It's actually kind of brilliant. Mercuriadis et al are getting some of the rights to well-known intellectual property through the presumably underpaid, behind-the-scenes contributors. His competitors say he's paying too much, but is that just because they've been paying too little?

I was biased against the guy when I started the article, but if the status quo ante was other execs paying pennies to songwriters for their rights, and then doing little to nothing with them, maybe Mercuriadis is onto something.