AM Biz News: Piracy Is Global Pricing Problem, Why A&R Is Broken, Britney Spears’s Legal Battle & More
We post a roundup of music business news mid-morning (ET) each weekday and when warranted add a PM update late in the afternoon. For breaking news follow @hypebot on Twitter.
- Report: Piracy a "global pricing problem" with only one solution. (Ars)
- Live Nation Entertainment faces critics in Austin. (LATimes)
- Britney Spears's legal battle with the Bellamy Brothers shows that when it comes to alleged copyright infringement it's difficult to draw the line between inspiration and imitation. (Guardian)
- Live In Your Living Room: You Book The Bands. (NPR)
- SXSW: In App Age, MySpoonful Bets on Email. (Evolver)
- What's broken in A&R and how to fix it. (Wired)
- Century Media, a heavy music label, and EMI Label Services/Caroline Distribution have renewed their global distribution relationship.
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As a music lover, I have become my own A&R guy, thanks to the accessability of an ever growing amount of independent musicians’ websites. The old A&R guys used to be label representatives that acted as translators between the band and the marketing people from the label at best and as “artistic visionaries” themselves on behalf of the label at worst. Independent artists don’t need people to tell them how to make music that they know how to sell, they need people who are creative enough find new ways to sell the music that the artists make. So for the future, the direction of “artist and repertoire managers” must be turned around 180 degrees. That way, they would become “fan locator & market creator managers”. At one point the music business people of old got arrogant and didn’t care anymore about what their customers want. That behaviour is still ongoing and for example in format radio, it has resulted in only those listeners still sticking around who do not care about new music but only about the same old same old.
I don’t believe that 360 deals are better for up and coming artists but only for their employers, formerly called labels because they don’t even have to put out a product or promote it to get a huge part of the revenue stream generated in merchandise and ticket sales. In a world where DIY is possible, 360 deals seem like they are only an old label rearing its ugly head.