Archive for: record label
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.
We’re big fans of Fink, one of Ninja Tune’s artists – if you are too, then you’ll be interested to see that he’s got a free, previously unreleased download of a B-side track that didn’t make it onto ‘Sort Of Revolution’ up on his site at the moment. You will need to swap him your email for it though…
Ad-supported music and digital content service Guvera has set the date for going live in the States as 30th March. The service, named for the bloody-handed revolutionary icon Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara [wiki here, tl;dr we should all strive for personal fulfilment and be nice communists, but sometimes it's ok to shoot people in the head if they betray you] – aims to instigate a ‘revolution’ in the media industry by getting advertisers to pay for content delivered to consumers, who have chosen the advertiser whose branding they find least offensive/interruptive. This may not be quite the paradigm shift that they seem to think, but their beta service has been up and running for a couple of months in Australia now, and has been successful enough for them to roll out the full scale launch. They have deals in place with Universal Music Group, EMI Music and IODA offering consumers ‘free but paid for’ legal downloads from their full music libraries, but concerns abound as to whether they’ll be able to pay for them in the long term and on the grand scale that they hope for. Another streaming service in the States means that Spotify, bogged down making their platform profitable in Europe, will find the marketplace that bit more crowded if and when they finally get their stall laid out in the US, but they will have had the headstart in refining the user experience and gathering advertisers to their service. There is a future for online ad-supported music streaming, the appetite is strongly apparent, but it will be a hotly contested race to become the dominant provider, and Guvera have yet to prove themselves against the competition.
In a competition that opened on the 1st, Guitar Center is offering the chance to have Guns n’ Roses Slash write, record and perform on a 3 track EP with you. The prize is more than that:
· A 3-song E.P. produced by legendary producer Mike Clink (Guns N’ Roses, Megadeth, Mötley Crüe)
· Slash will write, record and perform on your single
· A management development deal with “The Collective” (the team behind Linkin Park, Slash & Avenged Sevenfold)
· Feature of your single on iTunes
· World-wide digital distribution of your music through Tunecore
· $10,000 Guitar Center shopping spree
· $10,000 in new gear and endorsement deals from Ernie Ball Music Man
· The opening slot on Slash’s Monster Energy Bash
· An editorial feature on your band in Guitar World magazine
Whether or not you think Slash will fit into your J-Pop band, or be able to enhance the sound of your folk band, the experience and connections of a man who’s been at the top of the music industry for the last 25 years is going to be invaluable, and the publicity generated from the win, let alone the efforts of the management team will push you into a new league. Submit your music through the competition website here. Just read that contract.
After the success of the Christmas No.1, Rage Against the Machine, anti-X-Factor facebook campaign, a lot of copycat campaigns have sprung up attempting to achieve the same effect, and get specifically unknown music into the charts. The most ambitious of them has got to be ‘Storm The Charts’, which intends to place an indie musician at each slot of the UK Top 40. Currently the mainstream charts are devoid of ‘interesting’ music not becuase music fans don’t buy music, but because their tastes are far more varied than those of the people that buy chart music; those who are swayed by the marketing methods of the Big 4, and what’s pumped (pimped) through the TV on a Saturday night. Bringing disparate fans together for high profile campaigns is only a short term ’statement’ trying to get the attention of the industry and asking them to pay more attention to smaller artists, but it’s hard to see how the major labels can defocus their marketing budgets and make the same kind of impact for a wider range of smaller acts. Nevertheless, it’s something we’d like to see happen, and if enough noise is made, then it might further persuade the industry that the broadening of music consumption that is apparent online should be mirrored in the mainstream. This would have the knock on effect of encouraging them in their efforts to monetise content online, and mean that we’re all more likely to see viable legal alternatives to the file-sharing that’s so widely prevalent, and widely blamed for causing the steep decline in physical sales.
If you’re interested in participating in the campaign, however Quixotic it may seem, you can get more details by clicking onto, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=231943888357 – the main Facebook group, or www.myspace.com/stormthecharts.
Does your brain need scrubbing out after the weekend? Then you’ll be interested to note that Mancunian electronic artists Autechre have announced that they’ll be releasing a new album. Their music is a crushed up, jangling, unsettled and deeply atmospheric mix of glitchy, static sounding samples and electronic noises, sometimes over soothing synth lines and drum beats seemingly recorded over a telephone mic, sometimes blended with a brooding black wall of noise. Released and distributed through Warp on the 22nd of March, Oversteps will be Autechre’s tenth full album in a career that spans almost twenty years (their first single and EP were released in ‘91 – make you feel old?). Tracklisting as follows, but if you can make head or tail of it you’re a better man than me:
Oversteps:
01 r ess
02 ilanders
03 known(1)
04 pt2ph8
05 qplay
06 see on see
07 Treale
08 os veix3
09 O=0
10 d-sho qub
11 st epreo
12 redfall
13 krYlon
14 Yuop
There are a lot of fresh tracks (some with less than 1,000 plays) up on their white-on-white myspace page (drag highlight it if you want to actually read anything) but none of them seem to feature on the new album listing.
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.
Guy Ritchie may have split from pop Empress Madonna, but there’s still plenty of room for music in his life. The 42 year old director has clearly been spending a lot of his time (and doubtless his $50 million divorce settlement) as a newly single man in the pub he owns. As well as developing a line of new beers that he plans to market, he’s also starting up a record label to promote the pub’s house band – imaginitively named ‘The Punchbowl Band’, after the pub where they reside. Justin Timberlake is a fan of theirs, having previously performed with them; “Jamming with the guys was the best fun I have ever had without a woman.” Quipped the scruffy faced ex N’Sync member.
I suppose we should look out for the pub band on the soundtrack of the upcoming Lobo comic book conversion…
http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/news/guy-ritchie-to-direct-dc-comics-lobo-neilm.php
You know what time of year it is… and since it’s been a while since we posted anything about Lady Gaga, here’s a Christmas Carol, barbershop version of her song ‘Bad Romance’, from a strange group of people called the ‘Cherry Tree Singers’. Cherry Tree is a sub label of Universal’s whose roster includes Feist, Sting, Tokio Hotel and Lady G, so I’m guessing that these are label employees that have recorded an office sing-song of their more famous client’s releases. Consider this a taster for tomorrow’s upcoming Xmas playlist. [I know. I'm sorry.]
Click here for the video.
Warner Music Group just posted their Annual 10K with the SEC (click on the thumbnails to enlarge). Revenues are down, and the company has posted a -$77 million dollar loss for the year: double what they lost last year (-$35 million), but better than they did in ‘05 (-$110 million). They’ve managed to shave 5% off their administrative costs, and there’s a marked increase in their digital revenues, up from $599MM to $656MM, which nevertheless fails to cover the drop in lost physical sales. Really it’s the same story we’ve been hearing from the majors for the last few years – the focus is gradually shifting across to digital music, and physical revenues are dwindling away, meaning that the big 4 are making less money and having to downsize their infrastructure. I’m absolutely convinced that after a period of shrinking like this, the big guys will return to profitability, and the quicker they shift their focus across to maximising digital and live revenues, the quicker this will happen.
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:
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