Archive for: investment

Charlotte Church Lands £2 Million Record Deal

The not-so-cherubic singer has signed with music investment group Power Amp, a fund that specialises in “providing equitable finance for established artists to record and market new music.” The deal will provide her with the funds to record and produce a new album independently, in return for revenues from all aspects of Charlotte’s music career:

“Rather than investing in an artists record only, Power Amp invests in all areas of an artists career: recording, publishing, touring, merchandising and sponsorship etc.”

Which sounds pretty much like a 360 deal to us. Madonna’s got one, so why shouldn’t Charlotte Church? She’s quoted on the FT as saying:

‘[The deal] provides me with a financial commitment equivalent to that of a major record company but with a much greater degree of control and ownership over my career’

Fair enough, if you’ve got national profile and the experience of releasing an album with a major label under your belt – C.C. released her previous album with Sony BMG – and the trend certainly seems to be towards self releasing music and working with independent digital music distributors like us here at RouteNote, which we obviously welcome. At any rate, why Ms. Church needs to borrow the money from an investment group rather than funding herself is a little mysterious… Perhaps her fee for being a chat show host wasn’t quite as astronomically high as Clarkson’s.

Major Label Video Site Vevo Received Investment from Abu Dhabi Media

Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and the other two major labels (who are expected to join Vevo before it launches), plus Google, have found the key investor they have been looking for: Abu Dhabi Media, owned by the Abu Dhabi government.

The Abu Dhabi Media company has been reported to have bought in to the service on a pre-launch value of $300 million. Google is also involved, in that it will operate the back-end of the site in return for a share of revenue, but does not own part of Vevo.

Obviously the $300 million valuation seems very high for a site that is yet to launch, but Vevo is no ordinary site. Vevo will easily become the worlds largest site for music videos online and with a large majority of YouTube’s views coming via music videos, it is surely going to be a hit. I really just hope Vevo ties in the videos nicely with purchasing options such as iTunes and Amazon, as well as giving artists the option to place whatever advertising they want next to their videos.