing reflected in the others’ expressions—a growing realization that they were no longer discussing quarterly objectives or five-year forecasts. Marvin was describing an empire measured in decades.

Several smiles appeared almost unconsciously.

They weren’t smiles of amusement.

They were the smiles of people who had just been allowed to glimpse a future so vast that, moments earlier, they wouldn’t have believed it possible.

Patricia Moss slowly lowered her pen onto the legal pad without writing another word. For perhaps the first time in her career, she wasn’t thinking like a lawyer. She was thinking like a shareholder.

Max Martin remained motionless. He had spent years in the music business, long enough to develop an instinctive skepticism toward grand corporate visions. Record executives promised revolutions every other month. Most amounted to little more than marketing slogans dressed as strategy.

This felt different.

It wasn’t the ambition that unsettled him.

It was the precision.

Marvin wasn’t dreaming aloud.

He was describing a machine that already seemed to exist in his mind—one so complete that everyone else in the room had merely been invited to assemble the pieces.

For the briefest moment, Max found himself wondering whether he wasn’t looking at an extraordinarily gifted thirteen-year-old... ...but at someone who had already seen the future and returned with the blueprint.

Max Martin, looked at Marvin with the expression he occasionally wore when something reorganized a previously settled assumption about reality.

Then, Max simply looked down and made a note.

The afternoon session ran for three intense hours.

It covered the publishing division’s current holdings and aggressive acquisition targets.

Hendricks had identified several massive catalogs of mid-tier but commercially durable material. They were available at prices reflecting the sellers’ uncertainty about the Napster future—meaning they were priced far lower than they would be in five years, once the streaming economy clarified the massive long-term value of publishing rights.

The logic was simple, and Hendricks presented it: buy now, hold the line, and collect forever.

The mechanical and performance royalties on well-placed songs were going to be worth exponentially more in a streaming world than in a physical CD world, once streaming platforms had the global scale to make fractions-of-a-penny per-play rates meaningful.

This was not entirely certain to the rest of the world, but it was probable to this room. The acquisition prices offered by sellers who didn’t share Marvin’s probability assessment made the risk-adjusted case compelling.

Marvin approved three massive catalog acquisitions on the spot, transferring 40 million, and ordered Hendricks to prepare deep due diligence on two others.

Edward Holt, joining briefly by phone from his Los Angeles law office, confirmed the deal structures could be legally executed within the current month.

The international expansion conversation was much longer and far more textured. Sarah Kwan had prepared a dense, market-by-market analysis running twelve pages. The room moved through it with the efficiency of people who had read it in advance and were refining the strategy rather than discovering it.

Japan was the most developed international position. The label’s relationships there were generating meaningful licensing revenue, and the market’s insatiable appetite for the Backstreet Boys and Marvin’s catalog had consistently exceeded even the most optimistic projections.

The UK was the most complicated puzzle. The domestic British music industry had established structures and rigid cultural preferences, and the Cheiron London branch was still in the painful process of becoming more than a satellite operation.

”The UK breaks through raw musicians,” Max stated firmly, tapping his pen. ”Not through label politics or schmoozing. We have the production capacity to make records the British market wants, before the British market even knows it wants them. That’s how we forcefully build the position there.”

Germany, the Scandinavian markets, and Australia were addressed in rapid sequence.

The Korean and Japanese markets were discussed separately, reflecting the distinct, patient developmental approaches Marvin had outlined earlier.

”Southeast Asia,” Kwan said, almost as an aside, pulling up a new data sheet. ”Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines. These markets are deeply underdeveloped in terms of physical infrastructure, but the consumption appetite is massive and starving. The middle class is growing rapidly. Physical music retail is actually expanding there even as it begins to contract elsewhere. And internet penetration is going to accelerate in ways that will make digital distribution highly viable within five years.”

”Flag it,” Marvin commanded. ”It’s not a primary focus today, but we want the political and corporate relationships in place before the market becomes a bloodbath of competition.”

The final item on the agenda was the Meyers Music Group organizational chart—which sounded, as Voss introduced it, like a dry administrative matter. It was not.

The real question no longer revolved around signing artists or acquiring labels.

It was what came after.

How did you govern an empire without suffocating the very creativity that had built it?

Every acquisition brought new talent, new executives, new producers, new cultures, and new ways of working. That diversity was going to be one of Meyers Music Group’s greatest strengths—but left unmanaged, it could just as easily become its greatest weakness.

Wolf Cousins Records, Cheiron, and Maratone had never been intended to become departments within some bloated corporate bureaucracy. Each had earned its reputation precisely because it possessed its own identity, its own creative philosophy, and executives who knew their audiences better than anyone sitting behind a desk in Los Angeles ever could.

And they were merely the beginning.

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