Commenting on my post on hip hop's transition to digital sales, XXL's Tara Henley summed up 2006 this way:

"I think 2006 will be remembered as the year that The Hustler trumped The MC as the prevailing icon of the culture. The year that rappers became so busy trying to be entrepreneurs and pitchmen and Hollywood actors that they didn’t have the time or the inclination to make dope music anymore. The year that being a rap artist—someone who sincerely aspires to spit mind-blowing rhymes—became, well, kinda corny. The year all your favorite rap stars started adamantly denying they were rappers."

Rappers are not shy about promotion and making money. What separates this year's greed with the chart-topping greed of previous years? Maybe consumers are tiring of rappers ostentatious lifestyles. Maybe they're starting to look for something else. R&B is having a good year -- John Legend, for example, is having a year most rappers could only dream of.

Outside of changing consumer sentiment, what could be behind the fall? I tend to look to radio and promotion, then to distribution and retail. Here's a crazy thought: Part of the sales lag can be chalked up to what is and isn't classified as hip hop. Two huge, beat-driven albums that could technically be called hip hop albums but are filed under electronic at Soundscan, are Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere and Gorillaz' Demon Days (released last year but sold about 500,000 units in 2006). Both were produced by Danger Mouse (pictured), and both are no more or less hip hop than OutKast, for example, a group that is classified as hip hop.

Add Danger Mouse's million-and-a-half 2006 sales -- currently classified as electronic -- and hip hop isn't looking as bad. Those 1.5 million units of St. Elsewhere and Demon Days would raise hip hop's yearly total by about 3.2%. So has Danger Mouse taken a good chunk of hip hop's crossover audience away from more traditional hip hop? It's not a far-fetched idea, and it would fall in line with the theory that consumers are tiring of hustlers. Who is less a hustler than Danger Mouse?

Posted by Glenn at 3:28 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

A thought crossed my mind last week as I looked over last week's album chart: What has happened to hip hop? Diddy's Press Play (Bad Boy) debuted at #1 but has dropped to #7 and then to #20 -- and that's an impressive hip hop showing in 2006!

Lloyd Banks' Rotten Apple (Interscope) has moved only 234,000 in four weeks, with nearly 61% of that coming in the first week. After debuting at #3, Rotten Apple's next three weeks were #15, #33 and #43. The critically loved Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor (Atlantic) by Lupe Fiasco has moved a scant 184,000 in seven weeks and has dropped to #94. At #95 is Young Dro's Best Thang Smokin' (Atlantic) with 281,000 in ten weeks. Outkast, which previously crossed over to pop and rock fans, didn't bring their new fans with them: Idlewild (LaFace) hasn't even gone gold in 11 weeks.

The list of disappointments and underperformers is a long one. Method Man's 4:21 The Day After (Def Jam) has been out for ten weeks and has moved only 170,000. It's already off the Top 200 and sold a mere 4,000 units last week. In 15 weeks, Pharrel's In My Mind (Interscope) has sold only 341,000. After a strong first week, it eased right down and then completely off the Top 200. Not even The Roots are having a good 2006. Game Theory (Island) has sold a paltry 148,000 in ten weeks, and 41% of its sales came in the first week.

This has not been a good year for hip hop releases in general, but the issue is much more complex. Hip hop discovered the Internet. Its fans -- and there are fewer of them in the mainstream -- are moving beyond the album format and taking songs one at a time. Hip hop is as much a hit-driven genre as any. Promotion requires radio and club play. Those impressions drive album sales. Now they drive single and ringtone sales as well.

The decline of 2006 can be traced to a slight downward trend that started after hip hop peaked at 13.8% of all album shipments (see RIAA's 2005 Consumer Profile). (Year-to-year swings can occur. The swing from 2004 to 2005 was 1.3 percentage points.) In 2005, hip hop accounted for 12.1% of album scans. In 2004 the number was 12.2%. Currently, hip hop accounts for 10.6% of all album scans in 2006. Even a blockbuster fourth quarter probably won't prevent a year-over-year drop. (And the fourth quarter could be good for the genre. The Game, Nas, Snoop Dogg, Akon, Lil Jon and Young Jeezy have new releases in the quarter.)

For proof of the genre's current lack of staying power, one can look at the length of time a hip hop album stays in the Top 40. In 2006, there are no long-lasting hits at the top of the chart. Each album is a flavor of the less-than-a-month. How many hip hop albums are in the Top 40? Five. How many have been there for more than three weeks? One (Ludacris). A hip hop album makes a big splash in its first week, drops around 60% in the second week, and fades out of the mainstream's attention.

Continue reading "Hip Hop's Transformation Into A Singles and Ringtone Business" »

Posted by Glenn at 9:31 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

What could be better than Malcolm Gladwell writing about music? His article for The New Yorker, "The Formulra," finds him explaining the New York-based company Platinum Blue, which examines music's underlying mathematical structure to predict the hit potential of an album or a song.

"This past spring, for instance, (Platinum Blue) analyzed 'Crazy,' by Gnarls Barkley. The computer calculated, first of all, the song’s Hit Grade—that is, how close it was to the center of any of those sixty hit clusters. Its Hit Grade was 755, on a scale where anything above 700 is exceptional. The computer also found that “Crazy” belonged to the same hit cluster as Dido’s 'Thank You,' James Blunt’s 'You’re Beautiful,' and Ashanti’s 'Baby,' as well as older hits like 'Let Me Be There,' by Olivia Newton-John, and 'One Sweet Day,' by Mariah Carey, so that listeners who liked any of those songs would probably like 'Crazy,' too."

Platinum Blue's Mike McCready explained how people have had similar preferences for hundreds of years.

"If you go back to the popular melodies written by Beethoven and Mozart three hundred years ago, they conform to the same mathematical patterns that we are looking at today. What sounded like a beautiful melody to them sounds like a beautiful melody to us. What has changed is simply that we have come up with new styles and new instruments. Our brains are wired in a way -- we assume -- that keeps us coming back, again and again, to the same answers, the same pleasure centers."

Posted by Glenn at 7:45 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

This makes a good complement to IFPI's global recorded music data that was just released. Year-to-date market shares came out last week.

The title of the The Hollywood Reporter's article, "Digital Sales Shore Up Ailing Music Biz," makes me wonder how many more CDs would have been bought if there were no a la carte downloads. Regardless, there was another drop in physical sales and it's being made up for -- almost -- by digital sales. The article points out a statistic, track equivalent albums, that Soundscan uses to give people a yardstick with which to compare year-over-year sales as consumers shift from digital from physical. The track equivalent album statistic, which converts every ten individual tracks into an album, decreased through September to 434.9 million from 439.2 million.

Using a metric like track equivalent albums does not, of course, reflect the continued changes in music retail. Tower Records was representative of the shrinking middle class, those music specialists that used to lure customers with their deep inventories. The middle class will continue to shrink -- who's next, Virgin Megastore? -- as niche-focused indies and hit-driven mass merchants fight it out with digital stores.

Here are album shares (with digital) of the four majors and indies:

1. Universal Music Group: 31.4% (28.0%)
2. Sony BMG: 26.7% (22.6%)
3. Warner Music Group: 12.1% (11.6%)
4. EMI: 11.8% (10.7%)
5. All indies: 18.00% (26.9%)

Posted by Glenn at 3:59 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

• The IFPI reports global music sales were down 6% in the first half of 2006. Digital sales were up 106% and now account for 11% of total recorded music sales. In the U.S., digital accounted for 18% of recorded music sales. Countries such as Japan and Italy have very high mobile shares (85% and 76%, respectively). In the U.S., online sales account for 64% of digital sales. (Read press release)

• Goldman Sachs lowered its EMI target price. It forecasts a drop of 6.5% for the first half of 2006 and flat sales for the year. (Read article at newratings.com)

• Navarre Corporation announced the effect of the Tower Records bankrupcy on its earnings. The company plans to take an after-tax charge of $0.03 per share for the quarter ended September 30th. Multiplied by the 29,951,497 shares outstanding at the end of June, that charge will be just shy of $900,000. (Read press release)

• The Tower.com website was purchased by Norton LLC, owner of music memoribilia site Wolfgang's Vault. (Read post at FMBQ)

• Columbia Records has asked veteran Steve Ralbovsky to be senior VP of A&R for its Canvasback Music. (Read article at Hits)

• A story on the Froncysyllte Male Voice Choir, which signed to Universal Music after being heard at a wedding by Daniel Glatman, the former manager of boy band Blue. (Read article at The Independent)

Posted by Glenn at 2:18 PM | Link
|EMI||Indies||Music Industry||Tower|

The USA Today's David Liebermann has an article on the music industry that's surprisingly good. (That's because the article is in the Money section of the paper, not the Arts section.)

Liebermann takes a gander at the decline in sales of recorded music and what companies are doing about it. Publishing is the focus here. Universal Music Group's purchase of BMG Music Publishing is mentioned. Newcomers like Primary Wave Music Publishing are mentioned due the lower barriers to entry compared to the recorded music field.

Some hard numbers (from Credit Suisse) help make the article worth reading. Here's a sample:

"Publishing revenue will total about $4 billion this year and swell at least 4% a year through 2013. That's attractive because about 24% of revenue flows to earnings before taxes and depreciation, according to Credit Suisse. Recorded music generates cash-flow margins of about 14%."

Posted by Glenn at 2:53 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

The NY Times' Jeff Leeds has an article today about "how technology is shaking up the hierarchy of tastemakers across popular culture." It's been written before, but Leeds concentrates on music recommendation services, playlists and online radio -- not blogs and Pitchfork.

The beginning of the article reminds me of a similar article about Epitonic.com in the late '90s as the company was burning through money. The company employed music buffs to input data about each band into the download service's database. (It was a kind of "Revenge of the Nerds" article that was so popular before the bubble broke.) Here, Pandora, which is not yet profitable, is using professional musicians to categorize music by their characteristics.

Most interesting yet unsubstantiated item in the article: Pandora founder Tim Westergren claims ten percent of the time Pandora users click through to buy a song or album on iTunes or Amazon.com. That's a heck of a conversion rate.

Posted by Glenn at 11:58 AM | Link
|Digital Music||Music Industry|

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's nominating committee is going to get a makeover and, possibly, that element of youth that has long eluded Grammy voters. Hits Rumor Mill quoted an excerpt from a letter from Rock Hall nominating committee chairman Jon Landau that says the committee had expired and will be replaced by a smaller group. Landau is seeking a youth movement.

“'We are particularly interested in recruiting some fresh voices whose taste and love of music was formed more in the Eighties,' Landau wrote, adding that the former committee members will still be allowed to cast their votes once the ballot has been compiled. Under the new regime, the names of Gen X heroes like Joy Division, New Order and Echo & the Bunnymen would appear to be headed for future ballots."

In other Rock Hall news, the museum has hooked up with technology company Music Pilot " to find and identify relationships in music that have previously gone undetected." Phase one will let visitors use kiosks to search a database of music and find relationships, influences and similarities. Sounds fun.

Posted by Glenn at 6:30 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

In 2000 the FTC put an end to the major record labels' practice of minimum advertised price (MAP), which set a floor under which stores could not advertise with labels' cooperative marketing funds. Since MAP's demise, consumers have cheered, a class action suit has filled libraries with B-grade product and mass merchants have taken loss leader pricing to new levels.

But MAP does live on. As an article at Video Business indicates, the FTC never got rid of movie studio's MAP policies. "Navigating Around MAP" tells how retailers are discounting below MAP more and more these days. Coop funds are dwindling anyway, giving retailers less incentive to play by MAP. And some chains, such as Target, rely on slotting fees, not ad reimbursements.

The video world has the same issues that music retailers face. "It hurts the specialty retailers more than anything else," one source told Video Business, "because they can’t afford to lose money on ad [support]."

Posted by Glenn at 6:25 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

Previously Coolfer had wondered how little radio support and huge Internet awareness would do for Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere. The results are in, and St. Elsewhere sold 50,000 in its first week of wide release. (It sold about 3,700 digital albums a week before the CD was released, and had a few hundred street date violations that week as well.)

That's good for #20 on this week's album chart. Color Coolfer impressed. This has been a campagin driven by the Internet, and it proved that the Internet can indeed move the units...as long as the major retail chains are on board, of course.

Terrestrial radio support will be a major factor in sustained chart position. Otherwise expect around a 40% slide in the second week.

Six albums sold over 100,000 last week, four of them debuts. Red Hot Chili Peppers' Stadium Arcadium sold 442,000 and tops the album chart. Nick Lachey's Jive debut, What's Left of Me, moved 171,000 and sits at second. Big debuts by Jagged Edge's self-titled Columbia album and the Isley Brothers' Baby Makin' Music on Def Soul Classics did 114,000 and 111,000, respectively.

New albums by Paul Simon and Neil Young both did 60,000 in their first weeks. Given all the hoopla for Young's Living With War, 60,000 might not look that great but his fans aren't the type to rush out to midnight sales.

People were pretty impressed by Mobb Deep's 105,000 last week. How do they feel about a massive 65% slide in its second week?

Proving that hit singles don't always sell albums to match, Daniel Powter has dropped to 32 from 23 from 18 in the last three weeks (it's been out for five weeks).

A note to hipsters: The Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Then Sings My Soul debuted higher than did Grandaddy's Just Like the Fambly Cat.

Posted by Glenn at 2:15 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

• Have the Dixie Chicks resigned to move on from their old fan base? Hits points out that even though country radio isn't eager to play the single "Not Ready To Make Nice" the song is #1 on the iTunes country chart. The song was co-written by Dan Wilson (Semisonic, Trip Shakespeare) and produced by Rick Rubin -- not household names in country-loving homes. The next single is going to country radio, let's wait and see how that goes over. (Hits Rumor Mill)

• Read the transcript from Sony's fourth quarter earnings conference call held yesterday. (Consumer Electronics Blog)

• DJ Shadow has signed with Universal Records and will have a new album -- with guest vocalists -- out this summer. (Internet DJ)

• Cheap Trick and the Allman Brothers have started class-action procedings against Sony BMG over the royalties formua the company is using for digital music. (Digital Music News)

• Austrailians are complaining about the high prices they pay for digital downloads. Their CDs ain't cheap either. (Sydney Morning Herald, via Slashdot)

• Good news: Rhino is reissuing remastered Jesus and the Mary Chain albums. Finally. Bad news (to the many who are haters): They're DualDisc format. The DVD side of each will contain the album in high-res audio and a paltry three videos. (Pitchfork)

Posted by Glenn at 9:40 AM | Link
|Music Industry||Sony BMG|

• Tapes 'N Tapes, one of the buzz bands of this year's SXSW, has signed with XL Recordings. The band's self-released album The Loon will get a worldwide release this summer. (Pioneer Press)

• Koch has added three labels to its roster: Made Records, REX Recordings and R.N.L.G. (Rob Nonies Label Group). (Hits Rumor Mill)

• A group of prominent Canadian artists, the Canadian Music Creators Coalition, is butting heads with the Canadian Recording Industry Association over copyright, and the media is paying close attention. New members of the group include Avril Lavigne, Broken Social Scene and Barenaked Ladies. (Globe and Mail)

• India.Aria's upcoming album, Testimony: Vol. 1, Life & Relationships, has been bumped to June 27th from May 9th. (Billboard.com)

• There's been another shooting at NYC's Hot 97 radio station. Rappy Gravy was shot, well, he was shot right in the butt. (NY Post)

Posted by Glenn at 8:53 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

• Lawmakers have introduced a bill that would require satellite radio companies to compensate record labels for downloads that arise from their services. The goal, says the RIAA's Mitch Bainwol, is parity among platforms. Satellite radio, he says, should be looked at no differently than an on-demand store. "If someone gets a distribution right without paying for it, that blows a hole in the digital marketplace." XM chairman Gary Parsons calls it "a new tax being imposed on our subscribers." (Reuters)

• Based on one-day sales, Hits predicts Godsmack will top next week's album chart with over 200,000 in sales. Springsteen's We Shall Overcome will be helped by strong sales at iTunes and Starbucks and is on track to do about 100,000. (Hits Rumor Mill)

• Baller Status interviews Draze, who is about to debut something the website calls "he latest concept in buzz creation for an unsigned artist": the mixtape movie. The first is a cover of "Trading Places" with Draze playing Dan Akroyd's character and Jay-Z playing Eddie Murphy's character. (Baller Status) The movie can be seen at Draze's MySpace page.

• If you don't get your fill of Doomsday-for-the-music industry pronouncements from Bob Lefsetz's radio show, this summer you can listen to Marc Cuban on his weekly Sirius radio show. (Seattle P-I)

• It's off to a decent though quiet start, but Sergio Mendes' Timeless (Concord/Starbucks) should finally get a boost and get in the public's eye. Mendes and the Black Eyed Peas (whose Will.I.Am produced the album) will perform on "The Tonight Show" on May 9th. They recently shot a video for the song "Mas Que Nada," and the song will be featurd in Nike commercials during The World Cup.

Posted by Glenn at 9:00 AM | Link
|Legal||Music Industry|

Going against popular theory, a Nielsen/NetRating report claims 75% of UK Internet users call the CD their favored format. Only 8% prefer digital downloads.

"Despite the fact that Internet users are more likely to have purchased music online than from the high street they are actually spending almost twice as much on music in the high street than they are on the web. Again, this indicates that the high street doom-mongerers are perhaps slightly premature - brick-spend still outperforms click-spend for the music surfer."

How can one interpret these findings? Do people not value the convenience of digital downloads? Do they not find value in the ability to cherry pick songs? Here's a thought: most people still prefer the album format over the single download, and CD prices have come down far enough to make a digital album far less valued than the CD. Yeah, sounds old fashioned, but it wasn't fortysomethings who sent Fall Out Boy's last album over the double-platinum mark.

Posted by Glenn at 11:47 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

• Toucan Cove Entertainment has signed a worldwide distribution deal with Universal Republic. The label's next album is by The Muckrakers. T(PR.com)

• eMusic anc Circuit City have teamed up to offer a download starter kit that will be sold in Circuit City stores. The kit has the physical aspect of a gift card but comes packaged in a CD jewel case and includes a "how to" download guide, collector's cards of independent artists and information on eMusic's features. For $14.99 the kit offers 65 downloads per month (which goes for $15 per month) and 25 free downloads for signing up.

