As a rule of thumb, when a famous company goes under it’s usually because private equity firms bought it, hollowed it out and loaded it with so much debt that even a relatively small drop in demand made it unsustainable.

As David Turner writes, private equity has had a huge influence on the music business too. What began with firms buying record companies has morphed; the firms are now buying copyrights too. “Nearly thirty years since Sony’s purchase of CBS Records, private equity can be found within nearly all aspects of recorded music,” Turner says.