I was surprised that Blender was still around when I saw an issue at my dentist last month and thanks to Sivacracy, I found their list of The 20 Biggest Record Company Screw Ups.
Read it first, then come back to my following paragraphs.
I’m not sure what their research was exactly based upon, much of it appears to be opinion. Number 19 is a good theory explaining the “stealing” problem the music industry claims. As for Edison on number 17, the bigger industry-standard loss he made was on DC v. AC. Sony is now gone 1-1 with their victory on Blu-Ray. I completely agree on 16 and 13, Wilco and REM have always been overpriced, boring, pretentious acts the labels miscalculated. Many others are rather esoteric such as Motown’s value or Geffen suing Neil Young for changing styles. The general public is ignorant about which label their favorite acts are on because it’s not very important unless the records are unavailable through the big box stores.
I would add a corollary to number 2 for Decca passing on the Beatles. The Fab Four didn’t learn from their experience neither. When they formed their own label, they opted not to sign David Bowie and went with Harry Nilsson instead.