• Skype, the web-based phone service, has a deal from Warner Music Group to sell music on Skype's music store. Which music store? This one. (Forbes.com) If you're like me and wondering how this would work, ZDNet has a blog post that explains some scenarios. (ZDNet)

• Warner/Chappel names Bob Bortnick Senior Vice President, A&R. (Press release)

• Phil Walden, an industry veteran and head of Capricorn Records, died on Sunday. (Tennessean.com)

Posted by Glenn at 8:40 AM | Link
|Brick-And-Mortor Retail||Music Industry||Universal Music Group||Warner Music Group||eMusic|

In a lawsuit over Bertelsmann's investment and involvement in Napster, two rulings may give the Justice Department a better case in its investigation into digital music pricing. The LA Times' Joseph Menn detailed the judge's findings in an article today. One ruling had to do with which documents would be turned over by two majors music groups:

"But the Justice Department's decision was influenced by two detailed 'white papers' — one submitted by EMI Group and MusicNet, the other by Universal Music Group and Pressplay. In a ruling made public Friday, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel found that those papers were 'deliberately misleading.'"

The other dealt with Bertelsmann's $50 million loan to Napster and the revealing of an "unwritten deal allowing $10 million to be used for the legal defense of the old system." Bertelsmann did not disclose to the court that $10 million legal fund.

The Wall Street Journal quotes Bertelsmann's lawyer, Ken Steinthal, as saying, "There's no impact on the merit of the claims."

Posted by Glenn at 6:25 PM | Link
|EMI||Legal||Music Industry||Online Stores/Services||Universal Music Group|

Rascall Flatts dropped mightily but still held on to the top spot on the album chart. Me and My Gang sold 345,000 in its second week and narrowly beat out Toby Keith's White Trash with Money in that album's debut week. White Trash sold 330,000 while Now 21 moved 293,000 in its second week.

But the normal numbers get a bit boring week in and week out, don't they? Just as pro sports started counting different statistics over the years (assists, sacks, on base percentage), the music business needs look at the chart in new ways. Here are a few:

• Biggest second-week slides: Morrissey's Ringleader of the Tormenters dropped 59%, Lacuna Coil's Karmacode dropped 56%, Flaming Lips' At War With The Mystics dropped 55% and Rascall Flats' Me and My Gang dropped 52%.

• Biggest increase: Kidz Bop 9 rose 125%. (Love that cover of "Feel Good Inc.")

• Country rules: Of the 20 top albums, six were by country artists.

• Soft singer-songwriters are back: Daniel Powter and James Blunt sit at #9 and #10, respectively. They make Jack Johnson, who is at #20, look like Bruce Springsteen sitting on a Harley flanked by pit bulls. Time for that comeback, Dan Fogelberg?

• Like a basketball player who just returned from four seasons playing for a team in Greece to prove he still has some kick left: Check out Buckcherry's 15 debut at #49. Where have you guys been?

• A rivalvy like Sox/Yankees, or probably more like Kings/Lakers (since the Kings never beat them when it mattered): Hawthorne Heights, continues its downward fall. This week it's at #54. Victory nemesis Ne-Yo rose one slot to #14.

Oddly, much of the Top 40 increased substantially over the previous week. Sales for the week were up 6% compared to the previous week, and were up an amazing 20% over the same week last year.

For your reading stack: Billboard.com's recap of the album chart, the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, Billboard's Hot Digital Tracks chart and StreetPulse's Top 20 charts.

Posted by Glenn at 2:06 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

• It's tax day, so this article had good timing: Fifteen states and DC now tax music downloads (and movies and books, too). People are required to pay their own state taxes on media downloads. This is called a use tax, and it's paid voluntarily. (News.com, via paidContent)

• The NY Post reports on the legal problems of Larry Goldfarb, the financial backer of Irv Gotti's plan to revive Murder Inc. Records. (NY Post)

• A profile on Nashville's Dualtone Records. (Nashville Business Journal)

• Coolfer disagrees with those who say major labels are headed to extinction, and here's an example why: Interscope Records will get a cut of Hasbro's sales of a line of Pussycat Dolls toy dolls. (NY Times)

• A profile of Madison, Wisconson's Sugar Shack Records and its struggle to stay in business. (Madison Commons)

• ARTESTdirect announces its fourt quarter and annual results. The digital entertainment company acquired MediaDefender last year, and so pro forma income was given. For the year, adjusted EBITDA was $7.1 million. (Yahoo! Finance)

• The trend in country music it to collaborate. Nelly and Tim McGraw, Jon Bon Jovi and Annie Bassett. Jack White and Loretta Lynn. Brad Paisley and Dolly Parton. Country stations are embracing collaborations between country and pop/rock artists, and technology allows songs to be recorded without putting the two collaborators in the same studio. (Chicago Tribune)

• How could Michael Jackson use his publishing interests to pay his massive debt? Sony/ATV's music publishing catalog, of which Jackson owns 505, has a valuation of about $1 billion. (NY Times)

Posted by Glenn at 8:55 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

The Guardian's Charles Arthur points to a blog post by Jupiter analyst Mark Mulligan that questions the value the BPI puts on file sharing's impact on the UK music industry.

The BPI puts the value at 1.1 billion pounds over three years. Mulligan puts the loss at 0.14 billion pounds. Why the big difference? The BPI's numbers, he writes, confuses consumer survey data with national market data, and it overlooks the other reasons sales have declined.

"If, (and this is a highly hypothetical IF) these 3.3 million file sharers are really responsible for 1.1 billion in lost spending, that means that they had to not spend 110 pounds each per year, which puts them above average spending for UK music buyers. If that really is how much they would have otherwise spent, then the music industry has got a bigger problem than it could have imagined – that would mean that all the music aficionados have switched over to file sharing. But of course they haven’t, because that spending simply wasn’t there before file sharing."

The same could be said of the PR trotted out by the RIAA. It has consistently refused to recognize other factors such as competing forms of entertainment and an unhealthy retail climate.

Posted by Glenn at 2:16 PM | Link
|Music Industry||P2P|

• Six labels -- including Nettwerk Records -- have left the Canadian Recording Industry Association because of a disagreement over content rules for radio. (Toronto Star)

• Just as the other majors did last month, EMI signed a deal with Sirius Satellite Radio that give an unspecific compensation to the music group in return for allowing the Sirius S50 to store digital copies of EMI music. The AP's Alex Veiga reports that at least two of the majors' deal gives them a fixed fee per unit sold. (AP)

• Neil Young recorded a new album in just three days, according to Hits' Rumor Mill. There is no release date set for Life In War. (Hits Rumor Mill)

• An interview with an Orange County record store clerk. "People are obsessive. A lot can be elitists. 'Oh, I have the first pressing of that.'" (OC Weekly)

• By the time USA Today catches on, a trend is usually in full swing. "Hyphy pulls a Bay Area breakout," declares the article's title. Steve Jones tracks hyphy from its origins in Oakland to scene leader E-40. (USA Today)

Posted by Glenn at 9:15 AM | Link
|EMI||Music Industry|

• U.S. ringtone revenues will be about $600 million this year. One expert sees the growth of MP3-playing phones as a hinderence to ringtone growth, but a Warner Music Group exec disagrees and predicts healthy growth and continued use as a pre-album release buzz-builder. (CNNMoney)

• Hits covers the story of how the payola probe has scared radio programmers from adding some new artists to playlists. The LA Times had an article on this over the weekend, but Hits doesn't even mention Charles Duhigg's story. C'mon, Hits, how about a tip of the hat, a nod, a thank you? (Hits)

• MySpace is having another contest for unsigned bands, this one for the movie "John Tucker Must Die." The winner will get a $10,000 recording budget and a chance to appear in the movie soundtrack. You know, these kinds of contests really miss the big picture. Bands don't need videos, more money for recording, etc. What they could really use is a better manager. The contest that gives away a contract with a really solid manager is a contest that will really do something for an unsigned band. (Digital Music News)

• Online playlist site Webjay was bought my Yahoo last year, and it's still linking to much unauthorized content by big name artists. (Billboard)

• Music Choice is adding Universal Music Group content to its library. (MarketWire)

• A hint of things to come for "American Idol" contestants? Gareth Gates, who used the British show "Pop Idol" to get a recording contract and four #1 hits, has been dumped by Sony BMG. (Irish Examiner)

• Bands love MySpace. "Talk about the world's best promotion for a band," said the guitarist for Epic's Quietdrive. (Star Tribune)

Posted by Glenn at 8:41 AM | Link
|Music Industry||Ringtones||Universal Music Group|

• The buzz/overused word of 2006 is incubator. Last year it was upstream. This year it's incubator. Now for the story: Warner/Chappel Music has started an incubator label called Perfect Game which is intended to develop artists in the Warner Music house. First signing: Brooklyn's The Lordz, which can only indicate that rap-rock isn't dead yet. (FMBQ)

• Industry folks say the South is no longer the place to break country artists. Where's the finger being pointed? Clear Channel, for one. (Billboard)

• Rapper Proof of the group D12 was shot and killed in Detroit yesterday. AllHipHop.com reports that two men may have pulled guns at a nightclub. (AllHipHop.com)

•

Posted by Glenn at 9:10 AM | Link
|Music Industry||Warner Music Group|

The Hollywood Reporter's Georg Szalai spoke with Jean-Bernard Levy, chairman and CEO of the management board of Vivendi Universal, the owner of Universal Music Group.

"THR: Bertelsmann seems to be looking at selling its music assets. Any interest in BMG's music publishing operation?

Levy: We will be vigilant and ready to make a good bid for any significant assets that would be put up for sale.

THR: Could a spinoff of UMG, an initial public offering, make sense?

Levy: Do we not have the right management and do we need to change that through the stock market? No. Do we need to trade shares of the company because we need capital for acquisitions? No. So, what would the benefit be? Why should we deprive the shareholders of Vivendi of the value that the management of Universal Music is creating every day."

Coolfer's interpretation:

Q: You could stand to get into the music publishing business, couldn't you?
A: Yes, of course.
Q: Are you in such dire need of cash that you would jeopardize UMG's market dominance?
A: Are you nuts?

Read the entire interview here.

Posted by Glenn at 6:57 PM | Link
|Music Industry||Universal Music Group|

• Downtown Records has a deal with Atlantic Records to market Downtown releases. First up is Eagles of Death Metal's Death By Sexy, which will be released through ADA Distribution today. Next month Downtown/Atlantic will put out two anticipated albums: St Elsewhere by Gnarls Barkley (Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo) and Bang Bang Rock & Roll by Art Brut. Downtown also has a deal with Vice Recordings to help sell its initial releases. (MarketWire)

• Quango, the worldly dance label, has inked a deal with Fontana Distribution. Fontana will get its current releases as well as 17 catalog titles from its early Island Records days (Bomb the Bass, City of Industry soundtrack). (Hits Rumor Mill)

• Universal Music Publishing has signed Chris Brown, who penned the hit "Run It" and so far no other big hits, to an exclusive, worldwide publishing deal.

• Eve is now with Swizz Beatz's Full Surface label, which is now part of Interscope. (Billboard.com)

• Joe Escalante: member of the Vandals, founder of Kung Fu Records and, now, radio talk show host. Escalante, a graduate of Loyola Marymouth Law School, hosts a weekly show on Indie 103.1 and gives legal advice to musicians. The station is in Los Angeles but because people are listening on the Internet, Escalante gets calls from across the country. Great article. (Washington Post)

• CD manufacturer Disc Makers says business is good, though it doesn't go after contracts from big labels any longer. Independent musicians are now its bread and butter. (AP)

Posted by Glenn at 8:48 AM | Link
|Indies||Music Industry||Universal Music Group||Warner Music Group|

The media went crazy when it found out that RCA had signed singer Sandi Thom after her webcasts were heard by a reported 100,000-plus around the world.

Were we taken for a publicity ride?

A thread at the Velvet Rope and a post at Chartreuse explains that Thom wasn't just discovered and signed after building a webcast fanbase.

Thom signed a publishing deal last year with Windswept/Pacific Music Publishing, who has big name clients such as Beyonce, Pete Townshend, Talib Kweli and Craig David. And those 70,000 webcast listeners Thom was said to reach from her basement? Scrutinization hasn't been kind to Thom. Spikes in traffic have been explained to coincide with press releases and articles about her rags-to-riches story. Thom is said to have the financial backing and has her PR done by Quite Great PR.

Same story, different spin.

Posted by Glenn at 10:30 AM | Link
|A&R||Internet||Music Industry|

• The Shoreline Ampitheatre will be in court today with the city of Mountain View. The city is accusing Shoreline of rackateering and theft of public funds. (San Jose Mercury News)

• An article on Optimal, a German company that has picked up where the majors have left off: Manufacturing vinyl records. The workshop produces 4.5 million LPs and singles a year. (Financial Times)

• Sony to introduce a Robbie Williams Walkman phone that will have his music, video clips and links to his website. (Reuters UK)

• Sony BMG's Strategic Marketing Group has a promo comp CD in the next Seventeen. The music is from all sorts of labels. Music from "the independent music scene" says the press release, which isn't completely true. Will young girls be into Iron & Wine, Citizen Cope and the Shout Out Louds? We'll see. (Businesswire)

• Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" is still atop the UK singles chart. This is being seen as a case that shows that digital sales can drive physical sales. (Financial Times)

Posted by Glenn at 9:22 AM | Link
|EMI||Music Industry||Sony BMG|

In "Vanishing Act," an excellent article by the San Diego Union-Tribune's George Varga about albums versus songs and changes in music consumption, the best insights come from Thomas Dolby, famous for "She Blinded Me With Science" but less famous for Beatnik Inc, his company that has played a role in creating ringtone technologies.

In describing how ringtones and albums are linked, Dolby says, "It's like whistling a song – people are just quoting a melody from a record they like. “But people don't consider it the Black Eyed Peas, unless the ringtone is from the record."

And what about consumers' willingness to a higher price for a download than for the single song they think is overpriced at $0.99? (Coolfer has wondered about this for years.) Dolby thinks people are paying for the ringtone from their fashion budget, not the entertainment budget that accounts for music downloads.

"They pay an extra $10 to get the right logo on their sneakers, when they could get a cheap knockoff, because when you're a kid at the mall, what you're wearing is important. Similarly, when your phone goes off, you can't look like a dork. It's just like whistling the Black Eyed Peas' song – it's not the real thing."

Other than the occasional mention of the mythical $20 CD (sorry, people rarely pay $20 for CDs any more and it's time reporters get some accurate numbers) it's a very well done, comprehensive article that talks to musicians (Neil Young, Jenny Lewis) and labels to see how they approach music formats and what they see for the future.

Posted by Glenn at 1:20 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

• Napster expects its fourth quarter top and botton lines to exceed the company's prior guidance. What's that mean? The net loss is projected to be "in excess of $26 million." If that doesn't strike you as particularly good news, this might do the trick: year-to-year revenue growth is expected to be about 100%, and the company's subscriber base is over 600,000 worldwide. (PR Newswire)

• Album sales were down 3% in the first quarter of 2006. Universal Music Group had the biggest share at 30.7%, a number that includes Fontana's sliver of the market. (The Hollywood Reporter)

• Touch and Go Records is celebrating its 25th anniversary and is throwing a three-day celebration with bands such as Calexico, Pinback, Shellac and Black Heart Procession. (Touch and Go 25)

• Times two: The Capitol Records Tower is celebrated its 50th birthday yesterday, and there's even a blog filled with history on the building and the label. (Pop Culture Fanboy)

• Sprint is crowing over reaching the two million over-the-air download mark. (The first million milestone was reached a bit over a month ago.) Wonder how many of those were freebies... (Wireless Week)

• MTV Networks' Van Toffler calls the mobile phone "the holy grail of electronic devices" at the CTIA Wireless convention, the discussed his company's mobile programming. (Digital Music News)

• Has he been reading Coolfer's posts on the Cult of Bronfman? Analyst Michael Savner of Banc of America Securities dowgrades Warner Music Group's stock to "neutral" from "buy." (New Ratings)

Posted by Glenn at 9:00 AM | Link
|Digital Music||Music Industry||Napster||Warner Music Group|

Irv Gotti, the Murder Inc. hip hop executive who was cleared of money laundering charges in December, is planning a comeback. The NY Times' Jeff Leeds reveals that Gotti has lined up private financing and will enter into a partnership with Universal Music Group.

"After months of searching for an avenue back into the music business, Mr. Lorenzo is finalizing a deal to secure financing from Larry Goldfarb, the managing partner of the San Francisco-based hedge fund BayStar Capital, said these executives, who declined to be identified because the deals are still being negotiated. As part of the arrangement, which may be completed in the next two weeks, Mr. Goldfarb's newly formed LRG Records is expected to commit up to $30 million to operate the label in its first three to five years, these executives said."

Last year Goldfarb and Quincy Jones attempted to buy Vibe Magazine for $100 million. Goldfarb reportedly disappeared before starting negotiations and the deal fell through.

Posted by Glenn at 8:10 AM | Link
|Music Industry||Universal Music Group|

Music industry hatred will never go out of style. The latest to bash: Broken Social Scene and Radiohead.

After winning a Juno on Monday night, some members of the Toronto-based collective let loose on the Canadian Idols...who went home empty handed.

"I feel really sorry for those kids in Canadian Idol because they’re going absolutely nowhere," said BSS singer Kevin Drew. "It’s a trick … It’s a Canadian music industry downfall because in three years no one is going to remember them."

Not to be outdone, Radiohead singer Thom Yorke bashed the music industry in the new issue of NME, saying it's filled with "a bunch of fucking retards." It's always fun to see what musicians will say when they're between contracts. Coolfer wonders if Yorke is that down on the execs and worker bees at EMI who played an integral part in turning an unimpressive group of U2 clones into the biggest rock band on the planet. Or maybe he's talking about those labels who go cold on a band when it turns in a challenging album like OK Computer. Hopefully we can get a clarification after the band inks what is sure to be a huge multi-million-dollar deal with another fucking retard major label.

Posted by Glenn at 11:39 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

• Warner Music Group has named Todd Moscowitz president of its Independent Label Group, a recently formed to oversee Asylum Records, East West Records and Cordless Recordings. (MarketWire)

• Take That, the UK boy band that helped launch the career of Robbie Williams, has reportedly signed a deal and are working on a new album. Williams is not taking part in the album, nor was he in on the recent Take That one-off gig. Brits, enjoy. Yanks, go back to sleep. (MTV UK)

• Sony BMG has licensed its catalog to Motorola for its iRadio service. (Yahoo! Finance)

• Based on first day sales, Hits predicts Rascal Flatt's Me and My Gang will sell 800,000 in its first week. (Hits)

• BMI puts the 2006 U.S. ringtone market at $600 million. Also, are performance rights organizations getting a cut of the money? (Digital Music News)

• The Orchard has signed a deal with Amp'd Mobile to deliver its catalog of music to Amp'd Mobile's U.S. customers. (PR Newswire)

• Kansas City's Recycled Sounds will close its doors this Sunday. (Kansas City Star)

• RIP: Gene Pitney. (The Herald)

Posted by Glenn at 8:45 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

From an email from Lala.com, the overpublicized online used CD swap that will soon be open for business:

"Thanks to you, 'la la' is adding 30k CDs per day to create the largest music store on Earth."

