HMV is increasing it’s investments in the live music business. Having entered into partnership with Luminar to cross promote between live venues and their music store, and having operated a joint venture with MAMA in the same manner for just over a year, they have succeeded in obtaining just over 56% of shares in MAMA, giving them a controlling stake, and another place to promote their own artists and keep an eye on up and coming artists.
HMV
is one high street music chain that has thus far survived the decimation that has killed off Zavvi, Fopp, and other music retailers, and Luminar is a behind the scenes operator of a large group of nightclubs across the UK. According to a report in the Times ‘the two companies are discussing the possibility of setting up a small number of pilots that would involve HMV stores and Luminar clubs cross-marketing to each others’ customers.’ This seems like a smart move on HMV’s part, taking a few more of their eggs out of the physical retail market. In the light of the proposed deal between Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which if approved would sweep the board on high level gigs, it makes sense for mid level venues to start tying in with big players in the music industry for some marketing support, thereby providing another route to heavliy promoted artists, and safeguarding their territory from downward incursion.
HMV already has its own record label, and close ties into live venues, which are proving more resistant to the general slump in the music market than physical record sales.
American South rock legends Lynyrd Skynyrd have announced plans for their UK 2010 tour.
Be it a limited amount of dates, it will the first time the band have played in the UK since the release of their album ”Gold and Guns” earlier this year.
Tickets go on sale at the end of this week on, Friday the 13th, and are available from Ticketwise.com. Dates for the tour, all of which are in March, are below.
It has been reported over at Techcrunch that UK music retailer HMV has announced at its AGM that they will be buying a 50 percent stake in online music retailer 7Digital for £7.7 million. The move looks set to give HMV a ‘great leap forward’ in digital, since 7Digital has been fleet of foot in pushing non-DRM MP3s, open formats and signed deals with tech rock stars like Spotify. CEO Ben Drury, CTO James Kane and other managers are staying on and will be joined by three more from HMV on the JV board.
HMV Group will now use the five year-old 7Digital as its sole supplier for “all of its existing digital operations” in the UK and Canada. 7Digital will also be used to build a new e-books and audiobooks store for HMV’s Waterstones subsidiary, an area previously untouched by 7Digital. HMV’s own effort, GetCloser.com, has bombed, so this deal probably couldn’t come soon enough.
It is great to see that HMV is actually trying new model and markets. It was even reported a month or so ago that HMV had signed their first ever band to a record label, The Boxer Rebellion.
Morrisey is passionately asking fans NOT to buy albums/singles.
Hitting the shelves late this year will be a box sets dedicated to Morriseys/Smiths music, “the singles 7″ 89′-91′ “released on October 12th. Twinned by a the HMV/Parlophone singles 91′-95′ on November 2nd. Both sets will contain around 9 (according to the NME) 7″ singles complete with B sides and with the optional original packagin.
However an statement has been issued by Morrissey regarding a royalty crisis:
Morrissey would like it to be known that he has not been consulted by EMI/HMV/Parlophone with regards to two forthcoming boxed sets of Morrissey singles. Morrissey does not approve such releases and would ask people not to bother buying them. Morrissey receives no royalty payments from EMI for any back catalogue, and has not received a royalty from EMI since 1992. Morrissey also does not approve of, and was not consulted on, the Rhino box of Smiths CDs, or the Warner releases of Smiths LPs on 180 gramme vinyl. Morrissey last received a royalty payment from Warners ten years ago, and, once again, he would ask people not to bother buying the reissued LPs or CDs.
But there is an enormous amount of fans of either Morrissey or just music in general that don’t necessarily feel that anything wrong has occurred. Rumours are flying that Morrissey signed a contract to release royalty rights to the mentioned distributers, for a large undisclosed figure and cannot acctually claim rights for Smiths music between 1989-95.
RouteNote though, for what its worth are with Morrissey. What do you think?
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