New album: “Opulence” out now! 🎙️ HSRL podcast ✍️ Methods of Prosperity newsletter → https://xitter.gq/t.co/MxC0a5IpIA
California, USA
Joined May 2010
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No Insults Given to the Quiet Ones
Opulence is a concept. I promise this record will give you value for money, beauty, and nutrition. As well as relief from suffering, social status and so on. All over the world.
Among other ingredients, this record has frequencies. I know what you’re thinking: “All music has frequencies.” The difference is, this one has higher frequencies than most. Which makes it feel strange. That’s intentional.
What this record does, and who it is for:
It invokes future nostalgia for prosperous individuals.
Why did I name it Opulence? Because success and prosperity is a recurring theme in my work since 2022’s Surplus album. Too much music out in the world is about saccharine ideas and negativity. Breakups, crime, sadness, misfortune... I can’t tolerate that stuff anymore.
There’s one lyric at the end of the last song on this album where I sing the word “opulence”. I won’t give it away here. You have to discover it.
When you listen to this record, you may notice that it’s not mastered loud. It sounds like I recorded it on my laptop because I did. I won’t apologize for that. The first track, Automatic Self, features GrimesAI on backup vocals. It was one of the first songs I recorded a few years ago, actually.
Which brings up the topic of AI-generated music. I chose to employ GrimesAI because it was innovative and new at the time Grimes made it available. Other than that, there is a sample I made using AI-generated sounds in the last track, Holy Cow. That’s the extent of AI use besides help with balancing the mixes and mastering.
If you think this is a lousy record, you should have heard it before I mixed and mastered it.
You can hear it wherever you stream your music, including Bandcamp.
I like you,
Sean Allen Fenn
ALT Sean Allen Fenn – Opulence album cover art
Buy the Business. Build the Value.
How Henry Kravis built KKR (and what business owners can learn about leverage, operational discipline, and the art of the exit)
“Any fool can buy a company… just pay enough.”
– Henry R. Kravis
Financial freedom is elusive for many business owners. Instead of an asset with a price, a plan, and an exit, they treat the company like a personal identity project.
They make it too heroic. They try to build everything from scratch, alone, and through sheer will. It makes you wonder why they fail to align structure and incentives.
They use bootstrapping-as-a-religion. They’re afraid to use leverage. They refuse to “buy” cash-flow. Does debt feel to them like a moral failure rather than a tool with rules?
They celebrate the purchase instead of the exit. They underinvest in the unglamorous parts: team, culture, and operational craft. Those are the parts that actually make value real.
Not Henry Kravis.
ALT Methods of Prosperity 141 on Paragraph
King of Leveraged Buyouts
Methods of Prosperity newsletter no. 141: Henry Kravis
“Any fool can buy a company… just pay enough.”
– Henry R. Kravis
Most business owners struggle with financial freedom.
Why?
They treat the company like a personal identity project instead of an asset with a price, a plan, and an exit.
They make it too heroic.
They believe freedom comes from building everything from scratch, alone. And through sheer will.
It makes you wonder why they fail to allow structure and incentives to do the heavy lifting.
They use bootstrapping-as-a-religion.
That is, they avoid leverage.
They refuse to “buy” cash-flow.
Does debt feel to them like a moral failure rather than a tool with rules?
They celebrate the purchase instead of the exit.
They underinvest in the unglamorous parts: team, culture, and operational craft.
Those are the parts that actually make value real.
Not Henry Kravis.
ALT Methods of Prosperity newsletter no. 141: Henry Kravis
Most business owners build from scratch and fear debt. Henry Kravis used leveraged buyouts to acquire cash flow, improve operations, and turn disciplined dealmaking into lasting wealth. Discover how he did it paragraph.com/@seanallenfenn…
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What kind of postmodernist mash-up decomposition AI slop on a massive scale is this for the music industry?
Spotify just announced a feature that could either save the music industry or destroy it.
Starting as early as Q1 2027, Spotify Premium subscribers will be able to use AI to transform any participating artist’s song into a completely different version. Turn a folk ballad into a dance track. Make a hip-hop song sound acoustic. Generate a cover where one artist’s voice performs another artist’s song. Remix a pop hit into lo-fi study music. Create the version of your favorite song that only existed in your head until now.
The remixes will be uploaded directly to Spotify. They’ll appear in playlists. They’ll count toward the original song’s chart position. And most importantly the original artist will earn royalties every time someone listens to a fan-created remix of their work.
Spotify has already signed a landmark licensing deal with Universal Music Group the world’s largest record label. Negotiations with Sony Music and Warner Music are ongoing. The feature will cost an additional $4–$5/month on top of Spotify Premium. And analysts project 7–8% of American subscribers will adopt it by 2028.
