Did not even one person at any of the A-list music media brands in the new joint venture that pretty much ceases competition in Hollywood journalism raise their hand and suggest that naming the venture PMRC might not be the best idea? Or has everyone who was alive in 1985 already been forced out? Or are they just trolling us? Either way, the letters that once stood for a) music censorship, b) poor lyric comprehension skills and c) hating pop now stand for the combined forces of the PENSKE MEDIA CORPORATION, aka PMC, and MRC, which originally stood for MEDIA RIGHTS CAPITAL. Their properties include Penske's ROLLING STONE, VARIETY and MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE and MRC's BILLBOARD, the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER and VIBE. Penske, which owns several other titles, will run the joint publishing venture, about which details are somewhat thin—thank the WRAP and the LA TIMES, who are still able to report on this alphabet soup from the outside, for what we do know—while MRC will oversee a separate joint venture involving live events and film and TV production based on stories and from all those brands. (MRC owns DICK CLARK PRODUCTIONS and a piece of A24.) It would be a massive understatement to point out that these are not good times for the media, financially speaking, and the pandemic has been particularly hard on entertainment trades, which rely on advertising for the kinds of film and music projects that the pandemic has put on ice. There have been editorial shakeups recently at both companies, and shortly after the ventures were announced the Wrap reported that DEANNA BROWN is stepping down as president of the Billboard–Hollywood Reporter Media Group. The continuing consolidation is as understandable as it is troublesome. Several of these magazines are also, obviously, major sources for this newsletter, and Rolling Stone, Variety and Billboard in particular have all upped their editorial game in the face of these struggles. Their music industry reporting in the past couple years has been invaluable. Here's hoping the joint venture encourages more of that and doesn't in fact kill the built-in competition between them. I'd love for the first half of the first sentence in this rant to turn out wrong, and I'd like to think if the original PMRC tried to remake itself for this era of "WAP," "THE BOX" and "ROCKSTAR," those sites would be doing their best to scoop each other, and keep the rest of us informed, every day... "Imagine a bank lending you money to buy a house and then when you’ve repaid that mortgage, them telling you they still own it." That's KANYE WEST, or perhaps someone in Kanye West's employ, explaining why he's trying to remake the music industry, 30 or 40 tweets at a time, in a Q&A with PMRC's Billboard that was "conducted by text, through an intermediary, but West’s identity was verified by video," whatever that means. Whoever typed that sentence isn't the first to use that analogy, but that doesn't mean it isn't an effective one. Like a pop singer borrowing/repurposing ideas from lesser-known artists and subcultures, West's contribution to this decades-old artists' struggle may not be so much coming up with new ideas as persuasively synthesizing and resurfacing old ones. That's my two Kanye cents for today. I'm a little puzzled, though, that one of his allies in the struggle to make sure "every artist owns their masters" is MERCK MERCURIADIS, whose HIPGNOSIS SONGS FUND is in the business of getting artists to divest of their own IP... TIKTOK will not disappear, even temporarily, without a fight. And if it does disappear, even temporarily, its business could be crippled forever, says the company, which is asking a federal judge to stop the US government from blocking distribution of the app starting this Sunday... STORMZY, DUA LIPA, MOSES BOYD and ANNA MEREDITH are among the finalists for this year's MERCURY PRIZE, which will be awarded tonight on BBC ONE's THE ONE SHOW... RIP JULIETTE GRÉCO and WS "FLUKE" HOLLAND... And pro wrestler JOSEPH "ANIMAL" LAURINAITIS, one half of the ROAD WARRIORS, who used to step into the ring to "the greatest-ever wrestling entrance song."