That's quite the bold claim. Surely that isn't audited. The skepticism grows. But Coolfer is in the minority. Most of the dozens of articles on the company are enthusiastic about the business model. One should keep in mind that these are the same journalists who touted The Sun's DVD album as a breakthrough...right before next to nobody bought it.

Previously on Coolfer: Lala is the new Oxfam for its plan to give away 20% of revenues to artists.

Posted by Glenn at 2:34 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

• Suge Knight is looking to declare bankruptcy in order to prevent his label, Death Row, from going into receivership. (Forbes.com)

• Clear Channel has offered to pay a $1 million fine to the FCC to settle its payola investigation. The company cut ties with indepedent promoters two years ago, and it has completed its own internal investigation. At least one FCC commissioner isn't keen on settling, claims the article. (San Antonio Express-News)

• The Village Voice profiles New York-based online music stores: digital stores Tight Tunes and Dancetracks Digital, and CD-selling Insound. (Village Voice)

• Today Rhapsody will offer an exclusive on 33 live Barenaked Ladies concerts, with 27 more to follow later in the month. Each of the concerts, from the group's Play Everywhere for Everyone tour, can be purchased for $9.99 apiece.

• Mobile music execs talk about whether or not consumers should be charged more than once for the same content. (Digital Music News)

• The Vortex Jazz Club is at the forefront of London's jazz renaissance. "The renaissance involves a new generation, including the talented pianists Zoe Rahman and Andrew McCormack, the bassist Orlando le Fleming and the drummers Chris Higginbottom and Gene Calderazzo. There are also some well- honed bands with names like Acoustic Ladyland, Polar Bear, Partisans, Squash Recipe and Orchestra Mahatma that sound as though they mean business." (Bloomburg News)

Posted by Glenn at 8:59 AM | Link
|Music Industry||Online Stores/Services|

The Cult of Bronfman is back. This time Business 2.0 magazine is singing Warner Music Group's digital praises. Why?

"Its first-fiscal-quarter revenues were off 4 percent. But Warner has captured an outsize portion of the growing digital pie, commanding 17 percent of the CD market in the United States, but an almost 23 percent share of the sale of digital albums."

I've gotta hand it to WMG's Investor Relations people. They're realling spinning this story well. Pulling out digital album market shares? If only the rest of the company were that innovative. The thing is that digital album sales are not representative of the U.S. digital music market. Why is Paul Sloan giving these numbers to readers?

Here's all the three main points to keep in mind about WMG:

(1) WMG's digital sales were 7% of total sales last quarter. That's pretty average. Maybe half a tick better than average. But certainly nothing that deserves this much praise in business magazines.
(2) It wouldn't be a stretch to say the company's physical sales are underperforming, which in turn makes average to slightly good digital sales look even better.
(3) Last quarter net income was slightly up while revenues were down 4%. Digital is not replacing the loss of income due to sagging CD sales.

Related: Last week Coolfer pointed out the flaws in The Motley Fool's article that hyped WMG's digital performance and outlook.

Posted by Glenn at 11:04 AM | Link
|Digital Music||Music Industry||Warner Music Group|

• Just when Atlantic was left for dead, James Blunt scores a hit and now T.I. is set to top the album chart. Hits picks his album King to sell upwards of 500,000 in its debut week. The Craig Kallman deathwatch can go on hiatus for the time being. (Hits Rumor Mill)

• Eliot Spitzer is accusing the Feds of going behind his back to work out payola settlements with radio companies. Federal regulators are said to be seeking fines of $1 million per company. Spitzer is looking for something in the $20 million. (AP)

• Chalk up another 2,000 lawsuits against downloaders, these filed by the IFPI. (News.com)

• How's the summer's concert season looking? Not so hot. (Amusement Business, via Hypebot)

• Pitchfork has an email interview with music attorney and author Steve Gordon. Judging from how the title ("Live at the Witch Trials"), I get the feeling Gordon's evenhanded and fair remarks on the industy were less acrid than Pitchfork would have wanted. Pitchfork)

• The majors' drive for variable digital pricing is back in the news. This article by MacNewsWorld's Jennifer LeClaire is, one could safely say, pro-iTunes. There are more like this. They're all over the Internet right now. (MacNewsWorld)

• Country legend George Jones was treated for pneumonia and released from the hospital. (AP)

Posted by Glenn at 8:32 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

The IFPI released statistics for the global music market, and the news isn't good...but it's not the end of the world either. Total music sales -- measured as wholesale sales -- were down 3% in 2005. CD sales were down 6% and music DVD sales were down 4%.

The RIAA just announced that U.S. music sales were down 0.6% in 2005, at $12.27 billion. Included in that number are new sales figures for mobiel music, digital subscription services, digital music videos and kiosk sales. If not for the addition of these revenue streams, the number would be a lower 3% drop. Digital music is taking shape, and was much stronger at the end of the year than at the beginning, but its increase was not enough to offset the drop in physical sales.

Posted by Glenn at 1:19 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

• The Daily Mail is the latest to talk about a possible EMI/Warner Music Group merger. It writes about one estimate that a merger could save over $170 million pounds a year. Nobody would hate to save money, that's for sure. The downside? "The only real problem could be deciding which executives fill the key management roles." (Daily Mail)

• Related: EMI's stock was up 1-1/2 on the FTSE this morning on the Mail's merger article.

• TVT has taken a leap of faith: The indie label has licensed its music to Qtrax, an ad-supported P2P service. (Digital Music News)

• Capitol Nashville wants Latin country star. (Reuters)

• The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne, who's probably doing ten interviews a day right now, offers something notable in this Billboard. The Lips have one album left on its seven-album deal with Warner Bros, and realizes the band has sold far fewer albums that most long-term Warner Bros bands. He talks of the band's relationship with the label, admits he had fears of being dropped tells of the good communication that exists between band and label. (Billboard)

Posted by Glenn at 8:11 AM | Link
|EMI||Music Industry|

Courtney Love, the widow of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, has sold 25% of her share of Nirvana's publishing catalog. The buyer was Larry Mestel, who paid an estimated $50 million. Mestel was the former COO and GM of Virgin Records.

Questions abound. Does she need to money? Could she have got somebody to just manage the catalog? How soon until "Territorial Pissings" is heard in a Cadallac commercial? How bad is her next album going to be?

The press was all over the news, and the humor was in bloom:

• At E! Online: Courtney & Nirvana: Smells Like a Sellout.
• The San Jose Mercury News imagined how the lyrics to "Heart Shaped Box" would go with consumer products. "'Ive been drawn into your magnet tar pit trap / I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black. Yeah, that will sell a lot of fabric softner."
• Quipped Spin, "Now all that's left to do is cross our fingers and hope 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' doesn't wind up in a deodorant ad."

What are the Nirvana fans saying? Read this thread at a fan website.

Posted by Glenn at 10:47 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

• Trans World has bought a controlling stake in Mix & Burn LLC, a company that lets customers to download songs and mix their own CDs. It's part of an initiative to get digital and mobile music into its retail stores. Here's the thing: The jury is out on selling things like these in brick-and-mortar stores. Everybody wants to incorporate digital with the physical. Nobody knows how it will be done. (AP)

• Listen up, majors. Word on the street is that you're screwing up left, right and down the middle. Mintel International Group Ltd is so bold to state that while iTunes has helped slow the fade, "labels still face the challenge of meeting the demands of a diverse consumer marketplace." (Digital Music News)

• As for poor analysis, here's an article on Tower Records' new online book store (and music retail in general). Alyce Lomax is so concerned about "excitement" (the word appears numerous times) that the fundamental reasons behind the move is lost: Books offer more margin than CDs, and a diversified storefront is stronger than a narrowly focused one. It's not a cure-all, but it a step in the right direction for Tower's online store. After all, Amazon.com doesn't sell just books. (The Motley Fool)

• As in other cities, indie music retailers are having a tough time. Many stores are hanging on, though, and one has seen an uptick in sales due to Hurricane Katrina survivors replacing lost collections. (Houston Chronicle)

Posted by Glenn at 8:54 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Look at Prince since he came out of the NPG Records basement and hooked up with major labels. His previously album Musicology, with the help of ticket bundling strategy, was a top ten mainstay. Now, with 3121, Prince has further removed himself from his relatively unheralded DIY days by debuting atop the album chart for the very first time. 3121 sold a firm 183,000 units, well above of freak hit High School Musical's 152,000. James Blunt is still on an Oprah high at 110,000.

And that's it. Those three are the only albums to top the century mark.

Speaking of century mark, Bo Bice has dropped below it. The Real Thing is well under #100 on the list and dropping like a dead bird.

Two debuts worth noting. FIrst is BG's The Heart of Tha Streetz, Vol. 2: I Am What I Am, which came in a #6 with 62,000. Pretty good for indie label Koch. Also, teen singer-songwriter Teddy Geiger's Underage Thinking came in at #8 with 56,000 units shifted to mostly young, female consumers. It's good to see "Love Monkey" wasn't all for naught.

Lastly, everybody's favorite guilty pleasure, American Idol graduate Kelly Clarkson, topped the five million mark this week with her debut album Breakaway.

Posted by Glenn at 10:05 AM | Link
|Music Industry||Universal Music Group|

• One day sales at Hits: T.I. could scan over 500,000 in its first week, Tim McGraw in on pace for 200,000 and Ghostface Killah in looking at 120,000. (Hits)

• The IFPI is pleased with the anti-piracy steps being taken by China. (Reuters)

• Speculation is that Google is working on its entry into digital music. If it's not incredibly superior to the Google video store, the company should skip it altogether. (ArsTechnica)

• The latest on Amazon.com's digital music launch: It'll be here by the end of 2006. A Merril Lynch analyst looks for the subscription model to create a "defensible competitive moat" in the long-term. Yes, that would be the best use of the word moat thus far in 2006. (Forbes.com)

• Interpol on its rumored deal with Interscope: A "blatant rumor," whatever that is. Look, wordsmiths, if it wasn't true a simple "no" would suffice. Can't want to read that Universal Music Group press release in a few months. (Pitchfork)

Posted by Glenn at 8:58 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Remember the eBay auction of a Postal Service gold record by former Sub Pop publicist Jed Maheu? Coolfer doesn't know how much the auction netted, but I do know that Maheu's plan of starting his own PR outfit came to fruition. Maheu has been spotted doing press for the new album by the band Sailboats are White for the Let's Just Have Some Fun label.

To relive the hilarity of Maheu's eBay auction, read the Stereogum post on the topic (which was wise to include some of the text from the now-delelted auction).

Posted by Glenn at 12:02 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

• John Mellencamp is mulling over a possible album deal with Universal Records, which just released a one-and-done album from Prince. Mellencamp says he is talking directly with Universal Music Group's Doug Morris on this one. (Billboard)

• At the Digital Hollywood conference, executives remained upbeat on mobile music's potential in the U.S. (Digital Music News)

• Ne-Yo is the first artist to be part of a Coke marketing campagin called Stageside.tv, a Jun Group-produced series of mini-documentaries with live performanes, interviews and behind-the-scenes stuff. (Slyck, via paidContent)

• Rapper The Game is suing Koch Entertainment for copyright infringement related to two releases, Untold Story, Untold Story Vol. 2 and G.A.M.E. (Chronic Magazine)

• Is it a bad time to be a female country music artist? Radio programmers explain how difficult it can be for females in country music. (Monsters and Critics)

• Ho hum: Apple and Apple are in court again. (Reuters UK)

Posted by Glenn at 8:19 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Market research company Forrester released a report yesterday will all sorts of predictions for the European market. Some of them are:

• Digital music will make up 36% of the legal music market's value in 2011. (That figure has got to assume that P2P will not be legaized with some sort of broadband tax, otherwise that number would probably be much higher.)
• The 30% drop in CD and DVD sales will be more than offset by digital downloads.
• The shift to download sales will mean more singles than albums sold. (That's already the case. Right now in the U.S. in a week there are about 30% more single downloads than total albums.)

Flashback: In early 2004, speaking about the U.S. market, Forrester predicted that by 2008 33% of music sales would come from digital downloads. (In 2005, digital accounted for about 6%.)

Here's what Coolfer said in response:

• "Five years is much to optimistic."
• "Retail will fight to the bitter end. Best Buy and other mass merchants have built up a market share that they will not soon give up." And they're doing just that. Best Buy, Circuit City and Target regularly sell CDs for less than iTunes sells digital albums.
• "Analysts--and especially reporters--too easily overlook the power of the older generation's purchasing power." What's happened since then? Starbucks has got in the music business, Ray Charles had a hit and won eight 2005 Grammy awards, and Barry Manilow and Rod Stewart have topped the album chart.

Flashback: In June of 2004 Jupiter's Joe Wilcox predicted digital downloads wouldn't represent 5% of music sales until 2008 (scroll down to bottom of article).

Posted by Glenn at 2:01 PM | Link
|Music Industry||Research|

• Sony and BMG are calling in the investment banks. (Times Online)

• Denmark, not exactly the leader of the music world, is considering a France-like DRM law. (PC Pro)

• At the Digital Hollywood conference, music execs sing the praises of the subscription model. So why hasn't it taken off yet? (Digital Music News)

• The unexpected benefactor of the digital music boom? It just might be classical music. Though the genre accounts for around 4% of CD sales, classical accounts for 12% of iTunes' sales. This has opened up new possibilitis for labels and listeners. (The Guardian)

• Here's an odd item: A media company in the UK is outfitting bus stops with headphone sockets to play the music of unsigned bands. Twenty of them will be up and running this week in London, Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham. (MediaWeek)

• Hits is still going on with its Kallman/Blunt recap. Here's the short version: Blunt blew up, Kallman lucked out, Sean Paul helped. (Hits)

Posted by Glenn at 8:43 AM | Link
|Apple||Music Industry||Sony BMG||Warner Music Group|

When Google Finance went live Coolfer stopped by to check out some music stocks and play around with the site. In case you didn't hear about it yet, it's Google's newest toy, a source of news and stock quotes akin to Yahoo! Finance. The interactive nature is attractive. Users get a visual on the a stock's performance and scroll through the stock's bar graph. And Google syncs press releases to the chart so you can see the effect of an announcement (those are the little squares with letters in them).

Here's a look at some music-related stocks: Warner Music Group, Loudeye, Trans World and Guitar Center. The window view is set for one year. Doing well: WMG. Not doing well: Trans World.

Continue reading "New Google Finance & Music Stocks" »

Posted by Glenn at 3:04 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

Lynell George, senior writer at the LA TImes' West magazine, writes of her years spent in record stores in an op-ed titled "What I Learned at the Record Shop." Yet another record store eulogy at the LA Times, which has given a lot of ink to the passing of an era; LA has recently lost Rhino and Aron's, and the city's music afficianados are in a deep state of mourning.

"I invested in these places — not just money, but time. And then, like the changer arm lifting and the stereo switching off, my habits changed. I somehow slipped out of my routine. I eased up on my record store fetish; I invested elsewhere.

And maybe that's why I didn't shed a tear or show up to mourn when Rhino Records and now Aron's (both long relocated from former addresses) began shutting their doors for good in the last few months. I'd already said my goodbyes — to old locations, to overpowering memories, to bins that had long since been picked over. I'd seen the shift coming, the back-stock thinning, all manner of new media — DVDs and DATs — taking up shelf space. I couldn't stomach the emptying bins, the death of an era.

It wasn't me that changed, it was the business model: a general slump in record sales (down 7% last year, according to SoundScan), a great big uptick in digital downloading, a rush to shop online. Statistics underscore what our eyes already tell us: The Amoebas stay in business, but there are only about half as many independent record stores as there were 10 years ago countrywide."

Previous Coolfer posts on LA record stores:

• Amoeba Expands While Aron's Closes
• The Further Decline of the Record Store

Posted by Glenn at 12:32 PM | Link
|Brick-And-Mortor Retail||Music Industry|

• Jessica Simpson has moved to Epic from Columbia. An album is expected before the all-important Christmas shopping season, and producers to contribute to the album include Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Cory Rooney and Scott Storch. (Billboard.com)

• Rumors are circulating in Grand Rapids, Michigan about the involvement of Interscope Records in a development of a "large-scale mixed-use riverfront project." (Grand Rapids Press)

• Indie record stores in Baltiore and beyond are succeeding and expanding in the MP3 era. (Baltimore Business Journal)

• A post at The Velvet Rope lists indie label market shares for the first quarter of 2006. Top three: Wind-Up (0.74%), Razor & Tie (0.72%) and Victory (0.67%). (The Velvet Rope)

• Study predicts a digital music download explosion in the UK. (Monsters and Critics)

• A London department store will offer a service, called Speedpod, that records customers' vinyl and converts the songs to digital files. (Virgin.net)

• Shades of Sony BMG's rootkit problem: A report that EMI Brazil released the new Marisa Monte CD with an end user license agreement that, if accepted, will install programs and files that cannot be uninstalled. One person declined the EULA but the software was installed anyway. (Boing Boing)

• Stanford law proffesor and Creative Commons board member/proselytizer Lawrence Lessig is for open-source DRM. (The Register)

Posted by Glenn at 8:45 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

The oppostion to DRM continues to grow in membership. Timothy B. Lee, who has written a policy analysis for the Cato Institute titled "Circumventing Competition: The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act," has an op-ed in yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune that's basically a teaser version of the 28-page analysis. Here's a taste:

"The DMCA was billed as an anti-piracy measure. It prohibits anyone from 'circumventing' a copy protection scheme such as that used to scramble songs from the iTunes store, or from creating software to do so. ... But that's not how things have worked out in the real world. After nearly a decade on the books, it's hard to find any evidence that the DMCA has reduced piracy.

Congress may have intended to target copyright infringers, but in practice the DMCA mostly harms paying customers by preventing them from playing legally acquired content on the device of their choice. The Constitution says that the purpose of intellectual property is to 'promote the progress of science and the useful arts.' When a copyright law begins to interfere with peoples' freedom to enjoy the content they have legally purchased, Congress needs to give it another look."

