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Although she wasn’t in the cast, the gobby 26 year old got stuck right into the spirit of audience participation. During a production of Cinderella at the Milton Keynes Ambassador Theatre, she yelled obscenities at the stage, supposedly including “f**k Cinders, Prince Charming, marry me”, and calling the Ugly Sisters “b***hes.” Presumably following this with bouts of laughter at her own innovative genius and wit. After being asked to leave by front of house staff, she was ejected kicking and screaming from the building by manager Richard Pound, and proceeded to assault him, now being due to appear at a Magistrates court, charged with common assault. Apparently she’d been drinking, but she was in Milton Keynes, so that seems understandable.
Beat that for attention seeking behaviour, Lady Gaga!
MJ’s life was hardly free of controversy, but it seems that a good deal of weirdness was covered up until he died of Propofol intoxication, allegedly maliciously induced by his doctor. Such malicious intent was not unique; in documents just released by the FBI, a man named Frank Paul Jones claimed to be entitled to half of the ‘Thriller’ singer’s estate (why he was making this claim isn’t exactly clear) and when no one responded to his threats, he said he would target President George Bush Senior [so it was probably becuase he was a loon then...].
The letter said: ‘I’ll commit mass murder at a Michael Jackson concert if necessary, in an attempt to murder Michael, then you will have to deal with my situation in the public.’ [Definitely a loon] “Michael Jackson I will personally attempt to kill, if he doesn’t pay me my money.”
Another letter stated: ‘I decided that because nobody is taking me serious that I am going to Washington to threaten to kill the President of the United States. [And there's the cherry on top]
Why an attempt to murder anyone would possibly encourage them to write you into their inheritance is difficult to fathom, as is how Jackson could engender such hatred in his enfeebled state.
Paul Resnikoff of Digital Music News today posted this article on his blog, making the radical suggestion that the majors should seriously consider ditching CD’s as a major sales format, and concentrating on digital, thereby divesting themselves of the whole distribution network necessary to sell them. If they just stopped pressing CD’s all the shops, warehouses, trucks, box packers and smiling counter staff would suddenly become obsolete, bad for the truck drivers, and bad for the record companies in the short term, as they’d lose that income stream – but would such a ruthless move be good for the majors in the long run?
Looking at the storage formats that have waxed and waned over the history of recorded music, the eventual demise of compact discs seems inevitable; from wax cylinders to minidiscs, everything is replaced by a more convenient alternative. Even though this shift from physical to digital is a big one for the human mind to wrap itself around “But where is my actual music? My computer looks just the same as before” This will hold true of the CD just as it did of the horse-drawn carriage; people will stand around scratching their heads for a while and bemoaning the loss of work for farriers and the fall in the price of oats, but eventually we’ll all get used to having our music stored in a cufflink, or beamed into our brains from our mobile phone or whatever else is in store for us, and the CD will become what vinyl is now – a charming reminder of a less convenient, more physical age. Those companies that accept the decline of physical media and look towards maximising the advantages of digital music distribution (minescule distribution costs, instant worldwide availability, no cumbersome physical infrastructure etc. etc.) will be the ones that dominate the new era, and those that keep clinging to the old technology, will lose out in the future, no matter how strongly entrenched the current hardware seems.
iTunes has announced that they have launched a new store in Mexico. Thus, if you select to have your music distributed via RouteNote and then select the USA store, your music will not only go to the USA but also Canada and now Mexico.
This will be live in the coming weeks.
RouteNote Team
Bob Dylan has never been a fan of digital music services, but this week he has pointed the finger directly at music streaming services. Over the past few days his back catalogue has been pulled from sites like we7 and Spotify, as Dylan takes issue with those who are sharing his music with their users. An instruction was issued by his US reps, through Sony, asking sites to prove they have the right to put the material up.
Clive Gardiner, we7’s digital music SVP, said: “We took it off the site a few days ago. Spotify would have had the same instruction. But it may be a short listing and it may come back again.
“There are some artists that will take umbrage at this from time to time. We expect this sort of thing, especially with streaming, and it not being fully understood where it sits yet. “
I still find it funny how major artists and their record labels still arent understand the concept behind music streaming services and technology in general. Dont they understand that music is slowly heading towards free and that the artist will be paid royalties in the same way as radio stations pay royalties?
