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Music labels – and independent artists – are fighting an uphill battle in trying to make money off recorded music. The problem is the marginal cost of music is $0.00: it costs nothing to give you an extra digital copy of a song.

It’s only copyright law that props up the price of digital music sales. Matthew Yglesias has a good analysis of this, where he smartly suggests that musicians focus their financial efforts more on live performances, where the marginal cost is actually quite high due to limited capacity at venues. The rise of the Las Vegas residency – Britney Spears is about to start one at Planet Hollywood – suggests musicians have started to take notice and are focusing more on touring

New music only brings in a small portion of the major labels' total revenue. A huge fraction of their income comes from their back catalogs as they rack up royalties for purchases and streams of music that was released years, even decades ago. In fact, Google has offered over a billion dollars to several record labels for their back catologs. They don’t want to buy the labels, they just want the back catalogs where the real value lies.

When a person dies, they let out a fart (among other releases) as all the muscles in their body relax.

Yorke thinks Spotify is the “dying fart” of the virtually dead major labels rather than a revolutionary new tool, because the majors are using it as one last way to maintain their gatekeeper role.

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Loeb’s analysis is borne out by a graph of Sotheby’s stock price during Ruprecht’s reign. It bounced back from the 2000 and 2008 recessions, but dipped two years ago and has only now returned to its 2011 level

Ruprecht has held the positions of Chairman, President and CEO since 2000. Prior to holding those positions, he served as Principal Auctioneer for Sotheby’s New York.

He has publicly touted Sotheby’s expansion into Asia, the Middle East and the developing world, with new offices in Beijing, Moscow, Istanbul and Doha. But Loeb thinks his tenure has seen Sotheby’s lag behind Christie’s in international art markets.

The State Department has enough money left in most of their accounts to keep the lights on for at least several days after the Oct. 1 shutdown began, meaning no furloughs are necessary – for now