Posted by Glenn at 2:47 PM | Link
|Digital Music||Music Industry||Online Stores/Services||P2P|

• U.S. Bankrupcy Court has approved the sale of troubled music retailer Musicland to Trans World Entertainment. Trans World will add to its already large group of retail stores 400 Musicland stores and web sites under the names Sam Goody, Suncoast, On Cue and MediaPlay.com. Trans World already operates almost 800 retail stores: fye, Coconuts, Strawberries, Wherehouse, CD World, Spec's, Second Spin and Planet Music. The company says it plans on keeping 335 of the 400 Musicland stores but will convert and operate them under different names. (Albany Business Review)

• Bertelsmann boss stays coy over flotation talk. (Times Online)

• LA judge says Death Row Records could go into receivership. (AP)

• Eliot Spizer and the Justice Department are looking for collusion between major music groups in their investigations of online music pricing. Here's some collusion that deserves punishment: Now That's What I Call Music! Vol. 21 is due out April 4th. (BusinessWire)

• The Apple fanboys/fangirls at Macworld UK has found an analyst who thinks France's new law aimed at digital interoperability could actually help Apple. "If one can use other services with an iPod we believe it makes the iPod more universal, versatile, and powerful," wrote the analyst. (Macworld UK)

• This year's Key West Songwriters' Festival, an annual gahtering for country songwriters and artists, will be held May 3rd to 7th. (Home page)

Posted by Glenn at 11:58 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

The German music industry fell for the seventh year in a row, and the German chapter of the IFPI puts the blame on piracy (naturally). The drop in 2005 was negligable, but since 1998 sales are down 45%. Digital sales aren't making up the shortfall as online sales account for a mere 2% of total sales (as opposed to about 5% and growing in the U.S.).

Such a dismal level of legal downloading conflicts with the rosy picture painted in the IFPI's 2006 Digital Music Report. "Already in the UK and Germany - two of the biggest digital markets worldwide - legal buyers from sites like iTunes, Musicload and MSN actually exceed illegal file-swappers," said IFPI Chairman and CEO John Kennedy. If that's the case, the real reason sales are lagging in Germany is due to legal sites' inability to grow and penetrate the market, not any negative effects of file sharing.

Posted by Glenn at 11:54 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Those merger rumors can be put on hold for the time being. Today Warner Music Group announced it has acquired Ryko Corp for $67.5 million. The press release touted the deal as a way to expand WMG's legendary music catalog -- Ryko owns catalogs of such labels as Restless and Hannibal -- and integrate it with its own Rhino Entertainment to create "new catalog-related business opportunities." The press release also said Ryko Distribution will work side-by-side with WMG's independent distributor, ADA. Coolfer's over/under for some aspects to be merged and some jobs to be lost at Ryko Dist and ADA: eight months.

Read the entire press release after the jump.

Continue reading "Warner Music Group Acquires Ryko Corp" »

Posted by Glenn at 11:14 AM | Link
|Music Industry||Warner Music Group|

The Boston Globe's Joan Anderman in "Bands Are Achieving Unprecedented Hype":

"Today, thanks to the confluence of Internet file-sharing technology, online blogs, and social networking websites such as MySpace, the grassroots community has swelled, quite literally, to global proportions. Instead of talking up bands and handing out tapes to friends in your town, music enthusiasts send the word, and the MP3 files, to cyber-pals around the world. ... This is good news in so many ways. After decades of being force-fed label-sanctioned product via corporate-approved radio, music consumers are more than ready to become programmers of their own playlists. And it's nothing short of a revolution in terms of opportunities for independent artists."

Then we get the one -- and there's only one -- example of an American band that has broke with this organic hype: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. And there's only one British example, the standard one: Arctic Monkeys. (This is getting tired. The P2P crowd clung to Wilco as its only example of file sharing's benefits. Now the hype judges are hard pressed to think of more than two bands that have used Internet buzz to springboard to success.) Lest you think bands just put their music on the Internet and let people come to it, keep in mind the machinery that's in place even at the indie level.

The article includes a gallery of The Globe's top ten overhyped bands. Can you guess which bands made the list?

Posted by Glenn at 10:11 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

• Radiohead hints at digital releases. (Digital Music News)

• A Federal court it Australia has allowed record companies to pursue contempt of court procedings against Sharman Network, the company behind Kazaa P2P software. Labels have alleged the company has failed to comply with a court order to stop users from breaking copyright. (ZD Net)

• USC students are getting free music through the advertising-based music store at Ruckus. The company is trying to make its service a networking community a la MySpace. One flaw: They play on PlaysForSure-compatible devices, so they don't work with the iPod. (Daily Trojan)

• Zakk Wylde and the Black Label Society have signed to Roadrunner Records. (FMBQ)

• BusinessWeekOnline has a good article on the Apple vs. France situation. (BusinessWeek.com)

Posted by Glenn at 8:33 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

The more things change the more they stay the same. Hits Rumor Mill reports that XM Satellite Radio, at the forefront of the new era of digital music, is teaming with Concord Records to create a compilation CD series based on XM stations. First up is a jazz series that will have the name Waterfalls, an XM contemporary jazz station. Those who say the CD is dead would probably call this an ironic turn of events. The rest of us consider this a smart move to expand a brand and capitalize on the predominance of the CD format in the music marketplace.

Posted by Glenn at 12:35 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

• Bad Boy Entertainment has signed a deal with the hot Block Enterprises. Bad Boy will handle marketing, sales and promotion for Block, which has albums coming up by rapper Yung Joc, Boyz N Da Hood, Big Gee, Jody Breeze and Jill Rock Jones. (SOHH)

• Bertelsmann, the media giant that owns one-half of Sony BMG, says profit dipped in 2005. A decision on whether or not the company will go public will come as soon as May. (Forbes.com)

• MSN was promoting its social networking site, Spaces, at SXSW. Market leader MySpace has proven to be a revolutionary way for bands to connect with fans, and MSN is well behind in this arena. (Digital Music News)

• Speaking of MSN, a note at its Music Filter blog says its closed for a few weeks while the MSN Music section is reworked. Could an overhaul of the woeful MSN Music store be nearing completion? Remember, Sean Nelson, singer for the band Harvey Danger, was named head of editorial content at MSN Music.

• The French parliament voted for a law that would require interoperability between digital music players. Next up: A vote in the Senate. (The Guardian)

• Apple has some words for France. Going to the fear card, the company says such a law would amount to "state-sponsored piracy" and predicts that "legal music sales will plummetjust when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers." (PC Pro)

Posted by Glenn at 8:28 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

• Ahead of tomorrow's final Soundscan numbers, Hits is predicting High School Musican to be the top album in the land with sales of about 130,000. James Blunt's Back to Bedlam will follow closely behind in second. (Hits)

• Digital Music Group Inc., a digital music aggregator with a catalog of oldies and not-so-hits, reported revenue of $1.06 million and a loss of $1.69 million in 2005. The company's February 2006 IPO raised over $33 million. (Sacramento Business Journal)

• Sirius has topped four million subscribers. Rival XM, currently at six million subscribers, plans to be at nine million by the end of the year. (Reuters) Related: Bear Stearns analyst maintains an "outperform" rating on Sirius at $9 per share. (Forbes.com)

• Orlando police are cracking down on bootleg CDs and DVDs and a usual place is targeted: flea markets. (WFTV)

Posted by Glenn at 8:56 AM | Link
|Digital Music||Music Industry||Sirius|

Ne-Yo's In My Own Words debuted atop the album chart (with sales of over 301,000) and sparked a debate over the merits of witholding a prerelease single in order to improve album sales -- a.k.a. the cannibalization theory.

But a funny thing happened on the way to pick up the debate trophy: Ne-Yo's second week sales dropped 62%, moving only 113,000 units in its second week of release. Big second week drops aren't unusual for urban albums, but 62% is enough to wonder about any marketing strategy. (Did the first week have a goldenboy week that simply couldn't be matched in successive weeks? Or was the second week slide avoidable?)

Any way you slice it, the only way to gauge the effectiveness of a label's pre-release single strategy is to look at total sales (single, album, ringtone) over longer periods -- four and eight weeks are good places to start. One week doesn't tell you much.

Oh, Juvenile's Reality Check debuted at #1 with 174,000 in sales. Matisyahu's Youth debuted at #9, the best opening week for a reggae artist since Soundscan started tracking sales in 1991. David Gilmour's On An Island debuted at #6 with 96,000 sold.

Posted by Glenn at 9:21 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

• The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (which really needs a Freep-like nickname) profiles hometown boy Teddy Geiger, whose Underage Thinking album will be released by Columbia tomorrow. The stars are aligning for this 17-year-old singer-songwriter. (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle)

• The post-Lack era is moving along fast and furiously: Sony BMG has named Tim Bowen as its chief operating officer. Bowen was previously the head of operations for many of Sony BMG's English-speaking international markets. (AP)

• Details on the upcoming The Capitol Years Vol. 2 Beatles box set. (LA Times)

• The New York Post calls Jordan Schur one of this week's winners (for his joint venture with Interscope Records). Sony CEO Howard Stringer and Village Voice managing editor Doug Simmons are among the week's losers. (NY Post)

• The LA Times is the latest to write about British efforts -- both government and business -- to break artists in America. (LA Times)

• Soul singer King Floyd III is dead at the age of 61. (AP)

Posted by Glenn at 9:09 AM | Link
|EMI||Music Industry||Sony BMG||Universal Music Group|

How often do you read that digital music will eliminate the need for a label and other middlemen? How often do you read that digital distribution will level the playing field and offer every bedroom producer the chance to compete with Pharrel Williams? Every day, right? Coolfer read two blog posts from industry vets that underline the continued need for money and middlemen.

At No Revolution, Bill Wilson breaks down some of the expenses involved in music (thousands of dollars on studio, mastering, print ads, postage, posters, a publicist) that have nothing to do with a physical CD. Before that he points out how familiarity (marketers use the word heuristics) is an undervalued comodity everywhere but in a record label's office.

"Why exactly is it that the very people who sing a sad song about paying for music are the same pie-eyed consumer drones who need to be force fed their music through MTV2 videos and big ads in Alternative Press? Sure, with Protools and Photoshop it's cheaper overall to make a CD. But to become well known and get the machine started, even the basics cost money."

Complementary post: Hypebot pulls a quote from the NY Times that marvels at the behind-the-scenes people who go into making an MP3 popular.

"When those songs get beamed around the Internet, it's seductive to think that bands and listeners have eliminated the middlemen: music goes straight from the recording studio to your laptop. This conference is a reminder of how many professionals it takes to turn an amateur band into a popular MP3. Here, 'behind the scenes' is the scene: the place is packed with publicists and managers and booking agents and marketing teams and even a few old-fashioned radio D.J.'s. This is a big part of what makes SXSW tick: middlemen as far as the eye can see."

Sorry, idealists. Music is still a business.

Posted by Glenn at 10:59 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

If anything can be learned from Rolling Stone's list of music's top earners in 2005, it's that touring is where the money bags are found. Neil Diamond, whose 12 Songs wasn't a monster on the U.S. charts, was #6 on the list. Mariah Carey, whose The Emancipation of Mimi was a top seller, didn't make the list. (And that's why she has a new lawyer.)

U2 was the top earner for the year and was over $60 million ahead of the second place band, the Rolling Stones. The top ten is filled with older, male artists who charge what could be called exhorbitant prices for concert tickets. The list continues with The Eagles, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Neil Diamond, Jimmy Buffett, Rod Stewart and the Dave Matthews Band.

The next on the list is the first female on the list, Celine Dion, who has a three-year engagement at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. Three spots down is the next female -- three of them, actually, Destiny's Child.

The first hip hop artist on the list if P. Diddy at #15. 50 Cent is four places below at #19, and Jay-Z three more places down.

Posted by Glenn at 1:04 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

• The Now That's What I Call Music series will launch a Spanish language version called Now
Latino - Esto Es Musica! The Latino and reggaeton music on these comps fit in well with the surge in Hurban radio stations. (PR Newswire)

• A profile on Hopeless Records and its founder, Louis Posen. (LA Times)

• eSunset is a new digital record label founded by Sunset Records Group and Play Fair Entertainment. The company has a partnership with Sony Digital Entertainment. Offerings so far are thin. The most well known names on the roster -- Fatboy Slim, Crystal Method, Sneaker Pimps -- are found on dance compilations, not artist albums. (Digital Music News)

• A new agreement will allow purchasers of Microsoft's Xbox 360 will get a year of free music videos and other goodies from Epic Records. The media will be accessed over the Xbox Live entertainment network. Sounds like the label is approaching this the proper way, which is to use new digital technoligies to develop artists in a meaningful way and not just expect a quick uptick in CD sales. (AP)

• Digital distributor IODA has hooked up with Verizon to sell its music through Verizon's VCast music service. The deal adds over 1,500 labels to the mobile service. (PR Newswire)

• Nettwerk Music Group, currently the leading RIAA bashers in the music industry thanks to boss Terry McBride's public spanking over consumer lawsuits, has inked a deal with digital distributor The Orchard. (Newswire)

• Bob Marley's bass player sues family and label, claiming he and his brother are due equal shares of the band's royalties because "it was the Barretts' unique sound which brought the Wailers international success." (Reuters)

Posted by Glenn at 8:33 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

USA Network's "Nashville Star," the country music version of "American Idol," isn't turning out stars from the close-knit Music Row scene. One winner was dropped last year after selling 128,000 albums. Another winner reached only #53 with her debut single. The Nashville Scene article is a very good view at country music, how its artists are marketed and the differences between country and pop cultures. Highly recommended.

The fourth season of "Nashville Star" started earlier this week. Need to familiarized yourself with the contestents? Check out their video blogs.

Posted by Glenn at 2:25 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

A few years ago I got a trivia question wrong. Q: What percent of Americans own a passport? I forget what answer I chose, but I remember overshooting the correct answer by a country mile. The correct answer is: About 20% of Americans own a passport.

Seems low, but even less regularly attend music events. Coolfer was taken aback when I read a post at Hypebot about the concert business. According to Live Nation's Michael Rapino, who was a keynote speaker at the annual annual Concert Industry Consortium, a paltry two percent of Americans attend three or more concerts a year. Rapino broke down the numbers.

"Of the total American population, 71 percent did not attend a live concert last year...That means only 29 percent of the population do attend live concerts every year....we can group these fans based on the number of shows they attended in the past year. What we call our Occasional Goer, those who only attended one concert in the last year, represent 23 percent of the population. Our Concert Goer group, those attended two concerts in the past year, represent just four percent of the population. And finally, our heavy fans, those we have called our Concert Aficionados, who attend three or more concerts a year, represent a meager two percent of the population."

Rapino then asked why they spend millions of ad dollars trying to reach just the 29% who do go to concerts. "We've got a lot to do," he argued, "and we must re-engineer our business to service the new fan of today."

Continue reading "How Many Americans Regularly Attend Music Events? Less Than You Think." »

Posted by Glenn at 11:46 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

• SnoCap, the legal P2P backend solution created by Napster founder Shawn Fanning, just raised $15 million in funding. (Digital Music News)

• The most interesting part of this article on mobile music: Push!Music, a mobile phone application created by researchers in Sweden, could allow music to be sent wirelessly from one phone to another. (The Guardian)

• To what lengths did Warner Music Group go to crow over the fact that it scored the top two albums on this week's album chart? Check the press release on its Investor Relations page. (Warner Music Group)

• Since you're dying to know, here's who won at last night's Trans World Awards dinner/schmoozefest: Victory Records won for best indie label, RED won best indie distributor, EMM won best major distributor and UMVD won sales team of the year.

• The Hold Steady, the critically beloved Brooklyn band previously signed to French Kiss, has signed with Vagrant Records and will begin recording in May. (Hits Rumor Mill)

Posted by Glenn at 9:13 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Mariah Carey is serious about her career, so serious, says Fox News' Roger Friedman, that she has hired attorney Allen Grubman, the same lawyer she fired when she left Tommy Mottola. Carey, says Friedman, feels underpaid given the huge success of The Emancipation of Mimi, and needed Grubman.

"Only Morris can OK what should be a record-setting money deal for Carey. And only Grubman can get Morris to agree to something like that. ... Bringing Grubman back is a surprise, but it shows that Carey is not fooling around, and isn’t letting personal feelings mix with business.

Posted by Glenn at 1:09 PM | Link
|Music Industry||Universal Music Group|

• Time Warner boss Dick Parsons has kind words for Warner Music Group's Edgar Bronfman to make up for what he said in this week's New Yorker. From a statement given to the NY Post: "Dick thinks Edgar and his team have done a great job in rebuilding and reviving the company. They've undertaken several new initiatives in the digital music space and have adopted an innovative approach to artist development and discovery - all with impressive results." (NY Post)

• Two execs are leaving BBC to create a production company that will be a joint venture with Sony BMG. (The Guardian)

• The New Cars and Blondie announce tour. Advance online ticket buyers will get a free album download at eMusic. (PR Newswire)

• Verizon is getting ready to expands its offering of indie music. (Digital Music News)

• Gene Simmons of Kiss and his business partner are marketing the Indy Racing League and Champ Car World Series. (LA Times)

Posted by Glenn at 9:13 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

It's been a while since the last ruminations on a possible merger between Warner Music Group and EMI. Enders Analysis, a London-based firm, brought up the topic last week in a publication on a business deal it calls inevitable. Hits must have got its hands on the publication. A post yesterday in the Rumor Mill because it pulls some tantilizing quotes from the analysis. "Only a straight buy-out by either EMI or WMG will resolve the complex issues of HQ and personnel that a merger raises," argues Enders, which probably saw the clashes and differences at Sony BMG and assumed its peers were watching and learning how not to merge two ego-driven companies with vast cultural and operational differences.

The EU would approve the merger, Enders believes, and estimates annual savings would be in the range of $300 million. The publication concludes that Bronfman and his backers "could make a timely and attractive exit from their investment," which is what many think they've wanted all along.

Posted by Glenn at 12:30 PM | Link
|EMI||Music Industry||Warner Music Group|

The debate over if/how digital singles cannabilizes album sales came to a fever pitch recently. Victory Records' Tony Brummel bashed the strategy in a guest op-ed for Hits. Last week the Brummel side of the debate got its first poster boy -- Ne-Yo -- and some national press.

Was it premature?

In its second week of release, Hits predicts Ne-Yo's In My Own Words will drop over 60% to 110,000 (from 310,000 in its first week). Just last week the singer's debut album was heralded in some quarters as an example of the kind of stronger album sales that result when the lead single is held until the album is released. OK, so that was the first week. How does Island/Def Jam explain the second week and its massive drop? Second-week tapers are expected, but usually not by two-thirds. And if sales are equally low in weeks three and four, how then is the lack of a pre-release single going to be judged?

