Music Publishers Demanding Musicians Hand Over More Rights

from the protecting-artists,-huh? dept

It would be amusing to watch the various parts of the legacy music business fight with each other over who can screw over artists faster if it weren't so sad. The latest, found on Hypebot, is that music publishers -- who used to be considered the part of the business whose interests were most "aligned" with songwriters -- are now demanding the equivalent of "360 deals" from artists. Basically, since their own business is struggling, they're trying to demand more rights from artists, who increasingly have other options and don't need to deal with such middlemen. What's amusing, of course, is that these publishers keep pretending they actually have the songwriters best interests at heart. Yeah, right.

Filed Under: 360 deals, music publishers, rights

Can Concert Promoters Become The New Record Labels?

from the time-to-find-out dept

A little over a year ago, the recording industry was surprised to learn that Madonna wasn't signing a new record label contract, but instead was signing a deal with Live Nation, a big concert promoter, to handle pretty much everything having to do with her business, including releasing new CDs. The WSJ Magazine is running a long feature story about Live Nation, its founder and its ongoing strategy, wondering if it's the new business model for the recording industry. Basically, the guy behind Live Nation knows that there's good money in concert promoting, but that the margins are low. So, he's betting on a few of these "360 deals" where he gets a much larger margin on all other aspects of the business.

It's an interesting strategy that appears to be a step in the right direction, but it's unclear if it really is the future of the industry. Live Nation's strategy seems pretty risky. It involves huge upfront payments for a small number of star performers (whose older, more well-known, music is still under the copyright of earlier labels). It also doesn't seem to do much to embrace new technologies and distribution methods. Instead, it's just this guy making a grab for some big names, and trying to consolidate all their sources of revenue, taking a cut of each one. There's something to be said for that, but it would probably work better in combination with newer technologies and music distribution means -- and without those huge upfront costs that may sink the whole operation.

Filed Under: 360 deals, business models, concert promotions, concerts, madonna
Companies: live nation