- Republic Nashville launched in Music City
- Yangaroo lands multi-content delivery contract
- ole strikes deal with BMG Rights Management
- Long-form video a big bust with YouTube viewers
- Jacko making bizarre demands for London concerts
- Stompin’ Tom returns to Nfld after 2o some years
- US approves extension in web royalty talks
- Hollywood’s new mogul: Ariel Zev Emanuel
- FULE-FM, Aboriginal Network seek licence allowances
- Miley Cyrus is #1 on Music Row’s new Twitter chart
- LN/TM merger under official scrutiny in UK
- Online ad spending up 8.2%, US data shows
- Craigslist revenue projected to top $100m this year
- More mud slinging over radio royalty
- Lady Gaga playing games with UMG’s blessing
- Cape Breton’s Screaming Eagles fly to The Eagle
- Roots, Americana genres replace Poka at Grammys
NEW NASHVILLE LABEL: Monte Lipman, President and CEO of Universal Republic and Scott Borchetta, President and CEO of Big Machine Records LLC, announced the formation of a new label partnership – Republic Nashville. The imprint will be headquartered on Music Row in Nashville and utilize the combined resources of Big Machine Records and Universal Republic Records.
Big Machine and Universal Republic first joined forces in 2007 to propel country Superstar Taylor Swift to Top 40 radio and beyond, with Taylor becoming the best-selling all-genre artist in 2008. Lipman and Borchetta also announced former Capitol Records Promotion executive Jimmy Harnen has been appointed President of Republic Nashville. Harnen worked with Borchetta in a previous capacity at DreamWorks Nashville.
YANGAROO: Yangaroo, the Canadian secure digital media distribution company announced today that it has signed a commercial agreement with an unnamed U.S. based multi-national, NYSE-listed Fortune 500 company to use the company’s patented Digital Media Distribution System (DMDS) to deliver pre-release music and audio files from the company’s television shows to custom lists of internal recipients and external destinations.
IT’S OLE AT BMG: ole and BMG Rights Management GmbH have signed an exclusive multi-year reciprocal deal, which will see the companies generate creative opportunities for each others’ copyrights in their respective territories. A news release says the synergies between the two companies are extensive. Both are committed to being top-tier global, full-service music publishers with a strong focus on creative development and strategic acquisitions.
ole Chairman and CEO, Robert Ott, says of the reciprocal service arrangement, “ole recently reached the threshold of becoming a medium-sized player in global music publishing. Our ascent to the next level will be founded on partnership-oriented thinking. With a very experienced executive and team, BMG has shown that its collaborative and artist-oriented approach is a success, and we look forward to a fruitful relationship. We wanted to work with a company that had a similar focus on service and adding value creatively and have found both in BMG.â€
BMG Rights Management CEO, Hartwig Masuch, says “Having known Robert and his team for a long time, I believe this is a perfect match and will deliver convincing opportunities for ole’s and our writers.â€
TV SHOWS A BUST ON YOUTUBE: The top-100 midtail producers — including names such as College Humor, Smosh and MyDamnChannel — have racked up more than 2 billion views during the past six months on YouTube, growing nearly 5% a month on average, according to video analytics firm TubeMogul. Meanwhile, the full-length hour-long and half-hour TV shows on YouTube, 3,215 episodes in all, have accumulated 19.5 million views.
YouTube’s biggest TV partner to date, CBS, has only 6.9 million views across 315 TV episodes in the year it has had shows on the site, which represents the equivalent of a bad night for “Two and a Half Men” on TV, and a mere speck on the 1.5 billion views YouTube streams around the world each day. Advertising Age
JACKO BEING BAD: Michael Jackson has issued a string of bizarre demands to the organisers of his comeback concerts in London that run from July to February next year. Jacko is insisting on a choir of children that range in age from 5 to 13 that can perform sign language, Alastair Jamieson writes in the Guardian today. The troubled singer is reported to have made a request to casting agents on behalf of promoters AEG Live, who are behind the 50 dates at London’s O2 Arena from next month, that the group should be made up of “exactly equal†numbers of black, white, mixed-race and Asian children. An email from Jackson’s promoters to the agents, reported in The Mirror, also insists the group should include six marching snare drummers who must be “young adults, clean-cut and of mixed ethnicityâ€. The email reported in The Mirror adds: “They must be real drummers so please do not waste our time suggesting people who are not.â€
STOMPIN’ ON THE ROCK: Stompin’ Tom Connors hits the road next month for 18 concerts in Ontario,Nova Scotia and a one-off in St. John’s on July 31 that marks his return to The Rock in more than 20 years. The 73 year-old icon continues to earn big bucks, reportedly getting anywhere between fifty to eighty-thousand dollars a night to perform songs from his catalogue of more than 30 albums. Backing him on the road is Tim Hus and band. Connors is plugging The Ballad of Stompin’ Tom, his latest album.
WEB ROYALTY RATE NEAR: The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2009 on Tuesday. If passed into law, the bill will give SoundExchange and webcasters an extra 30 days from when the bill is passed to settle on an acceptable royalty rate. The Webcaster Settlement Act of 2009 was introduced to the Senate in late May. The bill amends a bill President Bush signed into law in October 2008 that says Congress must honor any royalty rate agreement reached between online radio stations and copyright holders. That bill took the decision out of the hands of the government-run Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) and gave both sides until Feb. 15, 2009 to come up with a royalty rate agreement – a deadline that came and went without a deal.
HOLLYWOOD’S NEW MOGUL: Long known as a hardball player of considerable skill, Ariel Zev Emanuel, 48, has emerged in the last six weeks as the pre-eminent power player in a Hollywood that has often bemoaned the sunset of colorful moguls from an older generation, including Michael Ovitz and David Geffen.