Posted by Glenn at 10:30 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

• Warner Music Group declared a quarterly dividend of $0.13 per share of common stock. Previously the company announced it would pay out dividends on its common stock in the amount of up to $80 million per year. (Press release)

• Wouldn't it be nice? France may force Apple to allow non-iTunes songs onto the iPod. (Wired News)

• eMusic, which is now running TV spots on cable channels, has added 40 labels to its roster (including ATO, Morr Music, Wall of Sound, Ultra) and has exceeded 150,000 subscribers. (Yahoo Finance)

• A drop in CD sales has caused retail giant Transworld to shift toward DVD and electronics sales. (Video Business)

• As it searches for a new chief executive, music retailer HMV rejected a second takeover bid from a private equity firm. (AP)

• About 30 fans have bought shares in and funded the upcoming album by Leeds band Four Day Hombre. (BBC News)

• The Metropolitan Opera wants to show high-definition broadcasts in major movie chains and commission composers from the world of jazz, pop and Broadway. (Billboard, via paidContent)

• RIAA switches legal partners but is fixed on continuing its lawsuits against individuals. (Kansas City Business Journel, via Digital Music News)

Posted by Glenn at 8:46 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Jordan Schur, president of Geffen Records for over six years, and Interscope Records announced their new record label today. The puntasticly named label, Suretone Records, is a joint venture between the 41-year-old exec and Interscope.

The press release offers a short list of upcoming Suretone titles: The Pink Spiders, Headway, Eastern Conference Champions and Angels and Airwaves (featuring Tom DeLonge of Blink-182). Angels and Airwaves and the Pink Spiders will be released by Geffen. The other two will be released by Interscope. All four will carry the Suretone imprint.

Proving just how hard it is to get an original domain name, the Internet is already filled with Suretones. At www.suretone.co.za there's the Suretone electronic stimulation. There's the SureTone Rest, a shoulder rest for the violin and viola. This is Suretone Korea...not sure what it's about.

The only other thing of interest that Coolfer found through Google is this MySpace page of a young girl who says she does A&R for Suretone.

Posted by Glenn at 6:47 PM | Link
|Music Industry||Universal Music Group|

• Vinyl holds its own in the digital world. "There are four main reasons to love vinyl, in this order: sound quality, availability, aesthetics and nostalgia." (Asheville Citizen-Times)

• Jay-Z will act as editor on Nas' Def Jam debut, just as he did with the new Ne-Yo album. (Vibe.com)

• Digital music television network The Tube now has a deal to be carried in the country's biggest markets. (AP)

• In yet another article about the Arctic Monkeys and the changing landscape of Internet marketing comes this bit of wisdom from Polydor's Simon Gavin: "If it were just about the Internet, there would be 600,000 bands out there that would have been signed by now, and they're not." (International Herald Tribune)

• Get ready for the biggest surge in interest in classical music since "Mr Holland's Opus": Prelude Pictures will produce a film about composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. (Reuters)

• AOL Music has hired Bill Crandall, a former RollingStone.com editor, to be its editor-in-chief. (Digital Music News)

Posted by Glenn at 9:04 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Look at the 2006 calendar with this year's release schedule in mind and you might notice something special: June 6th is a Tuesday. In metal terms, that means 6/6/6, is going to be a release date for new albums. Naturally, any self-respecting metal band should be aiming to put out an album on that day.

One album that's going to be out on 6/6/6 is the Island/Def Jam debut by The Bronxx, an album the band's website promises to be "a scorcher." The band's previous album was itself a scorcher and landed on Coolfer's best of 2003 list. For a taste of that self-titled album, The Bronxx website has free downloads of "Heart Attack America," "White Tar" and "Bats!"

Shadows Fall is going to be late by a week -- its new album Fallout From The War will be released on June 13th.

Posted by Glenn at 12:30 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

A day prior to the Victory email that encouraged its street team to tamper with a competitor's CDs in retail stores, a missive was sent to rally the troops by Victory act Hawthorne Heights. It's a sometimes humorous rant that pits major labels against indie labels, and its delivered with the kind of fire-and-brimstone fervor often seen in Victory boss Tony Brummel. It's us against them, the band insists, indies against majors, genuine versus manufactured success, rock versus non-rock.

"You might ask, how has ROCK been put on the backburner? A current example is an artist that we are up against called Ne-Yo. Many people are saying that Ne-Yo is going to outsell us because Ne-Yo has had a tremendous amount of over the top, mainstream media coverage. His album will be in stores tomorrow. Radio has played his single 160,000 times. Our single has been played 3,800 times. We know that does not seem possible but it is the truth. Ne-Yo is on a major label. Hawthorne Heights is on an independent label. ROCK music needs to win tomorrow."

The entire email after the jump. (Thanks to the Leafblower for forwarding the email.)

Continue reading "Another Email, But No Victory" »

Posted by Glenn at 11:03 AM | Link
|Indies||Music Industry|

• Fat Joe leaves Atlantic for Asylum Records. (SOHH)

• The Black Eyed Peas have sold over two million master ringtones. (Digital Music News)

• William Lerach, a San Diego class action lawyer, has filed a complain in a federal court that accuses that the four majors "conspired to fix and maintain" online music prices. (Red Herring)

• A second Beatles box set may be in the works. (Monsters and Critics)

• The Sacramento Bee follows its profile on Tower's Russ Solomon with an article on local music store The Beat, which is coming off a record sales year. (Sacramento Bee)

• Some artist and small label views on iTunes. (OU Daily)

Posted by Glenn at 9:40 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Let's take a break from CD talk. Other formats are seeing sales growth, reports The Hollywood Reporter. Music DVD sales increased at a higher rate in 2005 than DVDs in general. Music DVDs, which accounted for 2.7% of all music transactions, grew by 4% compared to the 1% in the growth rate for the entire DVD business. Mass merchants have seen music DVD sales rise 7%.

And the DualDisc format isn't doing too poorly. They accounted for 15% of total music sales. Combining CDs and DVDs in the same package (as opposed to putting them on the same disc) is also popular. "The days of a single-format world are over," said Bill Sondheim of Sony BMG.

Harry Safter of Sony BMG said music DVDs offer a good branding opportunity for a band, and pointed to a Los Lonely Boys DVD that was put out to bridge the gap between albums.

But most majors aren't heavily pushing the DualDisc format, Sony BMG being an exception. From things Coolfer has heard and read, consumers are just fine with a two-disc package that includes one CD and one DVD. The DualDisc format sells, certainly, but that's often because the consumer isn't given the option of buying the CD.

The most recent RIAA statistics are for the 2005 midpoint. The dollar value of music DVD shipments (net of returns) was up 3.3%. DualDisc sales are included with CD sales and are not broken out separately.

Posted by Glenn at 2:07 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

Nothing gets a music industry issue publicity like a Jeff Leeds article in the New York TImes. Today his "Labels Halt Downloads to Increase CD Sales" examines how some labels are withholding pre-release singles from online stores until the album streets. The latest theory is that for some hit songs, an advance release will eat into album sales when it's eventually released.

Of course, if you've been reading Hits and following along at Coolfer you know this, and if you've read recent Rumor Mill posts some of Leeds' article will look very familiar.

"Contrast the Ne-Yo experience with another new R&B star, Chris Brown. He had a similarly inescapable radio hit with the song 'Run It!' on the eve of his debut album's release late last year. 'Run It!' was available for sale online for more than three months before his eponymous CD hit stores. During that time, Mr. Brown's song sold more than 300,000 copies. When the album finally went on sale, it sold roughly 154,000 copies in its first week — about half the sales of the Ne-Yo recording, according to Nielsen SoundScan."

This is what Hits wrote a day earlier:

"Handicappers are pointing out that R&B/pop singer Chris Brown, the most recent comparable artist, bowed at 155k in December on the heels of a radio smash and a huge iTunes single, as Jive followed the standard practice of making the lead track available online in advance of the album release."

I found it odd that both Hits and Leeds mentioned Chris Brown. Is that the only example of cannabilization that exists?

About wholesale discounts Leeds wrote:

"There is still plenty of debate over the effect of holding off on sales of the digital single; many also note that Island Def Jam offered a discount to retailers who stocked the album, allowing it to sell at stores like Target for $7.98 last week.

Hits wrote a day earlier:

"Further complicating any attempt to analyze the factors that contributed to Ne-Yo’s big first week was the fact that IDJ set an aggressive price point on the album as part of its marketing plan."

Again, this is an integral part to a story about Ne-Yo's first week sales, but the similarity in information presented by the two publications stood out when I read Leeds' article. Makes me wonder why people in the industry are rallying around the same bits of information.

Posted by Glenn at 1:43 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

• French MPs fail to legalize file sharing. (PC Pro)

• Ric Ocasek's post that explains why he is not taking part in The Cars reunion tour and comments on things said by Elliot Easton. (The Velvet Rope)

• The American Association of Independent Music has sent a letter to the FCC requesting an investigation into the lack of independent music on American airwaves. (FMQB)

• For those of you waiting for iTunes to show its approval of music subscriptions, here's what may prove to be an early step: the online store has introduced a monthly subscription for "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." One month of shows costs $9.99. (MP3.com)

• Two men have been indicted on federal charges for posting a Ryan Adams album prior to its release. (Tennessean.com)

Posted by Glenn at 12:22 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

It's not often the Wall Street Journel covers independent music, so when it does Coolfer takes notice. Yesterday the WSJ had an article titled "London's Calling But U.S. Fans Aren't Picking Up." (No hyperlink, Coolfer subscribes to the paper edition.) Even though the British government has been taking steps to help its artists break in the United States, sales are only a fraction of their potential -- if potential is measured by UK success and incessant hype that comes from the bands' homeland.

The focal point of the Ethan Smith's article is the Arctic Monkeys, whose debut album sold 10% in the States what it sold in its first week of release at home. (To further put that into perspective, the U.S. has a population nearly five times that of the U.K.)

Why the difficulty winning over us Yanks? Smith has some thoughts.

"Arctic Monkeys faces a problem that has dogged a string of promosing rock bands in recent years--especially those from England. One after another, British acts awash in homeland success like Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs and the Darkness have hit American shores riding a global wave of hype, thanks largely to the Internet. But in most cases, the rabid critical enthusiasm in the States is followed by indifference from radio programmers, modest sales and a slow fade from view--in time to make way for the next Next Big Thing from across the pond."

The modest success to date of the Arctic Monkeys in America says two things to Coolfer. One, labels need to strike while the iron is hot. Buzz, especially when gained through the Internet, is often fleeting. The longer the wait for an official release, the lower sales will be. (Conversely, rushing an album's release presents its own set of problems, so the trick is to find and/or manipulate that sweet spot where public excitement overlaps with label readiness.) Smith points to this problem and says some fans may have downloaded the tracks while waiting for the domestic release. Coolfer believes it's more an issue of withering attention spans -- the band's songs were downloaded in the UK before the album was released, so the downloading argument doesn't hold water.

Continue reading "Getting Arctic Monkeyed To Death" »

Posted by Glenn at 5:33 PM | Link
|Indies||Music||Music Industry|

Sacramento Bee business writer David Barton gives us a reason to read the Bee other than Kings coverage: a frontpage article on Tower Records founder Russ Solomon. It's more a profile on the man than his company, since Solomon wouldn't comment on the current state of Tower Records (recent bankruptcy filing, current search for buyer). Barton captures an optimist who sees today's changes in the music business as part of an ongoing evolution of formats, music styles and retail landscape.

Jim Urie, president of Universal Music and Video Distributing, had many compliments for Solomon and Tower Records.

"'Tower Records is the best brand that has ever been or probably ever will be established in music retailing. And I think that there is no Web site with the clout or reach or credibility that Tower has. They were the first, and they're still the best. Specialty retail is going to continue to decline. But where Tower is better off than the recently departed Sam Goody chain is that they have this huge breadth of catalog, and what the consumer is saying is, they want the depth of catalog.'"

And Solomon is adamant about the future of physical product.

"'People who want full albums are not in the world of digital downloading. It gives them pleasure to own the album, the same way people get pleasure out of keeping a book after they've read it. It feels good to have it on the shelf at home. ... There will be a future to the packaged part of the business'."

But he did have harsher words for labels: "The business is in the hands of the record companies. But they won't do anything. They refuse to take any substantial chances."

Posted by Glenn at 11:33 AM | Link
|Brick-And-Mortor Retail||Music Industry|

• New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer's payola investigation has resulted in suits filed against Entercom Communications Corp, owner of 105 radio stations. Said Spitzer, "We have moved away from the label, those who put out the records and are forced to pay for air time, and switched to the radio conglomerates ... that are extracting money." (Newsday)

• Ruckus now offers a free, advertising-based P2P service to college students. (Digital Music News)

• VNU, the parent company of Billboard magazine, AC Nielsen and Neilson Media Research, has agreed to be acquired by six private equity investors. (Billboad Radio Monitor)

• Reggaeton star Daddy Yankee was named Songwriter of the Year at last night's ASCAP Latin Music Awards. Publisher of the Year went to Sony/ATV Music Publishing. (Market Wire)

• MusicStrands, which makes music recommendation software, raised $2.3 million in a recent round of financing. (paidContent)

• Hypebot has five questions with Music Arsenal's Jimmy Winter. Music Arsenal is a web-based application that helps record labels organize and share their information. (Hypebot)

• Denver Nuggets forward Carmelo Anthony is the latest pro athlete to start a record label. Kross Over Entertainment has signed Atlanta's Berg, artist/producer Soundz and R&B singer Alesia Miller. (Baller Status)

Posted by Glenn at 11:12 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Does a lack of a pre-release single help CD sales? In a recent post, Hits suggests that very thing.

The impending chart-topping debut of Def Jam/IDJ Urban songwriter-turned-performer Ne-Yo's debut album, In My Own Words, would appear to offer powerful evidence that album sales were maximized by not allowing iTunes to sell the hit single, 'So Sick,' prior to release of the full-length disc. Industryites who have been arguing that download sales are cannibalizing album sales have some ammunition in what looks like the CD's estimated 250-300k figure.

Cannabilizaiton of CD sales is a favorite topic at Hits. Who can forget last month's rampaging guest editorial by Victory Records head Tony Brummel that called a la carte downloading "ultimately detrimental to the artists who created the music"?

Posted by Glenn at 10:50 PM | Link
|Digital Music||Music Industry|

Wait...wasn't the CD deemed a dead format? Start-up Lala.com will launch a used CD trading service on July 4th. The company plans to give 20% of revenues to artists. The site also urges people who mail a CD to another member to "remove songs from your iPod or PC."

Coolfer's early prediction: The business plan is admirable but there aren't nearly enough do-gooders in the world to keep this company out of bankruptcy. American music fans talk a lot about wanting to help artists and demand they have equitable contracts with record labels, but this being America they're most likely to follow low prices and convenience. (New Yorkers demand air trade but every Starbucks in Manhattan is doing brisk business.) A company with an extra 20% in overhead puts itself in the unenviable position of having to compete against more efficient competitors.

Lala.com will offer new CDs or digital downloads in the event a particular used CD is not available. And it says it will have social networking aspects and personalized recommendation engines. Unless the company finds a niche, something that differentiates itself from the dozens of other online stores that will be spending their investment capital in the coming years, neither will matter.

Bain Capital and Ignition Partners, your $9 million is going the way of Kozmo.com.

Posted by Glenn at 11:57 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

• Ali Farka Toure died this morning at his home in Mali. The cause was bone cancer. (Times Online)

• Some investors are bullish on music, and Apax Partners has announced a fund tha will focus on digital media start-ups. (Digital Music News)

• Estatic Peace, the label founded by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, has inked a deal with Universal Music Group. Some records will be distributed by Fontana while others will be signed and developed in a joint venture with Universal Records. (Pitchfork)

• Goldie Lookin' Chain got dumped by Atlantic in the UK. Said the group's manager, "Unfortunately the label we are on would prefer to spend money on James Blunt - work that one out." GLC's last album sold a mere 90,000 units. (BBC.com)

• Charlotte County's T.J.'s CD's & More is turning 20 this month. How has it survived? It sells both new and used CDs, movies on tape and DVD, and even cassette audio tapes. Also, "One thing that's helped a lot is that the store has become kind of a hangout for local musicians," says owner T.J. Koonz. (Sun-Herald.com)

• A profile on Minneapolis hip hop label Rhymesayers. (Pulse of the Twin Cities)

• Mariah Carey up won best female album and best female single at the 20th annual Soul Train Awards. Chris Brown won best new rap artist. (Billboard.com)

Posted by Glenn at 10:31 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Last week an email surfaced from Victory Records' street team director that encouraged kids to purposely misplace the CDs by Def Jam artist Ne-Yo while performing stock checks on the new Hawthorne Heights CD in stores around the country. President Tony Brummel is on the record as saying the email from street team director Abby Valentine was "a joke." Here's what he told Billboard's Todd Martens:

"It was absolutely a joke. We need people in stores buying every record possible by artists of all genres. No one associated with us is doing anything at retail that they shouldn't be. You will not find Victory's music on iTunes, and that is because we believe in retail, which we prove day in and day out."

A very nice, by-the-book denial, but it's just not believable. The instructions laid out in Valentine's email are simply too plausible in the competitive world of street marketing. And Victory is a competitive label that wants a #1 record. What do its current cable TV spots say? Down with corporate rock, support real music.

Martens quotes a legal expert about possible repurcussions. "If true, these are outlandish, illegitimate sales tactics that will likely lead to legal liability for Victory Records if the recipients read it and follow the instructions,"

Posted by Glenn at 5:03 PM | Link
|Indies||Music Industry|

• Phonogenic/Sony UK has signed 23-year-old singer-songwriter Ross Copperman. The Virginian has been writing songs with production team The Matrix and working with producer Guy Chambers. Copperman says the plan is to hit the UK first, then other territories and then come back to work the home country. (The Roanoke Times)

• A profile on the popular Kidz Bop series and the growth in kids-oriented music. Coming next week is the album Devo 2.0: Q: Are We Not Kids? A: We Are Devo, an album of Devo songs performed by children, on Walt Disney Records. (The band was involved with the project and plays on the album.) Coolfer has heard rumors of other labels prepping kids releases as well. (NY Times)

• The billion dollar question is this: How long can the iPod stay on top? Investors are getting worried, barbarians are lining up at the gate, but the iPod's cultural and technilogical head start are formidable. (LA Times)

• Mute Math is suing Warner Music Group for breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation over the way its label marketed the group as a Christian band. (Billboard)

• Ann Powers, a senior critic for Blender, will replace Robert Hilburn as the chief pop music critic at the Los Angeles Times. (LA Times)

• Michele Hooper has been elected to the Warner Music Group board of directors. (Market Wire)

• Have you seen that HSBC commercial with the horrible cover version of Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing"?

