[douglasdickel]

"Here's how screwed up the music business is, in 100 words or less. You're likely familiar with this story. Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was deemed sales cyanide by Reprise Records, so they ditched the record and the band along with it. Wilco bought back Yankee Hotel Foxtrot from Reprise and eventually sold it to Nonesuch, and the album debuted at No. 13 on the charts. Reprise and Nonesuch are both owned by Time-Warner-AOL; meaning, that company paid for the same album twice." (Dallas Observer)

"Jeff Tweedy is a twat," one former major-label president told me at the height of the singer's travails with Reprise. Though acknowledging the enduring merit of Wilco's music, the executive—who didn't even work for Warner Brothers—marveled at Wilco's desire to make "indulgent albums" for what had become the music industry's largest corporation. "It's unacceptable at this time for any artist to behave the way he does. Who does he think he is? Neil Young?" Perhaps. Neil Young once got sued by his label in the 1980s for making what the gravely disappointed executive David Geffen called "unrepresentative" albums—in other words, they didn't sell well enough. (USA Today)