Music Business/Management DB

Month: August

Full Text:

Jingles have made a comeback to the forefront of many advertising campaigns today. Wrigley had recently commissioned Ne-Yo, Chris Brown, and Julianne Hough to remix its jingles for Big Red, Double Mint, and Juicy Fruit, respectively. Julian Casablancas of the Strokes, Pharrell of the Neptunes, and Santogold recently wrote a song called "My Drive Thru" for a Converse advertising campaign, even though that song was not a jingle. McDonalds recently held a contest to remix its famous "all beef patties" jingle from the 1970s. It is a new expression of the jingles, since they had gone out of style in advertisements some years ago, and have since been replaced by more standard music with a catch phrase line at the end, such as Kay Jeweler's "Every kiss begins with K" or "Come and get your love" from Alltel. Some think the jingle is making a comeback because it originally came up when times were "better," according to some. "Jingles" is a television show to be aired in CBS with judges, including Kiss' Gene Simmons. It will give contestants a chance to write jingles for actual products and a $100,000 prize.

Month: August

Full Text:

As the future looms for Ticketmaster, the industry is watching closely to see what moves they will make to continue success after Live Nation leaves and goes from being their #1 provider of income to their #1 competitor. While Ticketmaster remains the top event entertainment website, they will have to deal with Live Nation becoming active in primary, secondary, fan club, VIP, presale and other developing ticket markets through its own website. Ticketmaster has responded with making some deals, including its purchase of secondary ticket vendor TicketsNow, which is helping them capitalize on a small, yet flourishing sector of the ticket market. While executives of Ticketmaster say they will never count out becoming a risk-taking company and look to make artist-exclusive deals and become a promoter, they say their primary source of revenue will still from ticket service charges. They are confident that their core strengths as a company will continue to bring them success in a competitive market.

Month: August

Full Text:

A ban on foreign rock acts is putting a damper on the live music market in China. Ever since Wham! played in 1985, China's market for live music has been emerging for more foreign rock acts. But in March, Bjork played a set where she closed with a chant of "Tibet! Tibet!" onstage. This prompted authorities to not allow foreign rock acts to play until after the Beijing Olympics this summer. Tours by Avril Lavigne and Good Charlotte have had their dates postponed and this year's Beijing Pop Festival is canceled. Bjork's performance convinced the government that rock stars can easily damage the country's image during the run-up to the Olympic games. This comes at a time when the country's appetite for Western pop culture is growing, Live Nation and AEG Live have set up offices there in the past few years, Ticketmaster acquired an entertainment company, and more rock acts are looking to tour China. Putting on shows in China has always been a challenge. The months-long process begins with a promoter gathering information on an artist including song lyrics, biography, and probable set list. The information is sent to the Ministry of Culture, the agency that licenses events. The government wants to maintain control over the talent that is promoted in its country, but does not want to seem as prohibiting it. It is also expensive to set up shows, as stages typically need to be built, sound checks run for hours, and bands typically need to ship in their own equipment. Ticket prices also must remain low as citizens of China live on extremely low wages. Artists are told to not be political and not swear onstage.

Month: August

Full Text:

Atlantic Records has created a new application that makes it easier for fans to connect to and check up on their favorite artists. Fanbase is a program that works directly from users' desktops with an imeem music player, Meebo chat feature, and content from YouTube and Brightcove along with up-to-date tour and new release information all on a single window. This application with make it easier for fans to connect with their favorite artists through less clicking and searching around the Internet. Atlantic chose specifically to use pre-existing technologies for the application because they saw programs like Meebo's chat being much better than anything they could create themselves. The chat feature is looking to directly connect fans to each other in a better format than MySpace uses with just leaving comments. Fanbase and Atlantic hope to move to mobile content and possibly find different solutions to the CD problem and more in the future.

Month: July

Full Text:

EverGreen Copyrights continued its purchasing of assets by acquiring the publishing catalog of Lil' Joe Wein Music. This includes the entire output of 2 Live Crew and songs by Poison Clan and 69 Boys. It is estimated that EverGreen paid $3 million for the 700-plus song catalog. This marks the 19th acquisition by the company and brings their hip-hop catalog up to 75,000 songs. Working with Lil' Joe Records, which will retain the master recordings, they look to grow the catalog in film and television. EverGreen's catalog also contains a number of other diverse artists and genres like Nick Drake, Bill Monroe, Bruce Fisher, and more.

Month: July

Full Text:

Many labels and publishers are going with branded CDs to expose their music to audiences. They can approach a particular outlet, like Hello Kitty or Lancome, with a certain demographic of customer an create a compilation CD filled with songs specifically picked for that target market. For Hello Kitty, having the product closer to toys and in the same store is important. Parents may not think twice about picking up the CD if it is already in the store they are shopping in, rather than having to go to a CD store. Wal-Mart has done a similar practice with their "Soundcheck" series, where artists would play short sets and Wal-Mart would release them on CDs in their stores, sometimes packaging them with "official" releases. The labels and publishers are trying to find any non-traditional way to get their music noticed, and are realizing the power that retailers have in exposing the music.