Posted by Glenn at 8:41 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

The annual Billboard Music & Money Symposium has just held in New York. Here's a recap of articles on what was said. From the looks of it, people are excited and at least optimistic about on-air downloading even though the mobile cart is so far ahead of the horse. The infrastructure will be in place for the next generation of digital music before (a) there's a proven piece of hardware or (b) it is known to what degree consumers will adopt it.

"Sillerman Questions Record Business, Sees Rockiness Ahead" from Digital Music News. "SFX Entertainment founder Robert Sillerman challenged the underpinning business model of the traditional recording industry during a recent keynote address. Sillerman criticized labels and distributors for 'ignoring technology and consumer preferences,' eventually creating the conditions for file-sharing pioneer Napster to thrive."

Digital Music News has other posts on the Symposium, on the future of on-air downloads and mobile virutal network operators.

"Music Execs Happier About New Digital Frontier" from The Hollywood Reporter. "After increasing revenue by 1.5% at his firm in 2005 to $5.8 billion with profits of $570 million, Universal Music Group chairman and CEO Doug Morris said he expected further erosion of the physical CD business and increase of the digital business over the next five years. His outlook for Universal was completely optimistic: 'We have so many sources of income coming into the company from iTunes to phones that every month there's more and more money.'"

Posted by Glenn at 4:54 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

The Digital Music Forum was last week in New York, and there have been a lot of articles with thought-provoking quotes from the panelists. Here's a sampling of what was written. And Coolfer should note that the tech sites are way ahead of the music sites in covering the news, as is usually the case in issues where music and technology overlap.

• "Students Shirk Legal Downloads" at Red Herring. "Michael Weiss, chief executive of StreamCast Networks, which runs the peer-to-peer service Morpheus, a frequent RIAA target, said his company had polled students about how much they would be willing to pay for music and found an unwillingness to pay at all."

• "Music publishers are restricting online growth - DiMA" at PC Pro. "Jonathan Potter, director of DiMA, the Digital Media Association, said that unless publishers accept a smaller share of the digital music pie for songwriters, the online services will not be able to cut prices in order to better compete with the 'free' music available on p2p file sharing networks."

• "Cell Phones That Play MP3s A Hot Topic At Digital Music Forum" at NY1. Larry Kenswil of Universal Music Group: "I think more and more phones are coming out with broadband capability, 3G phones, and a lot of them now you can download entire songs, not just ring tones, and there's huge growth in that market. Like everything, no one knows how much people want, but there's certainly going to be plenty of things for people to get if they want it. The convergence of the mobile device with the music player and the television set and the whole online world is what's happening this year.”

• "MySpace man says their CD was 'shitty'" at Drowned in Sound. "Gold told the Digital Music Forum that MySpace Volume 1 had only sold a maximum of 50,000 copies, a pretty poor return considering just how many people were made aware of it through the multi-million-person reaching MySpace."

• "Digital Formats Continue to Bless Indie Labels, Artists" at Digital Music News. "David Pakman, head of independent online retailer eMusic, pegged the independent sector at a 27 percent market-share in the US, a figure that factors in major label distribution arrangements. Pakman noted that the independent sector is "the only area that is growing in terms of revenue and market share," while observing that the 'independent artist has always been afforded advantages online that he has not been given in a traditional retail environment'."

Posted by Glenn at 11:10 AM | Link
|Digital Music||Music Industry|

Los Angeles loses one (Warner Music) and gains a smaller one (Hear Music). Yesterday the Starbucks coffee chain's Hear Music label announced its VP of Music Dan MacKinnon quit the company, or rather, resigned for personal reasons, which is the corporate euphemism given to a situation in which somebody was forced out. Hear Music also confirmed that it was planning to relocate to Los Angeles from Seattle to be closer to...everything.

The New York Post calls the move a sign that the coffee chain has serious ambitions. One industry executive speculates Starbucks Entertainment head Ken Lombard "wants to go in a more commercial way rather than just being an indie tastemaker."

For those of you keeping score at home, Starbucks has become a significant force in music retail and an important tastemaker. It acquired the Hear Music chain in 1999 and integrated it into its coffee retail chain. Its Hear Music label scored a huge success, along with Concord, with Ray Charles' Genius Love Company. Its latest release is Sergio Mendes' Timeless, which has got some great reviews but so far has lukewarm sales. In 2004 the chain sold 3.5 million CDs in its cafes and music stores.

Posted by Glenn at 12:42 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

• The Deparment of Justice opens the probe on online music pricing. (Forbes)

• Tower Records to start a service that allows users to create their own podcasts using a free catalog of 6,000 songs (Forbes)

• The British government has announced new initiatives to help British acts break into the U.S. market, such as sharing market research with UK labels and the creation of a website devoted to British music. (BBC News)

• The repackaged hits just keep on coming. Though released in May of last year, Fall Out Boy's Under The Cork Tree will be released as a special tour edition with new artwork and five new tracks.

Posted by Glenn at 9:05 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Often the secret weapon in album sales is the hard work of street teams, those armies of dedicated fans who pass out flyers, bombard chat rooms and do a lot of priceless dirty work.

This being the music business, yes, some of it is dirty. A post at the Velvet Rope gives an examples. It's from Victory Records to the Hawthorne Heights street team, and it captures the label's desire to get Hawthorne Heights' new album to the top of the album chart. Here's a clip in which street teamers are encourages (wink wink) to obscure the CDs of Hawthorne Height's prime competition, Ne-Yo.

"As for Ne-yo, the name of the game is to decrease the chances of a sale here. If you were to pick up handful of Ne-yo CDs, as if you were about to buy them, but then changed your mind and didn't bother to put them back in the same place, that would work. Even though this record will be heavily stocked and you might not be able to move all the stock, just relocating a handful creates issues: Even though the store will appear to be out of stock, the computer will see it as in stock and not re-order the title once it sells down and then Ne-Yo will lose a few sales later in the week."

Is the email legitimate? Coolfer would guess yes. Nothing in the email is very outlandish, frankly. These are the kinds of things labels do to get an advantage. As for the person who wrote it, it could be Abby Valentine, director of street promotion. Here's an article about Abby and Victory's street team.

The entire email is posted after the jump.

Continue reading "Victory at All Costs" »

Posted by Glenn at 8:33 AM | Link
|Indies||Music Industry|

This is worth a chuckle: MySpace exec explained to the Digital Music Forum that the company might have pushed its first CD too hard on its users and ended up hurting demand. MySpace Records Volume 1 has sold "between 40,000 and 50,000" units so far (right in the middle, actually). But exec Shawn Gold admitted it might have been "just a shitty CD." The compilation has tracks by Fall Out Boy, Weezer, The Click Five, AFI and other successful bands. The site attempted to lure buyers with free t-shirts and extra photos for users' sites, and fuse had a promotion that gave away $1,000 for 39 days.

Coolfer is on the record as doubting the ability of MySpace to sell music. Not the record label, but the website. More than one artist who has been the focal point of a MySpace campaign has got barely a jump in sales. The social networking site is good for giving away free music. At this point its users may be conditioned to expect only free music from the site.

Then again, compilations are a very tough sell, and making something like that a label's first release should have been approached as nothing more than a test run. The label now has a sales history and can build upon it with all original music from bands it will sign and develop.

Posted by Glenn at 8:52 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

News from the Digital Music Forum in New York:

• DRM and interoperability isses are called out at the Digital Music Forum. (Digital Music News)

• Execs call out publishers for high royalty rates they claim are problemic for digital music businesses. Attorney and author Steve Gordon colorfully disagrees, puts blame on recording rights holders. (The Register)

• Larry Kenswil, Universal Music Group's digital division, bashes those he calls "the utopians," the "capitalism is evil crowd, the folks who want stuff for free -- and you'll find them on Slashdot." (The Register)

And news elsewhere:

• A report says Vivendi Universal would like to buy the publishing arms of Warner Music or EMI in the event the two companies merge. (The Times Online)

• Wayne Russo of Mashboxx has (another) bold prediction: "Steve Jobs and Apple are going to be toast." (Fortune)

• Kelefa Sanneh on a pop hit by Cascada and dance music label Robbins Entertainment. (NY Times)

• Van Morrisson rips today's music industry, says "everything is about commercialism these days, not music." (Contactmusic)

Posted by Glenn at 8:46 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

If only for a week we are getting a picture of what the world would look like if superstars ceased to exist (which won't happen) and the top sellers list was a collection of niche superstars. Album sales were down 10% from last week (and sit 2% down for the year), and sales for the top ten look more like the 10 to 20 slots during a summer vacation week. Only one album, the High School Music soundtrack, broke the 100,000 barrier last week, though Kidz Bop 9 was just a few thousand short of the century mark. Much of the top 40 is clustered around 40,000.

The debut by Arctic Monkeys, immediately hailed as a modern classic, sold a sliver of what they did in the UK. Still, 34,000 in the first week is excellent and was the third-highest indie album on the chart, behind Kidz Bop 9 (Razor & Tie) and Nickelback (Roadrunner).

Even though sales were tepid, not everybody is so down. In his weekly email CIMS president Don VanCleave pointed to a release schedule that favors music specialists, "With Artic Monkeys last week and Hawthorne Heights this week, the crowds are starting to remember where the record stores are," he wrote.

It was a slow week in the release schedule. Starting yesterday the semi-popular trend ended. Today Hits announced the begining of a bull market.

"March will roar in like a lion for the bealeaguered biz when Def Jam/IDJ's Ne-Yo proves to be the year's first breakout artist, with his debut album, In My Own Words, set to debut atop next Tuesday's HITS album chart with somewhere in the vicinity of 275-300k in first-week sales."

Victory's Hawthorne Heights could have been #1 if released a week earlier. If Only You Were Lonely is on pace for around 100,000.

Posted by Glenn at 9:06 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

• Sanctuary Music Group hit a 52-week low yesterday. (Bloomberg.com, via The Velvet Rope)

• Universal music group is predicting a slight increase in 2006 sales. Why so rosey? The company feels digital gains will outmatch the decrease in sales of physical product. (Reuters)

• Brooklyn band TV on the Radio signs with Interscope Records. (Billboard.com)

• There's movement in Amazon.com regarding digital music: more hires and increased negotiations. (Digital Music News)

• Warner Music International has appointed Eric Daugan, to the new position of VP of digital marketing. (Mad.co.uk)

• The Boston Globe on TuneCore, a new digital distributor that takes a very small amount of money (in the form of one-time placement fees). TuneCore was founded by Jeff Price, co-founder of spinART Records. This really got my attention: "He estimates that 17 percent to 25 percent of spinART's annual revenue comes from iTunes sales." (Boston Globe)

• The Smithsoneum Musuem plans a hip hop exhibit. (AP)

• Which album holds the one-day sales record at the Stockton Tower Records? Believe it or not, it's a compilation created by the students in a Univery of the Pacific music management class. (Stockton Reporter)

Posted by Glenn at 8:41 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Coolfer reacted with equal parts delight and surprise when I opened a package from Devious Planet publicity, which is handling the press for Cordless Recordings' Breakup Breakdown. In the past Coolfer has noted how E-labels get very little press, and it's clear that in order to write about something critics need to be prompted by a free physical CD received in the mail.

And what did I get from the publicist for this e-label? Not only a three-song promotional CD, but a 7" single. And not just a 7" single, but a commerically available 7" single with a bar code.

Digital music is cool, but vinyl is still cooler. The underground still loves vinyl, and it's in the underground that you'll find the writers, the clubgoers and the musicians who create the buzz that publicists so clearly want to capture.

It's ironic that a label that seeks to capitlize on the promise of digital distribution is mailing out physical CDs and records. It goes against conventional thinking -- but conventional thinking says the CD, still well over 90% of all album sales, has been dead for years. Kudos to Cordless and Devious Planet for recognizing that MP3 links in an email, a mark of the digital era, doesn't get the attention of a good, physical mailing. And congrats for recognizing the allure of vinyl in the music underground. Yes, it's just more clutter for my apartment, but my inbox has a lot of clutter as well.

Posted by Glenn at 10:46 PM | Link
|Music Industry||Warner Music Group|

• Back to American rule: Madonna tops the UK singles chart while Jack Johnson tops the UK album chart. (Reuters)

• The Rough Trade music store -- not the label -- has partnered with Bleep.com to create a DRM-free digital download store. The store's website claims a fall launch. (Netimperative)

• Pearl Jam to release a single, "World Wide Suicide," next month. (Top40-Charts)

• Rupert Murdoch's News Corp to launch a mobile venture called Mobizoo that will offer games, ring tones and video clips. (The Guardian)

• Out of respect for an officer slain by an artist on its roster, Beat-Tech Productions has pulled from stores the CD by Las Vegas rappers Desert Mobb. Amir Crump, one half of Desert Mobb, shot and killed an officer responding to a domestic violence call, and was himself then shot and killed by police. (KVBC.com)

• Brit singer/rapper Jay Sean has parted ways with EMI/Relentless. (Asians in Media)

• South African R&B singer Tsakani TK Mhinga was found dead in a Johannesburg hotel yesterday. (Tonight)

• A Pantera CD and DVD are schedule for May 2nd. (antiMUSIC)

• With the help of iTunes' promotion, Jack Johnson's Sing-a-Longs and Lullabies for the Film Curious George sold 26% of its total in the digital format. (Billboard)

Posted by Glenn at 8:34 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Coolfer heard reports from various sources throughout the day that Studio Distribution has closed its doors. A thread at the Velvet Rope has similar confirmations.

Studio was a distributor of mainly dance but also hip hop and reggae/world titles, mainly music with a connection to urban and club life. Two of its main labels, !K7 and Global Underground, had recently left. Those two labels helped Studio become a prominant player when dance music took off in the States in the late '90s. Now, Studio's demise mirrors dance music in the country: It ain't what it used to be.

Also, there was widespread industry discussion about how well its deal with Navarre was working out, and its thought that Studio ended up getting hurt by Navarre's financial situation. The two companies entered into a distribution agreement in August of 2002 and renewed it for five years in February of 2004.

Posted by Glenn at 9:14 PM | Link
|Indies||Music Industry|

• The head of Yahoo!'s digital service calls on labels to allow DRM-free downloads. (PC Pro)

• MSN and Billboard will partner to produce the Billboard.Latino.MSN.com, a Spanish language music site. (Adotas)

• Swiss and Belgian authorities shut down Razorback2, a top eDonkey P2P server. (vnunet)

• Megadeth to release the two-disc Arsenal of Megadeth on March 21 via Capitol Records. The set will contain 20 music videos, home videos and interviews. (ChartAttack)

• In honor of upcoming live DVD/CD and remastered reissues of Trouble, Lovehunter and Ready & Willing (all with bonus tracks), David Coverdale and Whitesnake are hitting the road this year. (Starpulse)

Posted by Glenn at 8:57 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Universal Motown Records Group will split into two distinct labels, reports Billboard.biz. The two labels, the urban-centric Universal Motown and the rock-focused Universal Republic, will share services (legal, finanacial and sales) but will operate independently of each other. Hits further explains that the Universal Motown roster will include the labels SRC, Cash Money and Blackground.

This move bucks the recent trend of merging labels for cost-cutting reasons. On the other hand, it follows a trend of putting space between two executives who are said to not get along: Monte Lipman, who will head Universal Republic, and Sylvia Rhone, who will lead up the Universal Motown label.

Commentors at The Velvet Rope noticed the separation of urban and rock. "Sounds like it's come down to black and white," said one. "The two different water fountains of Universal Records," commented another. Racial humor aside, seperating urban and rock divisions should, on paper, allow each division to maximize its potential and focus on the distinct differences that exist in each.

Posted by Glenn at 8:41 AM | Link
|Music Industry||Universal Music Group|

As iTunes hits the one billion song mark and music retail's future is celebrated comes news of Tower Records' move to find a buyer. Ed Christman's article at Billboard.biz reveals that the chain -- a rare powerhouse national retailer that specializes in selling music -- has hired an investment banking firm to find a suitor for the 90-unit chain of stores.

"Houlihan Lokey, based in Los Angeles, has been working for the chain in an advisory role since at least last fall. Initially, its task was to work with Tower senior management on a value-creation enterprise, aimed at boosting the chain’s worth. But some time in the last two months, Tower’s directors approved the hiring of an investment bank to shop the company, and Houlihan Lokey won that assignment."

Christman compares Tower's peak years with its current sales. Before it filed bankruptcy, the chain's annaul sales were nearly $1 billion. Now sales are around $450 million to $500 million.

In May of 2002, Tower sold its Japenese operations -- 51 stores -- for $122 million.

Posted by Glenn at 7:52 AM | Link
|Brick-And-Mortor Retail||Music Industry|

• Research by Ipsos Insight shows 52% of Americans over the age of 12 have paid for a music download, and 24% have in the last month. Desire for a la carte songs and recent purchases of MP3 players are fueling digial music sales' growth. (Ipsos News Center)

• News burst across the Internet of a post from the Radiohead website that said the band is recording a version of the song "Nude," an OK Computer-era song that has been played live for years.

• This article at the Norwich (England) Evening News talks about bands that will be showcased by Radio 1 DJ Rob Da Bank, who took over the slot left when John Peel died. One of the bands mentioned is Cord, who signed a five-album deal with Island. That deal was signed that deal in the fall of 2004 and according to the band's website it was finished in December of 2005. (Norwich Evening News)

• The Arctic Monkeys have shipped 40,000 in Australia, which should be good for a top three chart position. (The Age)

• Legacy Recordings plans Roy Orbison reissues. (Monsters and Critics)

Posted by Glenn at 8:59 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Singer Jameim tops the album chart for the first time in his career with 152,000 first-week sales of Ghetto Classics. Jack Johnson's Curious George album fell 28% to the second slot. Barry Manilow, who was forecased by Hits to sell upwards of 150,000 in his third week and battle Jaheim for the top spot, took third with 116,000 in sales. (A note about Manilow's comeback album: It's been without the help of digital sales, which says something about the audience who is buying the album. Digital albums are a slight one percent of total sales.)

Others in the top ten are Mary J Blige at #4, Andrea Bocelli at #5, and James Blunt at #8.

Sales were up 2% from the previous week, and year-to-date sales are down 2%. Check Billboard.com's article for more details.

