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Prince Does It Again And Others Will Likely Follow
July 20, 2007
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"Music fans spend much of their day, if not their life, sitting in front of their computer, discovering and downloading music. Today's power brokers no longer work in the steel-and-glass towers of the traditional record business; instead, they're tech geeks, bedroom bloggers and Silicon Valley visionaries." -- BLENDER magazine editor-in-chief Craig Marks this week in the article referenced below, 'Jobs Tops List Of Online Music 'Powergeeks'.
A few years ago (2004 to be exact), Prince angered a whole bunch of music industry people when he decided to give away a "Musicology" CD with the purchase of a concert ticket. He also made it available commercially via his Web site, www.npgmusicclub.com, and the disc was in record stores at a later date.
This week the news was all over the web about Prince's latest CD, "Planet Earth," being distributed in the Sunday edition of London' DAILY MAIL newspaper. (See the story below: "Prince CD Angers Music Industry")
Sunday circulation of the MAIL is estimated to be between two to three million. That's approximately how many copies of Prince's new album was distributed in one day. In essence, Prince sold a couple of million albums in one day! Not a bad day for the "Purple One" at all. The financial information about how much the MAIL paid Prince for this deal was not disclosed, but I would imagine Prince got a nice big fat check.
Prince's label, SONY/BMG, decided to pull the album from its UK release after Prince announced this deal. I'm guessing Prince expected that and doesn't really care. At a time when CD sales are dropping precipitously all over the globe, he took matters into his own hands and did what he thought was best. He's also giving the CD away to people who purchase concert tickets to any of his 21 London area concert dates. As of this moment, he's reportedly already sold over 200,000 tickets. Add the concert money he'll earn to the money he received from the SUNDAY MAIL deal, and you can see how loud his cash register is ringing. Lots of CDs sold, lots of concert tickets sold.
Many now see this as the beginning of the end for record labels in the UK. Such deals could make a label obsolete. But, not every artist has the stature and legacy of Prince and others who have made similar deals. Labels are going to have to work harder to establish and develop new talent if they want to stay in business - especially because the next generation of artists are, as it says above in the quote, "tech geeks, bedroom bloggers and Silicon Valley visionaries."
What is certain is this: Established artists with a legacy of great music can make more money by taking a label out of the picture entirely. New distribution methods are needed and artists are seeking them now. (Just ask Paul McCartney about his Starbuck's deal) Could Sony/BMG have shipped 2-3 million CDs to retail in one day and guaranteed Prince a paycheck for that? Of course not.
If anybody in the business is angered by what Prince did, they should first ask themselves what they would do if they were in his shoes. All he did was what any artist should be doing: He made the best deal possible in a fast-changing music retail environment.
Whether industry people are angered or not, this won't be the last deal done this way. Other artists will now wake up and see the opportunities that exist for them outside of traditional label distribution.
AS I WAS SAYING...
I did a search of my archived commentaries, and found the word RIAA several hundred times in dozens of articles written over the past five years.
Most of those articles have been critical of the RIAA's do-nothing-except-file-lawsuit policies that have done nothing to help the industry the association allegedly serves. (And it's five years and I'm still waiting for anybody to e-mail and defend the RIAA and talk about what they've actually done to help the industry through these tough times)
This week, RIAA defendant Deborah Foster was granted an attorney fee award of $68,685.23, as the result of extended and delayed legal issues. US District Court Judge Lee R. West actually granted the award months ago, but now it includes a specific dollar value. Ms. Foster originally demanded the fees after the RIAA dropped its claim in Capitol v. Foster, and instead focused their energies on Deborah's daughter, Amanda. Deborah claimed no infringement liability, and argued that the label trade group subjected her to unnecessary fees. The court agreed, and rendered its decision this past Monday.
This is the first attorneys fee award against the RIAA. (You can read the entire decision here: http://tinyurl.com/2nrs82 ) But now the tide has turned, and it's likely that others now might fight similar cases against the RIAA. Which means, of course, the RIAA risks spending more time in court, but this time defending itself, not the industry.
With this precedent in place, the RIAA now has to decide if the risks of filing future lawsuits against alleged illegal downloaders are really worth it.
The answer, of course, is NO. The lawsuits have not accomplished a thing. Even if they win some lawsuits, the RIAA loses by their inaction to do anything else more meaningful at a most critical time.
Prince CD Giveaway Angers Music Industry
Prince is shaking up music industry people again. Several years ago he upset many when he gave away copies of his album with the purchase of concert tickets.
Now he plans to give away copies of his new album "Planet Earth" in the London DAILY MAIL newspaper's Sunday edition and is again giving it free to holders of tickets to his 21 London concert dates in August and September. It has led Sony BMG U.K., Prince's local label, to pull the plug on its own sales release of the CD in Britain.
Read more about it by clicking here.
20 Albums That Defined An Era
The times were volatile. Race riots plagued the nation. The Vietnam War was escalating. China set off its first H-bomb. But 1967 also brought the Summer of Love, a season of tie-dyed hippies, counterculture empowerment and (mostly) psychedelic soundtracks from one of music's most fertile years.