This is not Suno or Udio generating music from text prompts. This is fans remixing real songs by real artists with the artists’ permission, on the world’s largest streaming platform, with royalties flowing back to the creators.
A music industry analyst who’s covered streaming economics for 15 years told her team something after reading the licensing agreement that reframed how she understood the future of recorded music.
“Spotify just turned 640 million listeners into 640 million potential remixers. The question isn’t whether people will use it they will. The question is whether paying artists for fan remixes solves the economics of streaming or creates a world where the original recording is worth less than the infinite remixes generated from it.”
Here’s what Spotify’s AI remix feature actually is, who wins, who loses, and why this might be the most consequential decision in the music industry since the launch of streaming itself 🧵
16
Do you know what the funny thing is about a guy who only puts three percent down on a house?
He only put three percent down on a house.
So, you can’t quite come up with the down payment on a house? No problem. California will loan you the down payment. So now you owe the money for the house... and you also owe the money for the money you used to buy the house.
They say it’s for middle-income people. Which is perfect.
Because the only thing middle-income people were missing was a second mortgage. They already had the first one. Now they can have two.
It’s like going to a restaurant and the waiter says, “Sir, your meal is a little expensive.”
And you say, “That's fine, just put half of it on a different check.”
And then later you want to do a cash-out refinance. So you take the house you bought with a loan that covered the down payment, and you refinance it.
So you can get some of the money back that you never put in. You’re cashing out equity that was mostly other people’s money the whole time.
The bank asks how much equity you’ve built up. You say, “Well, I started with three percent, and then the government loaned me seventeen more, so I’ve got about... negative fourteen percent of my own money in it.” And they go, “Perfect. We’ll take that.”
It’s the same house. Same loan. Only more of it!
ALT 2008 called. It wants its GFC back.
Give my new record as a gift this holiday season! Today is Bandcamp Friday. All earnings go to the artist (me). New cult members always welcome!
No Insults Given to the Quiet Ones
Opulence is a concept. I promise this record will give you value for money, beauty, and nutrition. As well as relief from suffering, social status and so on. All over the world.
Among other ingredients, this record has frequencies. I know what you’re thinking: “All music has frequencies.” The difference is, this one has higher frequencies than most. Which makes it feel strange. That’s intentional.
What this record does, and who it is for:
It invokes future nostalgia for prosperous individuals.
Why did I name it Opulence? Because success and prosperity is a recurring theme in my work since 2022’s Surplus album. Too much music out in the world is about saccharine ideas and negativity. Breakups, crime, sadness, misfortune... I can’t tolerate that stuff anymore.
There’s one lyric at the end of the last song on this album where I sing the word “opulence”. I won’t give it away here. You have to discover it.
When you listen to this record, you may notice that it’s not mastered loud. It sounds like I recorded it on my laptop because I did. I won’t apologize for that. The first track, Automatic Self, features GrimesAI on backup vocals. It was one of the first songs I recorded a few years ago, actually.
Which brings up the topic of AI-generated music. I chose to employ GrimesAI because it was innovative and new at the time Grimes made it available. Other than that, there is a sample I made using AI-generated sounds in the last track, Holy Cow. That’s the extent of AI use besides help with balancing the mixes and mastering.
If you think this is a lousy record, you should have heard it before I mixed and mastered it.
You can hear it wherever you stream your music, including Bandcamp.
I like you,
Sean Allen Fenn
ALT Sean Allen Fenn – Opulence album cover art
Excess Is a Mortal Sin
Ingvar Kamprad’s Rule for Getting Rich by Selling Cheap
Småland, 1931. A five-year-old buys matches in bulk in Stockholm, rides his bicycle door to door, and sells them one box at a time. Cheap enough that anyone can buy. Dear enough that he still makes a profit. He is sixty years from a confession. One that will nearly cost him the company. And eighty years from dying the most frugal billionaire who ever lived.
Most retailers struggle with the fantasy that customers want luxury. They add cost and call it quality. They design first and price later. Then they wonder why only the rich can afford them. Not Ingvar.
ALT Methods of Prosperity 177: Ingvar Kamprad
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The following is Methods of Prosperity newsletter 177. It’s the first of three multi-issue arcs for Methods of Prosperity. There will be seven issues in this arc.
The arc across all three
One thread runs through all seven issues: control.
Arc 1: Ingvar Kamprad (IKEA), two issues
Issue 1: the frugality machine
prosperity.beehiiv.com/p/exc…
10
Futures Down 1.4%. Dow Up 3%. Inside the Midterm Whiplash Today on Hidden Secrets Revealed – Live! ™ The Republicans Lost. S&P 500 Rallies. xitter.gq/i/broadcasts/2MEXPYnLo…