Posted by Glenn at 8:29 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

• Steve Rifkind was given a new imprint at Universal to go along with his SRC Records label. The first signing is rapper Pharoahe Monch. Both labels, explains Hits, will be called SRC. The difference is that one label will be a P&D (pressing and distribution) deal and the other will be a joint venture with Universal Records. (Hits Rumor Mill)

• Loudeye, a digital distributor and backend service provider, recently raised $8.25 million from the sale of 16.5 million shares of common stock to institutional buyers. Given that the company has lost money as digital music's popularity has exploded, one has to wonder when the company can sustain a profit.

• MP3s: The New 45 Singles of the Music Business (TechNewsWorld). "MP3s have replaced 45s, and iPods have replaced turntables, it seems." No, MP3s replaced CD sinlges and cassette singles. iPods have replaced CD players.

Posted by Glenn at 8:37 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

• The Department of Homeland Security weighs introducing legislation that would ban DRM rootkits, which if passed should be commonly known as the Sony BMG Law. (PC Pro)

• Does Guns N' Roses still matter? The thread at The Velvet Rope on a post about leaked GNR MP3s offers all sorts of opinions -- and plenty of opinions on the leaked songs as well.

• Eliot Van Buskirk asks if surround sound can save MP3. (Wired)

• Billboard's Emmanuel Legrand does a Q&A with David Gilmour, who will have his new album, On An Island, released by Columbia on March 7th (and by EMI on March 6th in Europe). (Reuters)

Posted by Glenn at 3:47 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

With all the buzz surrounding video site YouTube -- with no shortage of talk coming from Coolfer -- it was only a matter of time before the video sharing site teamed up with a band and/or label for a promotion. MySpace's courting of labels and bands has helped it become the power in online social networking. Now YouTube has teamed up with a label is what should be the first of many music-related promotions.

First up is a promotion for Matador band Pretty Girls Make Graves that asks contestants to create a video for the song "Nocturnal House." The winner gets $1,000 and a trip to New York to meet the band and see them in concert.

Contest submissions are already rolling in. View the list of videos here. This one was recorded by a group of Marines at their barracks and has the explanation, "This is what we do when Marines get bored."

Posted by Glenn at 3:09 AM | Link
|Indies||Music Industry|

He's back. Hits' Rumor Mill put Barry Manilow as the title most likely to top this week's album chart. In its third week of release, Manilow's Clive Davis-brokered collection of fifties covers will sell around 145,000 units. (You've gotta like Hits' reference to Sportscenter's Dan Patrick in describing Manilow's re-ascent to the top : "You can't stop him, you can only hope to contain him.") Picked for second is the third album by urban crooner Jaheim.

On the other side of the spectrum, Sergio Mendes' Will.I.Am-produced Timeless should sell around 20,000 to 25,000. Impressive? No, but give it some time to catch on.

Posted by Glenn at 10:43 AM | Link
|Music Industry||Sony BMG|

• Rapper Juvenile will release his next album with software, UrTone, that will allow the customer to create custom ringtones from any song on the album. (Blogcritics.org) View demo here.

• Did you know that "Laguna Beach" cast member Talan Torriero is signed to a major label? Me neither. (JND Infowire)

• Payola was the big topic at this year's Country Radio Seminar. (Tennessean.com)

• Rick Rubin to produce the next Metallica album. (Billboard.com)

• William Cowsill, lead singer of The Cowsills, died at the age of 58. His brother Barry died during Hurricane Katrina. (BBC News)

• Latin Jazz legend Ray Barretto, died on Friday. (Jazz Police)

Posted by Glenn at 7:42 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

What went wrong with Andrew Lack's tenure as head of Sony BMG? Jeff Leeds article for the NY Times, "Behind the Music: How a Sony-BMG Feud Went Public," summed up the nature of the music industry that lead to his removal with this quote from an entertainment lawyer:

"Our business is not that big. If you're going to be successful, you get to know everybody, so you can channel relationships in ways that make sense. And I kind of felt like Andrew never got told that."

It's a great article that underscores the how Lack failed to built relationships and how Lack, a music outsider, never won the support of those long-entrenced in the industry. Leeds points out that Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, Lack's replacement, "is still regarded as a relative neophyte as well." All eyes will be on Schmidt-Holtz as he tries to unify a post-merger company that has for years not behaved as a single-minded entity.

Posted by Glenn at 6:27 AM | Link
|Music Industry||Sony BMG|

Time Europe has a piece called "Sing When You're Winning: How EMI and the music industry learned to stop worrying and love the digital download." Great title.

It's a story about EMI's Eric Nicoli, who after losing his job when Seagram bought Polygram in 1998 went to EMI in 2001with the goal of finding a way to make money from digital music. Early hire John Rose was given the task of making it work. And it is working. Digital sales are up to 5% of total revenues, EMI's market share has increased in the last year and some analysts are impressed by EMI's innovative approach to digital music.

And let's not forget the ringtone, the newest revenue stream that is sometimes forgotten because it lives in a world separate from music downloads:

"The unexpected cash cow of the digital era is the ringtone, and its wireless cousins: ringtunes, ringbacks and wallpaper. Last year mobile music sales were more than $400 million globally. EMI's publishing arm — with a catalogue of more than a million songs — is the world's largest, with a market share analysts estimate at around 20%. ... And consumers — especially teens — are embracing the new technology with fervor."

The article also hits on wireless sales, which has everybody hopeful due to the high penetration rate of mobile phones. One thing that's missing from the article, though, is Ted Cohen, the respected head of digital development and distribution. This Newsweek article from September of 2005, which calls Cohen "one of Levy's secret weapons," explains how valuable he is to the company's digital future.

Posted by Glenn at 11:45 AM | Link
|Digital Music||EMI||Music Industry||Online Stores/Services|

• Why can't we all just get along? The EFF takes issues with recent RIAA arguments against time-shifting and format-shifting. The RIAA says they've got it all wrong. (Digital Music News)

• An interview with Rawkus Records signing Naledge. (SOHH.com)

• The largest music chain in Australia to install music kiosks that will burn CDs and download tracks to portable players. (Sydney Morning Herald)

• How to teach music to the iPod generation? One way is a software series called Groovy Music. (BusinessWeek.com)

• A brief interview with The Starting Line, who signed a multi-album deal with Virgin Records. First question: Are you punk or not? (Ohio University's The Post Online)

• Glen Phillips, ex-Toad the Wet Sprocket, to independently release an album on May 6th. (Glide Magazine)

Posted by Glenn at 9:16 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

It's not just you and me who are wondering what what it all means when Barry Manilow can top the U.S. album chart with a collection of decades-old covers. Slate's Jody Rosen wonders as well, and one need look only the the acerbid article title, "When Cheeseballs Sing Standards: Barry Manilow's got a No. 1 album. What gives?" to get a feel for the article's tone

"In hitching his comeback hopes to a collection of song standards, Manilow follows a trail blazed by another extravagantly moussed older star, Rod Stewart, who has sold millions of copies of his four-volume Great American Songbook series. The mastermind behind both projects is Clive Davis, a music mogul with a proven genius for channeling middlebrow taste, who correctly intuited that older record buyers would embrace standards recorded by '70s and '80s hit-makers. The result is a music biz boomlet, in which aging stars hoping for a career resuscitation are resurfacing with big bands and Café Carlyle-appropriate apparel."

Rosen doesn't have a problem with covers of some of America's finest pop songs. The middle decades of the last century, he points out, produced "music of enduring wit, beauty, and charm." But it's how the music is covered. "They haven't the foggiest idea of how to sing these old songs," he insists. They treat them with too much respect. Which means they're careful to take any chances in their interpretations. Clive Davis knows what older consumers want, and it's not a flashy new version of a beloved song. (Which is why the older demo is probably going to dislike Will.I.Am's retrofitting of Serge Mendes songs.) Whether or not it's in music's best interest, Clive delivers what people want to hear. Now that he's opened the door, expect more of the same.

Posted by Glenn at 1:40 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

• Hits has an article by Victory Records' Tony Brummel that says iTunes is the enemy. iTunes, he writes, does not care about indie labels or the record industry, and that single downloads end up being detrimental to artists. For coverage that takes issue with Brummels's statements, read the reaction by PC Pro's Simon Aughton. Coolfer wouldn't anything less from PC Pro, and come to think of it Hits followed the party line pretty well also. Digital Music News posted about Brummel's article, but in a neutral manner.

• Brummel sees eveil in the future of digital music, but the UK's music industry is booming. The Arctic Monkeys, James Blunt and other homegrown artists have wrested away the charts from foreign -- mainly American -- competition. A sample of 1,000 Internet users revealed 85% of them buy at least one album a month. Interesting: Supermarkets account for 28% of all CD sales and are especially successful with female customers. (BBC.com)

Posted by Glenn at 8:47 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

What stands out about this week's album chart? First of all, Jack Johnson's Curious George soundtrack sold over 162,000 but did 26% of that in digital sales. That's a lot of high-margin sales. If 80% of that is an iTunes, which is probably the case, that's a huge amount of high-margin sales at one account. (Call it efficient, call it monopolistic, whatever.) For Universal, higher digital sales are a blessing because with digital albums there are no returns (as is the case with physical product) and you didn't have to spend a fortune for placement at iTunes (not yet, anyway) like you do at trad retail.

What else? Barry Manilow, the latest aging singer to hit the top of the chart with the help of Clive Davis, dropped only 9% in his second week. His Greatest Songs of the Fifties took third. (Get ready for songs from other decades...the sixties are in the works.)

Dem Franchise boys sold a respectable 105,000 CDs of their debut album. That's very good, but they're the current kings of the ringtones, not the album chart.

U2, the big winner at last weeks' Grammys, re-entered the chart at #49 with a 512% jump in scans. Mary J Blige also benefitted from the awards show, increasing the units sold but staying at #2 on the chart.

Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway shot up to #8 from #24. John Legend's Get Lifted, though, was the big winner, going to #18 from #187. That right there is why the Grammys still matter. That's the Grammy Effect. (The Super Bowl Effect? you ask? There was none.)

Speaking of "American Idol," did anybody notice Bo Bice's album is tanking? It's not doing as poorly as INXS's Switch, but it's falling down the charts and will be out of sight before too long.

Check Billboard.com's post for more details.

Posted by Glenn at 7:24 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

• Dem Franchise Boys have sold over one million master ringtones. Their album -- yeah, they bothered to release an album -- was released last week. (Digital Music News)

• The Country Radio Seminar started last night. Elliot Spizer's payola investigation and competition from satellite and the Internet will be hot topics of conversation. (Tennessean.com)

• An AP article about the uncertain future of music retail talks to Paul Epstein from Denver's Twist & Shout and Michael Bracy of the Future of Music Coalition. Geoff Mayfield from Billboard wisely reminds people to consider the socio-economic aspects when bracing for the digital takeover. "There are a lot of consumers out there, believe it or not, that don't own an iPod or even a computer. ... There's a lot more broadband now than there was five years ago. But I also remember that the time when the CD became the dominant moneymaker in music that fewer than half of US households had a CD player." (Republican American)

Posted by Glenn at 8:23 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

• From a business point of view this is great, but it's even better from a fan's point of view: The Orchard has announced it will launch a program to provide record labels a way to digitize rare and unreleased vinyl. What a blow to eBay and other markets for expensive collector's pieces, but what a bounty for music lovers. Here's how it will work:

A modified Simon Yorke S7 turntable fitted with a Kondo IO-j cartridge feeds the esoteric, rare, expensive and exquisite Kondo M1000 preamplifier, via a Kondo KSL SFz step-up transformer. This signal is in turn converted via an audiophile A-D 2 channel converter, and archived in DSL. All wiring is Kondo age-annealed 99.9999% pure silver wire, and all components are isolated by Vibraplane active isolation platforms."

The resulting high resolution digital archive can be re-encoded in the future as better digital formats become available. The first group of labels taking part in the program include SST, Delicious Vinyl, Lookout! Records, In the Red, Amphetamine Reptile, and Bizarre/Straight, and the songs will be available next month under the banner "When It Was Wax" at online stores such as eMusic, iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody and all the usual players. (Press release)

• Interesting quote from a Motorola exec: "Our relationship with Microsoft is about making the mobile world seamless with the desktop world and allowing consumers to experience music wherever and whenever they want." What is Richard Chin talking about? Motorola is adding Microsoft's DRM into its mobile phones, and they're pretty happy about it. (ZDNet)

• Koch Entertainment Distribution has inked a deal with digital distributor IODA and RoyaltyShare, a provider of royalty accoutning services and sale data consolidation. Over 40 labels and over 32,000 songs are part of the deal, which will help work the songs to many smaller retails while the Koch staff concentrates its efforts on the larger online retailers. (Market Wire)

• Indie rapper Murs will have a new album out on March 21st on the Record Collection label, which recently hired him as an A&R consultant. Murray's Revenge was produced by 9th Wonder. The label is known more for its rock releases by bands like The Walkmen, Ash, John Frusciante and Kate Earl. Look for more labels to rebuild in an effort to reach both rap and rock fans, which are increasingly the same group of people.

Posted by Glenn at 9:02 AM | Link
|Digital Music||Music Industry||Online Stores/Services|

Profits were up 91% at Warner Music Group last quarter, just the latest in improved earnings among the major music groups. Revenue dropped to $1.04 billion from $1.09 billion but with the help of a big increase in digital revenues -- up 30% from the previous quarter (due in large part to the holiday season) and up almost 200% from a year ago -- net income rose 9% to $166 million.

Other main points:

• Sales of recorded music were down 2%.
• International revenue grew by 1.8% (excluding effects from change in exchange rate).
• Music publishing revenue was down 15% (only 4% on a constant-currency basis), and digital revenues from music publishing was 4% of total publishing revenues.
• Operating income was $144 million compared to $130 million for the same period last year.

Posted by Glenn at 7:48 AM | Link
|Music Industry||Warner Music Group|

• The news hit the wires today, though Hits reported it on Saturday (and Coolfer linked to the article on the same day): Warner Music Group's Lyor Cohen canned Paul-Rene Albertini, the former head of Warner Music International. And even though Sony BMG's Andrew Lack has left no doubt in anybody's mind that a television executive may not be the best person to appoint head of a major music company, Cohen went ahead and appointed Patrick Vien, president of NBC Universal's Global Networks Division, to the vacant position. Lack was president and COO of NBC prior to joining Sony BMG in January of 2003, and was head of the NBC News division for the eight years prior.

• One has to wonder what the financial analysts in Linkin Park have to say about the early news on Warner Music Group's quarterly earnings: The company will announce earnings on Tuesday, and is expected to report a profit of 40 cents per share on revenue of $1.09 billion.

• A study has shown that music is chosen more when it's popular. Listeners were split into two groups. One group selected songs based only on artist and title, then they rated the song. Another group chose from the same group of songs but also saw the popularity of each song -- a social influence aspect that the first group lacked. The result: The social influence group picked the popular songs more often. The study also found that a song's rating didn't change based on how much the previous group liked or disliked it. The findings explain why time- and information-challenged listeners gravitate toward what is popular and what is recommended to them. "People are faced with too many options, in this case 48 songs. Since you can't listen to all of them, a natural shortcut is to listen to what other people are listening to," said Matthew Salganik, the study's co-author. "I think that's what happens in the real world where there's a tremendous overload of songs." (Live Science, via The Morning News)

• Properly Chilled is a website for "downtempo music and culture." And here I was thinking the word chilled had lost all respectability two or three years ago. (Via Metafilter)

• Those of you who think James Blunt's music is bland should check out his iTunes celebrity playlist.

Posted by Glenn at 11:45 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

There's been a lot of scattered talk lately about current and possible online music stores: Napster's financial health, the possiblity of a Google music store, rumors of a Google acquisition of the dollar-short Napster, and Amazon.com's foray into digital music. Here's a recap.

To start, a Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck got people talking when he forecasted an imminent Google music store.

There was a report from Digital Music News that Napster going to layoff some people. Napster denied those rumors but did announce it would cut ten middle manager positions.

And there has been some professional chatter about the possibility that Google will acquire Napster as a means to enter digital music sales. Citing anonymous sources, the NY Post reported (as reported here by News.com) Google was in talks with Napster over an "extended alliance" and a possible "outright acquisition." Forbes reports Napster's takeover value at $3 to $5.

As is often the case in Silicon Valley, Google denied rumors that it was looking to acquire Napster. "No, we have no plans at this time to develop a music store, or to compete with existing online and offline music retailers," said a spokesperson.

Last week Napster released its "sorry results" for last quarter. Napster wouldn't say what it had up its sleeve, but in a conference call with analysts CEO Chris Gorog said the company was optimistic about an upcoming initiative.

On Saturday The Independent ran an article about the music ambitions of Amazon.com and Google and how music executives are eager to work with the two companies in hopes they will loosen Apple's strangehold on digital music. One executive claimed "active communications in the last 60 days" with the two companies, and put Amazon.com ahead of Google in preparedness to launch a store.

Posted by Glenn at 10:56 PM | Link
|Music Industry||Napster||Online Stores/Services|

• As his The Greatest Songs of the Fifties is the top album in America, Barry Manilow and Clive Davis have already started work on hits from the next decade. The collection of hits from the Fifties sold 156,000 copies in its first week of release. (Billboard.com)

• Lou Pearlman, the entrepreneur who has launched the careers of Backstreet Boys and 'N SYNC, announced a new venture into the growing Latin pop market. Trans Continental Latino will develop new talent and recruit established artists. The first artist signed to the new label is bilingual boy band C Note. (I-Newswire)

• Rapper E-40 is teaming up with MySpace.com to promote his new album, My Ghetto Report Card (out March 14th). The social networking site will prominantly feature his video, debut an exclusive video interview, host an album listening party and sponsor a contest that will send the winner to New York to meet with E-40 and Lil' Jon for the listening party. (SOHH.com)

• As always, it'll be interesting to see how the Grammys impacted sales last week. A hint can be found at Amazon.com. The sales ranking of U2's How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb rose to #5 the day after the awards show, compared to #59 the day of the show. Mariah Carey jumped to #33 from #47, and John Legend rose to #6 from #12.

• As digital music stores make it easier to make available more music, it's a good time to ask the question: Is more better? Is it good for the consumer to have an artist's sub-par music, and what does it do to the artist's legacy? Would a deceased artist have wanted the public to hear recordings that were never intended to be officially released? These are questions asked by The Guardian's John L Walters about the upcoming Miles Davis The Cellar Door Sessions 1970 box set. Walters wrote an excellent article, "Kind of Overkill," and talked to people on both sides of the debate.