Forty years later, USA TODAY music critics reassess 20 albums that set the tone then and still serve as potent reminders of the era's artistic and social combustion.
Read more about it by clicking here.
In England Young Music Fans Ditch Downloads And Spark Vinyl Revival
· Sales of 7-inch singles rise by 13% in first half of year
· New bands and collectors turning to old formatThe format was supposed to have been badly wounded by the introduction of CDs and killed off completely by the iPod-generation that bought music online. But in a rare case of cheerful news for the record labels, the latest phenomenon in a notoriously fickle industry is one nobody dared predict: a vinyl revival. Latest figures show a big jump in vinyl sales in the first half of this year, confirming the anecdotal evidence from specialist shops throughout the UK.
Read more about it by clicking here.
Steve Jobs Tops List Of Online Music 'Powergeeks'
Steve Jobs has been crowned as the undisputed king of the online music revolution by BLENDER magazine. Jobs, the father of the iPod, topped a list of the 25 most influential people in Web music, dubbed the "The Powergeek 25." BLENDER, a U.S. music magazine, compiled the list to show who is reshaping the way people listen to, buy and watch music.
"Music fans spend much of their day, if not their life, sitting in front of their computer, discovering and downloading music," BLENDER editor-in-chief Craig Marks said in a statement. "Today's power brokers no longer work in the steel-and-glass towers of the traditional record business; instead, they're tech geeks, bedroom bloggers and Silicon Valley visionaries."
Internet Looms In New Hollywood Contract Talks
With Hollywood bracing for a season of possible labor strife, screenwriters sat down with studio executives Monday for contract talks expected to partly hinge on how the Internet has altered show business. The two sides also are likely to clash over industry proposals to revamp the decades-old system by which television and film writers are paid extra when their work goes beyond an initial broadcast or theatrical release and into reruns or onto DVDs.
Read more about it by clicking here.
Review: Sprint's Sweet New Music Phone
Who said you have to drop a bundle to put a sleek, new music phone in your pocket? The silly-named Muziq LX570 is no iPhone, but it is Sprint's best music phone so far, costs one-fifth the price of Apple's groundbreaking phone (4GB version), and does a bunch of things the iPhone doesn't do. Sure, it doesn't have the iPhone's amazing touch-screen interface, but hey, what do you expect for $100?
Read more about it by clicking here.
Why HD DVD and Blu-ray Need You To Be an Early Adopter Now
From www.avrev.comNo consumer who loves his or her home theater, or just watching movies or sports in HDTV, ever wanted an HD disc format war of any kind. All AV enthusiasts remember the epic battle between VHS and Beta, but saw a mainly positive outcome: the birth of the modern home theater movement, with a little help from our more "adult" friends in the San Fernando Valley. When the music industry began to decline in the mid to late-1990s, the next format war, between high-resolution audio formats like SACD and DVD-Audio, resulted in no winner. Record labels, seeing no need to take responsibility for selling music in a way that sounded better, simply picked the lowest lying fruit, selling songs by the download. This gave birth to Apple Computer's iTunes music store, the first real player in PC convergence, as a low-resolution, power broker in the music business. Anyone who spent the money to invest in a DVD-Audio, SACD, or a "universal" player to see only a few titles released in high resolution, is surely wary of yet another format war.
Read more about it by clicking here.
THIS WEEK'S 'WHO CARES?' NEWS ITEMS
ITEM #1: Victoria Beckham (a.k.a. Posh Spice) and soccer-star husband David arrived in Los Angeles this week. Based on the absolutely lukewarm reception to both, the extensive media hype didn't work for either of them.
ITEM #2: NBC announced that NBA star LeBron James will host the season premiere of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE when the show returns this fall. Does anybody still watch this show?
CONGRATS
CONGRATS #1 TO: The Killers' front man and lead singer Brandon Flowers. He and his wife, Tana, welcomed their first child Saturday, a baby boy whose name has not yet been released.
CONGRATS #2 TO: To Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who now can claim a 54-year span of No. 1 hits on the Billboard charts. (To find out why go to www.billboard.com and click on Fred Bronson's 'Chartbeat' column )
CONGRATS #3 TO: To David Chase and the entire "Sopranos" crew on their 15 Emmy nominations for the series' final season
NEW CARRIE
Carrie Underwood's follow-up to her record-breaking, Grammy-winning, multi-platinum debut (currently five million, heading to six), "Some Heart" has been slated for an Oct. 23rd release. "Some Hearts" has been on the charts since its release in 2005.
LENNON'S GLASSES UP FOR AUCTION
A pair of round, gold-rimmed sunglasses worn by John Lennon is up for auction through July 31 on British website 991.com, with bidding reportedly already skyrocketing as high as $1.5 million. The glasses were in the hands of Japanese television producer Junishi Yore, who worked as a translator for the Beatles in 1966 and received them from Lennon as a gift. When the musician was murdered in 1980, Yore pushed the lenses from the frame in accordance with a Japanese tradition that calls for the glass to be displaced so the soul can see in the afterlife.
