Warner Sings Desperate Song, Again

You want desperation? How about this pathetic attempt by Warner Music (WMG - commentary - Cramer's Take) to merge, again, with EMI, even though no regulatory body wants this deal to get through?

You need to go over the incredibly bad Warner Music conference call to see why this deal is a must for Warner. There simply isn't much of a business there. The only thing it really has is the potential for a lot of hits, and even then, who cares, because music is now public domain.

I know that seems ridiculous, but have you ever noticed how much money and how many speeches people give about this stuff? That's because the moment music is digitized, it's getting to be worthless to all but Apple (AAPL - commentary - Cramer's Take)!

Apple's the music store. It's the only place where people feel like paying, and they don't pay for the whole album because they consider most of the album throwaway stuff. Remember when you used to pay $18 for a compact disc to get a couple of songs that you liked? What a scam.

Now you pay a dollar each for those couple of songs, just for what you want, and it is so easy to do that there isn't a kid who has gone to college or even high school -- make that middle school -- who doesn't know how to do this form of legal piracy.

It gets worse: We have seen the future, too, in fast downloads. Why the heck are we paying three-four bucks to watch a movie on demand from cable or online when we can buy it for next to nothing, or just steal the darned thing in the ether? And of course I don't want it stolen, but do I look like the government? And does the government even care?

This is a frightening time for those purveyors of intellectual property. We all know that every bit of this stuff is a wasting asset. Music libraries aren't really worth much of anything.

Deals like Warner, when it came public, were predicated on solving this stuff. The only winner now looks like Time Warner (TWX - commentary - Cramer's Take) CEO Dick Parsons, who everyone thought gave this business away.

Maybe he was just a visionary.

At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in any of the stocks mentioned.

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