Perhaps not wanting to make the same mistake again as it did before and totally get rid of him, Legendary hit maker Clive Davis has been moved to a new spot in the BMG family. He will now be Chief Creative Officer. Barry Weiss will be moved to Clive’s old position. It’s is thought that he has closer ties to today’s Hip Hop and R&B pulse.
Source The Wall Street Journal
Posted under Barry Weiss, Clive Davis
Popular Internet destination blackplanet.com was sold this week for 38 million dollars. A popular site for people of all colors for over a decade I was surprised to see it sell at such a low premium. Especially considering popular European social community site Bebo.com was sold for almost a billion dollars (850 million) with similar numbers to blackplanet.com. They were bought by Radio One corporation.
Posted under blackplanet.comThere’s a war going on outside for the soul of the music industry. Itunes is the number one seller of music right now and the record industry is trying to counter act that. This week they hooked up a deal with myspace to give some of their music away for free and to make their money on advertising, merchandising, and other related venues. They also have to watch their flank because company, Live Nation is coming from the left to try to drink their milkshake. They are banking on the work the industry has done in making big name artist and signing them to huge deals to get a piece of their hustle. Who’s going to win this war, no one knows. but it should be an interesting fight.
A poem about the power of economics from the street level to the corporate level.
Posted under Tommy Bottoms
Top Albums for the week 4/04/2008
Top Digital Singles for the week 4/4/2008
For those in the know Janelle Monae has been bubbling in the underground for a minute now. Now her struggling has been rewarded by attracting the sights of the puffy one himself. Although his artist have been notorious in the past couple of years for having high profiling signings but not much in follow up, Janelle should be able to break that trend by being such an original and groundbreaking artist. It should be interesting to follow her career and see how it ends up, just being talented and original is not always that formula to success. Hopefully with backing of Diddy this should be more than enough.
Following in the footsteps of Madonna and U2 major superstar Jay Z signs music promoter Live Nation for 150 million dollars. The deal has an array of stipulations to it that pretty much play out to Live Nation backing a ton of Jay Z’s business ventures, as well as getting a percentage of touring and merchandise revenue.
There has been speculation wether this was a good deal or not for Live Nation as well as Jay Z’s part. We would have to conclude that not only was it a good deal but it’s the smartest deal out right now. This is where more music deals are going eventually end up because the old model is hanging on by life support. The only problem that we see right now is that this model is great for older established artist. There has to be a way for newer artist to be able to reap the rewards of their music as well as not being jerked around by the industry games that have been around for so long. This is just the beginning of this new world economy, not the end.
For more information about this deal go to this link from the New York Times, Jay Z Live Nation Deal.
Posted under Jay Z, Live Nation