Month: July

Full Text:

Music piracy has reportedly contributed to 70% of the reasons why global sales of recorded music fell 8% in 2007. But it has provided business with at least one advantage: statistics. It is helping management companies and more get insight into music-lovers interests and into what is truly popular. For every song purchased legally, 20 are said to be illegally downloaded. BigChampagne is a firm that compiles data about file-sharing to sell to its customers, like how many times a song is downloaded and where. Music executives are saying illegal downloading is no reason to put your head in the sand, because you might as well take advantage of the data available. These statistics are helping managers, labels, and more plan tours using the locations where artists are popular and can pair artists with groups their fans have similar tastes in based on people who download the same artists. Even though the execs are reluctant at first to use data from illegal use, they are coming to terms with its benefits.

Month: July

Full Text:

A judge ruled in US court that the use of John Lennon's song 'Imagine' in a documentary is allowed under the fair use US copyright law. Lennon's family and EMI Blackwood Music, which administers the rights to the song, were the plaintiffs and the defendants were Premise Media et al, the producers of the documentary 'EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed.' This is a film about 'intelligent design' and attacks the theory of Darwinism. A 15 second clip of the song is used in a part of the movie that shows a young girl dancing and a close-up of Stalin waving. The lyrics used are 'nothing to kill or die for / and no religion too.' This constitutes 0.27% of the film. There were four main factors that the judge ruled on. The purpose and character of the use, whether used for commercial or non-profit, was ruled to be less commercial and more 'transformative.' By that, the judge meant that the use of the song by the filmmakers showed the original work used with new expression and meaning. The nature of the copyright work is clearly creative, but the songs appearance in the film did not outweigh the important transformative use made of it. The amount and substantiality of the portion was under question. While the clip was 15 seconds of a three minute song, the plaintiffs used a musicologist to argue that the clip was from the 'heart' of the song and the repeating phrase used appears in over 50% of the song itself. The judge ruled that the song is repetitive and no part of the song could have been used without using that part and also that the recognizable part of the song was key in the use in the film. The last factor, the effect of the use on the potential market and value of the copyright work, the judge ruled that the use fell into the 'tranformative market.' The judge concluded that the injunction could not be granted because the fair use of the copyright would prevail in any trial awarded.

Month: July

Full Text:

An Access To Music Charge (AMC) paid to rights holders by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) has been proposed as a solution to the problem of illegal downloading over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. This possible solution comes from a meeting of the Steering Group (SG), an influential international forum composed of ISPs, online music services, independent and major record labels, authors' societies, lawyers, technology experts, and a futurologist. Such a system could provide revenue to the rights holders that are currently at a loss for them. In return, users would have access to the global recorded music repertoire without DRM restrictions and no direct cost to exchange downloaded files. ISPs and music service providers (MSPs) would have the opportunity to generate additional revenues if a significant percentage of P2P sharing was monetized. This comes at a time when ISPs are finding the benefits of creating partnerships with music rights holders, while national governments are preparing or threatening to make legislations in this area. More work still needs to be done on the proposal, including how it will affect current business models of services such as iTunes. The cost of distributing the monies would be very expensive, too. Numbers were projected by a group, Deltica, in the UK that studied ISP user activities. According to them, the ratio of P2P downloads to legal downloads is 20:1. So if the ISPs converted 5% of the P2P downloads into revenue, the gross figure would be something around $326m, something ISP executives say that ISPs would be very interested in. This is projected by Music & Copyright to have increased the pro forma total digital recorded music revenues in 2007 to $4.1bn from 2.9bn.

Month: July

Full Text:

As recorded music sales slip for the business and advertisers find their markets to be fragmented over new media platforms, it's easy to see why both are looking to co-brand in new campaigns. Marketers see using music as a way to reach consumers with a deeper ring that is not forced or contrived. Sara Bareilles' success within the Rhapsody spot along with The Shins and McDonalds, Santogold and Bud Light, and many more have shown a change in how it is easier to pair artists with brands in a day where people are just looking to make things work. Toyota, Red Bull, Barcardi, and Procter & Gamble have marketed, financed, and released music as part of branding campaigns. The next step happened when Reckitt Benchiser's agency of record Euro RSCG acquired a majority stake in an independent record label, the:Hours, with a distribution agreement with Universal Music. The:Hours' goal is to create a large, commercial friendly catalog through signings to be used for many campaigns. The company will continue to work through other labels and publishers, as well.