Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 6:26 AM by Gene

Steve Jobs yearns to be a Sumner. I'm not surprised; first off, he's been on AOL Time Warner magazine's cover (you know what that does to the megalomania), and with the success of Pixar that Hollywood gold dust has gone to his head. Let's see him try to move records like computers -- in a business with declining sales. Maybe he can create a new format that'll play on five percent of CD players. And considering what they paid for the former PolyGram and MCA Records, at $6 billion Vivendi and JUNIOR are getting hosed.

Also, the PR guys at the Monitor are saying the "independent" record labels -- you know, the ones who produce albums like Music to Collect Belly-Button Lint By -- are having PHENOMENAL sales. But they're a fragment of the biz, and they don't give specifics, and when Billboard says sales are down, it doesn't rely on PR (although it used to), it has hard numbers from POS terminals. (Although in the music biz, POS has several meanings.)

UPDATE: Apple's shareholders are so pleased with Steve's nascent moguldom they drove the shares to a 52-week low!