RCA Hits “Refresh”, Closes Arista, Jive & J Records
As part of a major rebranding and consolidation RCA is closing three of its most successful labels “In an effort to refresh RCA Records, all label imprints – J Records, Arista Records and Jive – will now be under the iconic RCA Records label,” read a statement from RCA issued Friday. No word yet on more staff cuts, but most artists will shift to RCA.
"The path we’ve taken is to refresh RCA, so we're going to retire those brands,” RCA COO Tom Corson told The Hollywood Reporter. There may be a reason down the line to bring them back, but it's a clean slate here." Corson began the housecleaning in late summer with a number of layoffs.
The Jive Records roster included Chris Brown, Jessie J and J. Lo; while Arista is home to Dido, Whitney Houston, Jennifer Hudson, Sarah McLachlan, and Santana. As of Friday, for both the J and Arista already defaulted to the RCA Music Group site.
A rep for Arista Nashville, whose roster includes Carrie Underwood, Brad Paisley and Ronnie Dunn, tells THR the country label's Sony Music Nashville operations "remain unchanged."
It’s really irrelevant. Consolidation may lower their labor costs. This isn’t the sixties or the seventies when people rushed to see what Motown,or A&M, or Atlantic or RCA was releasing. People don’t care what label an artist is on when they buy a cd or a download. Adele could be on the Dogshit label and she’d still move 11 Million units.Labels don’t have “brands” anymore. No one cares.
I completely disagree with one of your statements. Adele has been successful because of the unified efforts of Columbia/XL/Beggars. Universal Motown, for example, might have fucked it up.