As the co-chief executive and principal architect of William Morris Endeavor, formed in late April by the merger of Mr. Emanuel’s Endeavor with the venerable William Morris Agency, Mr. Emanuel has finally stepped into their shoes — assuming he can hold his venture together. He spent much of the last week in mixers meant to help hundreds of wary colleagues from the newly joined agencies get comfortable with one another.“Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of Ari Emanuel, especially now that his brother (Rahm) is running the White House,†said one television executive, who asked for anonymity to preserve harmony with him.
Mr. Emanuel is now pushing toward a next step that will involve an alliance with a still-to-be-formed investment firm. The goal is to put financial firepower behind the agency, new capital that could, for instance, allow partners or clients of William Morris Endeavor to finance media start-ups or its own productions. In full, New York Times
CRTC NOTICES: Application [No. 2009-0617-5]by Newcap Inc. to amend the broadcasting licence for the English-language radio programming undertaking (alt rocker FUEL 90.3) CFUL-FM Calgary. The licensee proposes to amend the condition of licence relating to the contribution to the development and promotion of Canadian talent. The applicant stated that due to logistics problems and timing constraints with the ‘‘Making of a Band’’ initiative, it was not able to contribute the total amount imposed as condition of licence for the 2008 broadcast year. Therefore, Newcap Inc. requests to allocate the amounts over the remaining licence term otherwise, while maintaining a total financial commitment of seven million dollars over a period of seven consecutive years, as stipulated in Broadcasting
Application [No. 2009-0763-6]by Aboriginal Peoples Television Network Incorporated (APTN) to amend the broadcasting licence for the television programming undertaking APTN.The licensee proposes to obtain some temporary flexibility in meeting its weekly Aboriginal- and French-language programming requirements and also its priority programming and described video requirements as set out in conditions of licence. For the upcoming Olympics in February 2010, APTN signed an agreement with the broadcasting consortium led by CTVglobemedia Inc. to air a minimum of 10 hours per day of Olympic coverage. Four hours of the Olympic coverage will be in English, four hours will be in French, and two hours will be in a variety of Aboriginal languages.
COUNTRY TWITTER: MusicRow.com has developed a Country chart based on the number of followers various hat and twang acts have on Twitter. Top 5 in ascending order: Kellie Pickler, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Miley Cyrus reigns as the Twitter bests runner up Taylor Swift by over 200,000 fans for a total of 803,795 followers.
LN/TM MERGER SCRUTINY: The UK Office of Fair Trading has referred the proposed merger between Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc and Live Nation Inc to the Competition Commission on the basis the union could substantially lessen competition, Billboard reports this morning. In a statement, the OFT says,”The proposed merger…raises a concern about whether Ticketmaster’s key position in the ticketing market could lead to the new company restricting competition in the promotion of live music events, for example through limiting access by rival promoters to ticket agent services. The CC may wish to examine this issue in greater detail.”
ONLINE AD SALES UP: While the overall online advertising marketplace declined an estimated 5% during the first quarter of 2009, according to official estimates released recently by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, new data being released this morning suggests a portion of the online display advertising marketplace may be bucking the downward trend. The data, which comes from ad tracking firm TNS Media Intelligence, shows online display ad spending rising 8.2% during the first quarter of 2009. Online Media Daily
CRAIGSLIST TOPS $100M: Since its birth in 1995, no one knows how much ad revenue Craigslist has cost the newspaper and Yellow Pages industries. This year, however, the free classifieds site will generate $100 million in revenue, according to new data from The AIM Group, parent of consulting group Classified Intelligence — if that’s any indication. That represents an increase of more than 23% from Craigslist’s estimated revenue of $81 million in 2008. Online Media Daily
ROYALTY ROW: The Associated Press begs the question: Which top-selling artist purportedly had his new single yanked from some radio stations playlists in retaliation for supporting royalties for musicians? No one involved will name the recording artist, but his no-play treatment by several radio stations is alleged in a complaint filed with the Federal Communications Commission and obtained by The Associated Press. It claims recording artists are being threatened and intimidated. In the filing, the musicFIRST Coalition says the top-selling artist — there are hints it could be U2 frontman Bono — recently released a new album and spoke during April in support of an effort to require radio stations to pay musicians royalties similar to those paid to songwriters. Not reported by AP but worth noting is note that Will.i.am, a vocal proponent of the performance tax, and his group Black Eyed Peas are currently #1 on Billboard’s Pop 100 Airplay Chart with the song ‘Boom Boom Pow.’
LADY GAGA PLAYS GAMES: Tapulous, the mobile game company known for its popular iPhone game, Tap Tap Revenge, has signed a deal with Universal Music Group, to make games based on some of the label’s most famous artists. The first game is based on hit singer Lady GaGa (pictured, right), and will include 14 songs for $4.99.To date, all of Tapulous’s games are Guitar Hero-like, meaning that people tap the screen to the beat of the song, similar to strumming a guitar. Moco News
EAGLES FLY TO EAGLE: Junior hockey’s Cape Breton’s Screaming Eagles are moving their radio home from Maritime Broadcasting Country CJCB in Sydney, NS to Newcap’s crosstown Country station CKCH (103.5 THE EAGLE) under a new three-year deal. “In undertaking this partnership with 103.5 THE EAGLE we believe it will allow us to continue to grow our fan base in CAPE BRETON market. NEWCAP RADIO and their partners at 103.5 THE EAGLE have had a dramatic impact in our area in a very short time and that certainly played a role in our decision,” said team President Paul McDonald.
ROOTS REPLACES POLKA: The Grammy Awards may have nixed the Polka category in the awards show, but the academy that controls the show will officially recognize the Americana genre and a corresponding Americana Roots Music next year’s program.