• The future of marketing campaigns: Subscribers to Verizon's VCast service will get exclusive access to A Capella, a four-song EP from Jaheim. The singer will be featured in VCast's media campaign just as his new album Ghetto Classics hits stores. (Soundslam)

Posted by Glenn at 8:22 AM | Link
|Digital Music||Music Industry|

• Hip hop producer Jay Dee (born James Yancy, pictured), died yesterday. Nobody Smiling just reported the cause of death was complications from lupus, according to Jay Dee's manager. The producer was known for his work The Pharcyde, A Tribe Called Quest, Common and Slum Village. (Read his AllMusic.com bio here.) Stones Throw released his album Donuts, released under the name J Dilla, on February 7th.

• Slash has spilled the beans on the eternally delayed Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy. Though he's no longer in the band, the former GNR guitarist told Christian O'Connell's Virgin Breakfast Show the album is coming out in March and "apparently is sounds great." (Virgin.net)

• Though he's not well known to Americans, but people in other countries are very familiar with Antony Costa through his year with British boy band Blue. Costa has signed a five-album deal with Universal Records and his debut is expected to be released next month. (ITN)

• The Futureheads are wrapping up the recording of News and Tributes, the English quartet's sophomore album. Producer Ben Hillier had the young band in and our of the studio in just five and a half weeks. (NME.com)

• John Cougar Mellencamp to start a 12-date tour on March 30th. The tour is in support of Words & Music, his two-CD greatest hits collection. (Pollstar.com)

• NPR's World Cafe hosted slide guitar/hip hop duo Slo-Mo and its new album My Buzz Comes Back. The group played three songs and talked to host David Dye. It's a fusion definitely worth hearing. (NPR.com)

• They're starting young these days: Fisher-Price to introduce a digital music player for children four and up. (News.com)

Posted by Glenn at 10:39 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

• This just in: Rolf Schmidt-Holtz will replace Andrew Lack as CEO of Sony BMG. Schmidt-Holtz will take over management responsibility while Lack will, according to a joint statement, "will lead the company's public policy and industry initiatives, and assume operating responsibility and oversight for the theatrical film business of Sony BMG."

• Independent distributor CD Baby shows growth in physical and digital sales. Sales in 2005 were $10.3 million for CDs and $3.1 million for digital. (Digital Music News)

• CBS is putting "Love Monkey," a show about a New York-based A&R rep, on indefinite hiatus after only three shows.

Posted by Glenn at 8:54 AM | Link
|Music Industry||Sony BMG|

• Hits on the exec moves at Interscope Geffen A&M involving Ron Fair, Jordan Schur and Polly Anthony.

• Napster released its third quarter earnings yesterday. The Street concentrated on the 5% gain in late trading yesterday after the company reported a smaller than expected loss. The Associated Press focused on what matters: That mess of an income statement. Napster's loss in the quarter was $17 million. The company's press release touted the 66,000 subscribers added in the quarter -- a 110% year-over-year increase. It's a lining, but not very silver.

• A Manchester record label has been given a £75,000 grant to help find the next Arctic Monkeys and create an onine buzz similar to the one that propelled the Monkeys to the top of the charts. If it were that easy there would be more Arctic Monkeys and Clap Your Hands Say Yeahs. But there are only two of them. Money can buy servers and web designers, but it can't buy those rare types of word-of-mouth-buzz that storm out of left field and catch everybody by surprise. (Manchester Evening News)

Posted by Glenn at 11:43 PM | Link
|Music Industry||Universal Music Group|

• On April 4th, recently created Sony BMG label Burgendy Records will release Sing Me Back Home by The New Orleans Social Club, a group that features Ivan Neville, Henry Butler and two founding members of The Meters, Leo Nocentelli and George Porter, Jr. (StarPulse)

• The New York Philharmonic has reached a three-year agreement with Universal Music Group. The two will release one CD per year and four digital albums per year. (Playbill Arts)

• The Flaming Lips' pop culture war.

• Prince's latest marketing stunt: Hiding in his upcoming CD special tickets that will get the ticketholder a private performance at his Minneapolis mansion. (Monsters and Critics)

Posted by Glenn at 9:09 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

It's water cooler day, the day after the Grammy Awards and the time for people to talk about what they thought when Paul McCartney jumped on stage with Linkin Park and Jay-Z, or what they thought of Kanye's ego this year. U2 came away as the big winner, taking the trophy for album of the year (How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb) and song of the year (for "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own") Green Day won record of the year for "Boulevard of Broken Dreams." Mariah Carey

Kelly Clarkson became the first "American Idol" contestant to win a Grammy. She won two, actually: best pop vocal album (Breakaway) and best female pop vocal performance ("Since U Been Gone").

Mariah Carey won three awards but it was John Legend who won for best R&B album (as well as best new artist and best male R&B vocal performance).

The Grammy website has the complete list of winners. Good coverage can be found at the NY Times, MTV.com and Billboard.com.

Posted by Glenn at 9:00 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

The Grammy Awards are tonight. Last night a friend asked me, in all seriousness, "Does anybody really care about the Grammys?" Yes, I told him. Labels care. Whoever wins the top awards tonight (album of the year, male and female solo artists, best new artist, etc) will get a huge sales increase. Instant sales, and bragging rights for as long as they can muster the energy to be boastful. Nominees care. Winners will get to add "Grammy Award-winning" to their bios. You laugh, but these things matter.

Retailers care. It's a chance to sell more music. Getting people to read a music-related article or watch music on TV is always good for music sales. This is the one award that people know. And some viewers will care. Not the jaded, spoiled music industry types who frown upon anything that cheapens the purity of the art form that is their chosen profession. I mean the viewers who don't live and breath music, who look to the Grammys to find out what music is popular and celebrated. The Grammys are, for many, an introduction to new music and a way to build a relationship with an artist. You laugh, but it's true. This is how people pick a few albums to buy out of the neverending stream of lookalikes and soundalikes.

For your Grammy previewing, go to the Grammy page at Yahoo, the official Grammy online partner, or the Grammy page at AOL Music.

Grammy article of note: Chris Faraone of the Boston Herald says Grammy is hip to rap music.

It all sounds grand, but Coolfer would rather go out and see some bands tonight.

Posted by Glenn at 6:47 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

A number of articles have been written on the fragmentation of the music market and the lower sales peaks reached by hit albums. There are a million and one subgenres and sales of hit records just aren't what they used to be. Semi-popularity is easier to grasp, superstar status is less attainable.

BusinessWeek Online's Jon Fine is the latest to chime in on the phenomenom. In "Rockers, Keep Your Day Jobs," Fine compares today's landscape against the star-friendly "symbiosis among rock radio, record labels, and the arena-concert circuit."

"In the 1970s their interplay enabled the emergence of a new class of megastar band like Led Zeppelin. But of nearly equal importance to the music business, it also gave rise to a cadre of second- and third-tier rock bands that, despite critics' complete derision, sold zillions of records."

And today:

Rock radio is increasingly a victim of fragmenting demographics. The sole genre posting sales gains last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan, was Latin. Arena rock shows that once promised spectacle for less than a sawbuck have bloated into elite affairs resembling closed corporate events. ... Today's key entry points for music consumers are iTunes (AAPL ) and ringtones. The former favors singles over albums and thus further unbundles rockers' preferred medium, and the latter is peculiarly inhospitable. None of the top 10 ringtone downloads of 2005 came from rock acts. Hip-hop now owns the artist-as-icon phenomenon."

True true true. The middle class is growing. The ceiling is lower and the floor (with the help of tools like MySpace) is higher. The billion-dollar question is this: What's a successful symbiosis in today's industry?

Posted by Glenn at 6:38 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

• ABC News is reporting that Elliot Spizter's investigation into payola in the music industry is turning its focus toward radio conglomerates. The nine companies that have received subpoenas are Clear Channel, Infinity (now CBS Radio), Entercom, Emmis, Citadel, Cumulus, Cox, Pamal and ABC. "The behavior has been unethical, improper, illegal and a sanction of some severity clearly should be imposed," Spitzer told ABC's Brian Ross. (ABC News)

• Apple introduced a 1 GB Nano and dropped the price on shuffle models. (Digital Music News)

• Though online classical music site Adante.com shuts its doors, NY Times writer Anne Midgette says classical music is thriving on the Internet. "It is just that, like many other things on the Internet, it is not thriving in the form people in the 1990's or early 2000's expected it to take." (NY Times)

• Courtney Love was commended by a Los Angeles judge for her rehab and is currently writing new songs and is often in the studio with Billy Corgan. She plans to enter the studio next month with Linda Perry. (Chart Attack)

• Enslaved will release its next album, Ruun, on May 8th via Tabu. (Blabbermouth)

• Rapper Bubba Sparxxx will drop his third album, The Charm, on April 4th. It will be released on Big Boi's imprint, Purple Ribbon. (RollingStone.com)

Posted by Glenn at 9:13 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Sony and Bertelsmann, the two companies that jointly own music giant Sony BMG, will reportedly swap executives as a solution to their ongoing internal problems. Current CEO Andrew Lack is to switch places with Bertelsmann executive Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, who has long been rumored as Lack's successor.

In his article, The LA TImes' Charles Duhigg points to the internal separations that will continue to exist. "The swap would represent a mixed victory for Lack, who is credited with driving the Sony BMG merger. Insiders say the power struggle has exacerbated the rifts between BMG and Sony Music, which remain separate divisions despite sharing a corporate parent."

Jeff Leeds noted the same in his article for the NY Times: "Even as the two sides have approached an accord, the tumult surrounding the joint venture's management has prompted many inside and outside the company to question whether Sony, the Japanese electronics giant, and Bertelsmann, the German media company, can maintain their relationship in the long term."

Posted by Glenn at 8:21 AM | Link
|Music Industry||Sony BMG|

• This week the French Minister of Culture will address legal P2P before a special parliamentary session. Digital Music News call this gaining steam, but there's a long way to go before a bill is passed. Ken Fisher's opinion on the proposed compulsary license is worth reading.

"A compulsory license to copyrighted material is questionable in terms of fairness to both users and content owners. 'Everyone pays' sounds great to those who make use of P2P, but those that do not are not thrilled at the prospect of paying fees for others' use. I have no problem paying for the content that I want, or better yet, not paying for the content that I don't want. But a compulsory license is, at the end of the day, little different from a tax, and the idea of sending even more tax money to large corporate interests sits uncomfortably with me."

Coolfer wonders if others will frame the P2P debate in this way. Most monies from a compulsary license would go to the very corporate interests that are so loathed by many in the pro-P2P camp. Rather than bring about much change, it could simply prop up the status quo. And will such a system, one that does not allow content owners to opt out, be viewed as fair to artists?

• The LA Times' Charles Duhigg writes and Rock the Vote and says the activist group is $700,000 in debt and currently has a staff of just two. Poor fundraising is one problem. The lack of a president is another. (LA Times)

• The Arctic Monkeys remain atop the UK album chart. Former Verve singer Richard Ashcroft is the current runner up. (Monsters and Critics)

• SunnComm, Sony BMG's company of choice for CD copy protection, has announced it will begin working on removing security flaws from its software. Future versions will include an un-installer and will allow the user to opt out of installing the SunnComm software when the CD is read by the computer. (CD Freaks)

• New Morrissey tracks have been making their rounds through the Internet. Today Pitchfork reviews "I Will See You in Far Off Places" and gives it a weak star-and-a-half rating.

Posted by Glenn at 8:59 AM | Link
|Music Industry||P2P|

• In case you missed it over the weekend, check out the NY Times Sunday Magazine's article on reggaeton superstar Daddy Yankee. (NY Times)

• Bob Dylan begins work on new album. Dylan and five musicians rehearsed material last week at a studio in Poughkeepsie, New York. Recording sessions are said to begin in New York this week. (NME.com)

• James Taylor has returned to the studio to work on a new album. It will be his final release for Columbia Records. (Starpulse.com)

• On April 4th, Rainer Maria will release Catastrophe Keeps Us Together for new label Grunion. (Punknews.org)

• eMusic is now a Soundscan reporter. The online music store claims more than 4.5 monthly downloads. Unlike iTunes, eMusic carries only independent labels and is a subscription service. (For example, a subscriber can get 40 songs a month for $10.) It also gives a free songs to new subscribers (often in quantities of 50). Basically, there's a lot less money behind those 4.5 million downloads than one may expect. The reporting to Soundscan will be accurate, but old methods of putting a dollar value on the scans won't work.

(Image by Naomi Harris for the NY Times)

Posted by Glenn at 8:38 PM | Link
|Music Industry||Sony BMG|

• Lost Highway is proud enough about its five-year existance to put out a press release to trumpet the fact. Job well done, Lost Highway. At the bottom of the page there's some info on some 2006 releases from Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, Lucinda Williams, Tim O'Reagan, and Golden Smog. (PR Newswire)

• Hits is predicting that Barry Manilow is on target to hit #1 tomorrow. Returning to this century, Mary J Blige should take the #2 spot.

• Labels are backing off the DualDisc format. Only one major, reports Billboard's Brian Garrity, is making DualDisc a priority: Sony BMG. Coolfer's take: One has to wonder how long retailers can stock an additional format. As music sales are slumping and music often taking a backseat to DVDs and video games, the DualDisc looks like a prime candidate to get the squeeze.

• Last week Vivendi Universal announced it would buy from Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. its interest in Universal Studio Holdings, a move that will give Vivendi full ownership of Universal Music Group.

• Billboard has details on an upcoming solo album by Jeremy Enigk (Sunny Day Real Estate/Fire Theft). The to-be-titled album will be released this summer on Lewis Hallow Records, a label created by Enigk and his manager, Steve Smith. That label will go through Sony BMG-distributed Reincarnate.

• There will be a new 50 Cent album in July. (Hip Hop Galaxy)

Posted by Glenn at 2:51 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

It's the battle of the companies at the beginning of the phone book (the oldest tactic in the world). In "Can Amazon Catch Apple?" Newsweek's Brad Stone writes about Amazon.com's pending entry into digital music sales and wonders if the online retail behemoth has what it takes to take on Apple.

It's a fine -- though brief -- article that's built around Amazon.com's hesitance in being a first mover in digital music. "I'm comfortable there will be a second, third and fourth generation of digital media services," Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos told Newsweek in 2004. Now that we're in or approaching that second generation, what has Amazon.com got up its sleeve? Coolfer finds this excerpt to be absolutely titilating (bold is mine):

"Customers who buy a CD will receive a digital copy of the album or song, which they can transfer to a portable digital music player. 'It's the most well-thought-out, consumer-conscious strategy I've seen yet for digital music,' says the insider. ... 'They realize that a very significant percentage of their sales are in physical media products that will almost certainly migrate to digital,' says Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney. 'The writing has been on the wall for a long time, and Amazon knows that.'"

It's not like ripping a CD takes a lot of effort, but offering digital tracks to CD buyers could lead to an exciting new strategy. What kind of purely digital plan, if any, will Amazon.com unveil? Coolfer can't wait to see it. Online music is finally getting the kind of competition and innovation that benefits both consumers and labels. The next year or two should be filled with ideas and ventures that will breath life into music.

Posted by Glenn at 2:36 PM | Link
|Apple||Music Industry||Online Stores/Services|

• Warner Music Group's investment in Bad Boy Entertainment is really paying off, isn't it? What music greatness does the label have coming next that's not from a dead rapper? Roger Friedman reported yesterday that Sean "Diddy" Combs just launched a fragrance called "Unbelievable." It certainly is.

• Former RIAA chief Hilary Rosen will start an anti-piracy consultancy group with former IFPI leader Peter Berman. (News.com)

• A poll conducted by Ipsos for the Associated Press and Rolling Stone reveals consumer's opinions about the quality and price of music. Three out of four say CDs are too expensive, and 58% say music is, in general, getting worse. The incredible thing about the Forbes article is that the mythical $20 CD is mentioned. Who pays $20 for a CD? Not any of the millions who shop for music at Wal-Mart, Best Buy or Circuit City. If people think $20 is too much for a CD, they're absolutely right. The problem is that few actually end up paying $20 for the average CD. Another revealing part of the study: FM radio is the main way people find out about new music. Television shows are a "distant" second. (Makes sense. Look at Amazon.com's top sellers and try to find something not related to TV or movies.)

• The LA Times talks about customizable Internet radio station Pandora, which uses the Music Genome Project to recommend songs and create playlists. "For the moment, it's the coolest thing out there," says EMI's Ted Cohen. "The whole idea seems to be to give people just enough interaction so that the listening experience gets better — and it works."

Posted by Glenn at 8:47 AM | Link
|Music Industry|

Maybe it's me, but it seems like there are a lot more music awards these days than there were, say, ten years ago. Everybody wants his/her/their day in the sun. And though most are often viewed as self-serving congratulations, awards do serve valuable purposes. For consumers they expose new music and reaffirm their love of the favorites. For artists they act as savored moments that can boost careers. For labels they're a chance to sell some music. For the press they're an opportunity to critise an egotistical industry (its words, not mine) and their boring awards shows (everybody's words).

And so tonight in New York we have the Plug Independent Music Awards at the famed Webster Hall. Indendent music also has the Shortlist Music Prize, in which the industry nominates albums that have sold less than 500,000 copies.. In the UK there's Q Awards, the Brits and the Mercury Prize (which will definitely be given to the Arctic Monkeys next time around) to name a few.

Next week, on February 8th, is the Grammy Awards, the Oscars of music. On the 9th the articles are sure to read something like this: "The Grammy voters are out of touch with the pulse of the country, and this year's telecast was among the worst ever." A week later Soundscan results will show that droves of Grammy watchers sent sales of winners soaring. This year shoppers may get their Grammy fix on iTunes before the night is even over. Good luck, nominees.

Posted by Glenn at 3:36 PM | Link
|Music Industry|

On Friday Nettwerk Music Group made (some) headlines when it announced it was pay the legal fees of a person sued by the RIAA for suspected copyright infringement. (One of the suspected songs on the defendent's computer was by Nettwerk artist MC Lars.)

Digital Music News adds a new wrinkle to the story this morning. Nettwerk CEO Terry McBridge was a host on Bob Lefsetz's radio program on 97.1 KLSX in Los Angeles, it reports, and told the audience he has since been contacted by several executives who would like to join his cause. The end goal, says the post, is to "shame" the RIAA and bring an end to the lawsuits against consumers.

Who these executives are and how public they will be in their opposition is the million dollar question. The unified front is obviously cracking, but who will show their faces?

Read Lefsetz's 1/27 post about Nettwerk and McBride, as well as commentary from producer Bob Ezrin.

Posted by Glenn at 9:36 AM | Link
|Music Industry||P2P|