BRITNEY WILL OPEN LAX
Britney Spears will host the opening of LAX nightclub in Las Vegas next month, a club rep tells PEOPLE magazine. LAX, whose investors reportedly include Christina Aguilera and Nicole Richie's former fiancé DJ AM, opens Aug. 31 in the Luxor Hotel.
KARAOKE REIGNS
NBC's "Singing Bee," the network's new karaoke-based competition, debuted at #1 last week with 13.3 million viewers. As a result, the show was given a spot on the fall schedule.
SHREK DOUGH MEANS MORE
DreamWorks is planning a fifth and final film in the Shrek franchise, to be produced after the fourth Shrek film is released in 2010, according to studio boss Jeffrey Katzenberg. "Shrek the Third" has already brought in $643 million and counting at the worldwide box office since its May release.
WELL, OK, IF THAT'S THE CASE, EXPLAIN THE LOONEY BEHAVIOR
This week on the "Today" show, Paula Abdul denied that she's ever been drunk in her life, and claimed she limits her alcohol consumption to "an occasional sip of wine or drink that has an umbrella on it and sugar." She also dismissed rumors that she's addicted to painkillers, saying that they don't work for her and that she relies on biogenic medicine to curb her pain from multiple spinal surgeries.
CURB YOUR MARRIAGE
Laurie David has filed for divorce from Larry David (of 'Seinfield' fame and now, 'Curb Your Enthusiasm') after 14 years of marriage, citing irreconcilable differences as the reason for the split.
A LESS EXPENSIVE iPHONE?
Rumors are rampant that Apple will release a less expensive iPhone to the marketplace before year end. Stay tuned.
Quotes of the week
"I do respect him, but I don't want to barbecue with him. We don't braid each other's hair. And, despite the rumors, he is nowhere near a father figure."
-- Kelly Clarkson to USA WEEKEND magazine on her relationship with RCA record chief Clive Davis, of whom she admits she is "not a fan." Will someone somewhere kindly tell Kelly to just shut the hell up? She's starting to sound as obnoxious as Rosie O'Donnell."Maybe after having kids, if my boobs dropped down to my belly button, I would get them lifted ... Maintenance. But you know, my boobs are real."
-- Jessica Simpson. Gee, how unusual--a Hollywood babe who says she's willing to have plastic surgery."I think they have this impression that I'm this miserable cow who doesn't smile. But I'm actually quite the opposite. ... I'm going to try and smile more for America."
-- Spice Girl "Posh" Victoria Beckham. We don't really care Victoria. You just ain't that big a deal."All of the going out he did after we broke up sort of shocked me. When we were together, he hated stuff like that, so I felt like I didn't really know him as well as I thought I did."
-- Hilary Duff, on Good Charlotte lead singer and ex-boyfriend Joel Madden. Did you expect him to sit at home and do nothing, Hilary? Uh, maybe, just maybe, he didn't hate doing stuff like that, but he hated doing it with you."The D.C. madam says that David Vitter sometimes paid $300 an hour just to have the hookers talk to him. Gave them $300 . . . didn't have sex. Another example of government waste!"
-- Jay Leno"I didn't have this tremendous sense of guilt, because I hadn't hurt anyone. Had I physically harmed someone or caused harm to a human being, I think it would have been an entirely different experience."
-- Winona Ryder in Vogue magazine, talking about her December 2001 arrest for shoplifting from the Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue, for which she was subsequently convicted of grand theft. So then crimes that don't involve a person being harmed are not that big a deal and don't carry that much guilt? Way to go, Wyona. Great example of what NOT to say in interviews.
The B-Side - 'Blips'
THE ONION (www.theonion.com) STORY OF THE WEEK:
No One Admits To Singing, Writing, Producing Nation's No. 1 Song
LOS ANGELES-As of Monday, the CD single "Baby Baby (Luvya Girl)" has rocketed to the top of the BILLBOARD Hot 100 on its debut week, despite the fact no one has claimed credit for singing, composing, or producing it.
The single's success marks a rare occasion in which both critics and the music industry find themselves in agreement, as magazines such as SPIN call "Baby Baby" "a wasteland" and "creatively brain-dead," and major recording labels such as Interscope and Sony BMG distance themselves from it.
"This is a first in modern recording history," BILLBOARD Magazine writer Jim Shapiro said. "Even third-place American Idol contestants and Diddy have not come forward as the creators, though it's obviously a solid hit and could make them a lot of bank."
Read the rest and laugh here: http://tinyurl.com/2u7act.
The Blogs
Check out a great blog (that I contribute commentary to) by Jerry Del Colliano, the Director Executive Programs, Clinical Professor Music Industry & Recording Arts, at the Thornton School of Music,University of Southern California, by clicking here: http://www.insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com.
Box Office
Check The Daily & Weekly Box Office (and more film info) at: www.boxofficemojo.com.
TinyURL
Check out www.tinyurl.com where you can make a smaller URL that will work for any webpage you wish to link to or reference. (As you can see, I'm using it in my news stories above!)
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