Has European music startup Spotify finally worked out the online music business? Rumors surfaced today that the company is raising a new round of financing of $50 million or so, at valuation of $250 million.
The new financing will bring in new “strategic” investors, which include rights holders in other geographic locations, according to our source. And while new investors are balking at the $250 million valuation, strong demand from venture capitalists is supposedly driving this deal to a close.
The company has yet to launch in the U.S., but boasts 2 million UK users, its biggest market. They are also launched in Germany and Sweden. Users can listen to music for free on a downloaded application with advertising, or pay a premium fee to remove the ads. Some labels are supposedly making more money now from Spotify than iTunes in the markets the service is available.
We have previously reported on the U.S launch as well as their upcoming iphone application.
Other sources that are confirming the investment include: techcrunch, venturebeat, paidcontent, arcticstartup and musically.
Music Ally has reported that over 445,000 people illegally downloaded the new U2 album. All these downloaded were alleged to happen between the 18th of February till the 3rd of March from BitTorrent sites.
The chart supplied by the company shows the spike in downloads following the album’s leak in February, apparently due to it being accidentally made available for sale on an Australian digital music store ahead of its official release on 2nd March.
The debate is always would these people have purchased the album if it wasn’t leaked on BitTorrent clients? No one can really answer that question, but I’m sure that certain sales would have happened because of this.
Overall this does make me think that the claims of the Pirate Bay in the last couple weeks that “80 percent of all their torrents are legal”, cant be true.
Here at RouteNote we were lucky enough to get some great press over the weekend from Digital Noise. Digital Noise is a digital music news site from CNet (owners of Download.com, TV.com and more).
CD Baby and Tunecore already offer digital distribution through iTunes and other stores, but both of them charge you money whether you make a sale or not. In contrast, U.K.-based RouteNote charges you nothing until you make a sale, at which point they take a 10 percent cut of whatever the store pays out.
Specifics: CDBaby charges you a one-time set-up fee of $35 (which covers setting up a store for physical CDs as well), then takes 9 percent of digital download revenues. TuneCore, which does digital distribution only (no CDs) charges you $20 a year for each album they stock, but takes no cut. So on a straight numbers basis, RouteNote’s a better deal than CD Baby for digital-only distribution, and a better deal than TuneCore if you expect to sell low volumes of downloads. Of course, there are a lot of other factors to consider, like customer service and speed of submission to iTunes and the other stores, but RouteNote looks like it’s worth checking out.
You can check out the full article here.
It’s been another record breaking month for sales as RouteNote.com grows from strength to strength.
Sales statistics for January 2009 have now been finalised, so be sure to check in on how your music is doing!
A big thank you to all account holders for your continued support and patience whilst we continue to close deals and develop the website.
Signed,
The RouteNote Team
RouteNote is an online music distribution service that provies artists with instant access to a large proportion of the online market.
Using RouteNote is simple: artists upload tracks to the RouteNote catalogue and enter into a non exclusive agreement permitting RouteNote to distribute their music. They then select the outlets they want their music available on and within moments their songs are available for purchase across a range of sites. RouteNote’s cut is highly competitive, with the company taking only 10% of each sale.
The service is aimed at independent musicians looking at ways of distributing their music, and offers a variety of promotional support tools as well. Distribution partners include Napster, Snocap, Samsung Mobile and iTunes.
It’s a neat middle-man service with great rates targeting an interesting niche. If you’re an unsigned muso looking for a leg up, RouteNote is worth a look.
http://www.inquisitr.com/745/routenote-offers-online-music-distribution/
Although she wasn’t in the cast, the gobby 26 year old got stuck right into the spirit of audience participation. During a production of Cinderella at the Milton Keynes Ambassador Theatre, she yelled obscenities at the stage, supposedly including “f**k Cinders, Prince Charming, marry me”, and calling the Ugly Sisters “b***hes.” Presumably following this with bouts of laughter at her own innovative genius and wit. After being asked to leave by front of house staff, she was ejected kicking and screaming from the building by manager Richard Pound, and proceeded to assault him, now being due to appear at a Magistrates court, charged with common assault. Apparently she’d been drinking, but she was in Milton Keynes, so that seems understandable.
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