MPress Records Signs Melissa Ferrick To Multi-Album Deal
New York City-based MPress Records has just inked a three-album deal with indie-maverick (and major label veteran) Melissa Ferrick. MPress, which internationally distributes albums by art-pop songstress Rachael Sage and award-winning songwriter Seth Glier, also produces the NEW ARRIVALS charity compilation series, and has presented artist showcases at such industry events as SXSW, CMJ & MIDEM.
via Mi2N.com – MPress Records Signs Melissa Ferrick To Multi-Album Deal.
We’re fans of both Melissa Ferrick (“North Carolina” is a favorite) and Rachael Sage, and we like it when ladies help other ladies make things happen, so we think this is pretty neat. Congrats to Melissa, Rachael and MPress Records!
Yet Another BMG Acquisition: Chrysalis Music Publishing
We were welcomed back from Thanksgiving this morning by the news that German media conglomerate BMG Rights Management is buying the Chrysalis Music Publishing catalog for a grand total of £107.4 million (or $168.6 million USD). Wow!
We’d like to say we didn’t see this coming, but we had a feeling this would happen after BMG snapped up Evergreen Copyrights, Stage 3 Publishing and Cherry Lane Music (Elvis, anyone?) in rapid succession earlier this year. According to Billboard Magazine, this acquisition probably makes BMG the world’s fourth-largest music publisher by global market share.
In addition to being the home of writers like Debbie Harry of Blondie, Chrysalis is also the home of some well-loved music execs like Jeff Brabec and Jessica Hobbs. We think that if BMG is lucky/savvy, they’ll hang onto the executive talent that has been looking after these copyrights for the past few years.
Spotify Bleeding From Licensing Costs
Photo courtesy of madstreetz
Spotify has just published its financial results for 2009, and the European streaming music service is bleeding fast. Spotify may have users “by the balls” (in the words of original Napster founder and Spotify investor Sean Parker), but content owners have Spotify in an even tighter grip. According to the financial statements for U.K.parent organization Spotify Limited, published on Music Ally this morning, the company booked 11.32 million pounds in revenue during the year. About 60% of that money comes from its 250,000 paying subscribers. The rest comes from advertisements that Spotify shows to the vast majority of its 7 million users who use the free Web-only version of the service.
Even Jay-Z Has To Go The Extra Mile To Clear And License Music
Image courtesy of SOCIALisBETTER
Last night Jay-Z made an appearance at the Live at NYPL series to promote his new autobiography Decoded. Among the many intriguing stories he shared with the audience, riffing on topics like Biggie, children and fame, he told of his efforts to convince composer and lyricist Charles Strouse to let him sample Annie for “Hard Knock Life”:
“I told him that we had an essay [contest] at school and I won the essay and we went to see Annie on Broadway and how it affected my life. The truth is — that last part was true, it did affect my life. My sister Andrea, we call her Annie, so when it came on TV I was immediately drawn to it. I was like, this is about us. This is how we feel. So years later, when I was on tour and Kid Capri had played this instrumental that the 45 King had made, it stopped me in my tracks. I was walking offstage after performing, and he played the song as an intermission before the next act went on, and I heard this sound, with these drums, and I told everybody around me, ‘Wait a minute.’ I went around to the D.J. booth, like, what is that? [45 King] is notoriously hard to find. We found him in Maryland somewhere. I recorded the record.”
Warner Music Group Reports Results
Total revenue of $752 million declined 13% from the prior-year quarter, and was down 12% on a constant-currency basis. Full-year 2010 revenue declined 7% to $2,984 million, and declined 9% on a constant-currency basis. Digital revenue was $197 million, or 26% of total revenue, up 7% from $184 million in the prior-year quarter on both an as-reported and constant-currency basis. Digital revenue grew 10% sequentially from the third quarter of fiscal 2010, or 9% on a constant-currency basis. Full-year 2010 digital revenue rose 8% to $759 million, or 25% of total revenue, and grew 6% on a constant-currency basis.
- Warner Music Group Corp. Reports Results For The Fiscal Fourth Quarter And Full Year
Sweet Victory For Sugarland: Vocal Duo of the Year
It’s nice to see country group Sugarland continue to get recognition.
Little known factoid about the country supergroup: one of the band’s members Andrew Hyra used to be the lead singer of a fantastic folk duo called Billy Pilgrim. We loved their harmonies and lyrics on songs like “Louisiana Sound” and “Insomniac”, one of the sweetest love songs about sleeplessness we’ve ever heard.
Let’s Talk About Girl Talk
Listening to Girl Talk often feels like the musical equivalent of whiplash to us: the songs snap back and forth between samples at a dizzying speed.
Brooklyn-based filmmaker JP Coakley released his documentary on Girl Talk to YouTube not too long ago, and the artist is back this month with a release so hot and so illegal (at least, from a copyright infringement perspective) that he yanked it from his site within a day of posting. No matter though — you can most certainly nab the tracks from any file sharing service.
And keeping the album up and easily accessible probably isn’t the main goal anyway. After all, tickets were just announced last week for the Girl Talk show in March 2011, and the tickets will almost certainly sell out if they haven’t sold out already.
What do you guys think of Girl Talk — love or hate?
Girl Talk Releases Documentary, Plays a Few Shows :: Music :: News :: Paste.
Moogfest, in Asheville, Honors a Synthesizer
We love Mark Mothersbaugh, and we love the the idea of Moogfest. We would have loved to be in North Carolina to see the likes of Massive Attack, Sleigh Bells, Caribou, Jonsi, MGMT, Thievery Corporation, Hot Chip, Big Boi, El-P and Four Tet play.
Pictured: Devo performing live with the amazing Austin band The Octopus Project, whom we’ve loved since we first heard their song “The Adjustor” off their 2005 Peekaboo Records release One Ten Hundred Thousand Million.
Can Michael Jackson bring music games back from the dead?
The French video game company is launching the first Michael Jackson dance video game for the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, and Sony PlayStation Portable on Nov. 23. Versions for the Microsoft Kinect and Sony PlayStation Move the new motion-sensing systems for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 will be available in early 2011. To stoke sales, Ubisoft promises a special-edition white glove for anyone who pre-orders the Wii version or buys it on the first day. In the game, you learn a bunch of dance moves set to Michael Jackson’s biggest dance tunes.
As Sales Collapse, Music Games Gamble on Real Instruments
Photo by Megan Hodge
Two new games released this month attempt to break the mold. Power Gig: Rise of the SixString comes packaged with a real guitar that works as a game controller or plugs into an amp. Rock Band 3 will work with a real Fender Squier Stratocaster guitar that will ship in 2011, but for now it has a less-expensive controller with about 150 tiny buttons that simulate guitar strings. It also features a new instrument — keyboards. And the game’s pitch-accurate Pro modes are nearly identical to playing the real things.In short, if you’ve already mastered Expert mode, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.