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Business News Week In Five
The music business week in five – Friday 11 Mar 2011
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 11 March 2011
There was another edition of our CMU Training course on music promotions this week, in which, amongst many other things, we discuss building a profile for new talent, and how doing so is a real step by step process, in which early media coverage isn’t so much about recruiting fans and selling records as it is influencing other influencers, whether they be other journalists, or radio or TV programmers, or festival bookers, or A&Rs.
But which media really influences those influencers? Well, if you come on the CMU Training course we give you a few hints, but in May we’ll be hearing it all directly from the mouths of those influencers, at The Great Escape in Brighton, when we discuss which media – from blogs to magazines to radio shows to social media – play a real role in delivering that all important “buzz” around new bands.
We’ll have key players from national print, radio and TV media plus a festival booker and A&R on the panel, making it a must-see event for anyone involved in developing an audience for new music. If you want to be there, you know what to do – www.escapegreat.com – early bird delegate passes are just £125. Meanwhile, here’s your week in music.
01: LimeWire settled with the publishers. The operators of the now defunct file-sharing service were declared copyright infringers in the US courts last summer at the end of years of litigation pursued by the record companies. With infringement proven, the publishers sued separately to get their own helping of damages. The terms of the out of court settlement between the publishers and the former digital firm are not known. The labels are expected to make a billion dollar damages claim in the US courts in May, though a judge this week limited the scale of that claim somewhat by saying statutory damages could only be claimed per track rather than per download. CMU report | CNet report
02: Warner asked for second bids from at least five parties. We reckon over ten organisations had bid to buy some or all of the Warner Music empire, most looking to buy the major’s publishing business Warner Chappell, but about five were this week asked to make more detailed offers. According to reports BMG, Sony/ATV, current Warner shareholder Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries, and private equity types Platinum Equity and Yucaipa Companies are among those still in the running. CMU report | LA Times report
03: The government backed the Live Music Bill. Tim Clement-Jones resubmitted his private members bill to reform rules covering small-scale live music events after last year’s General Election, and this week a government rep in the Lords, Patricia Rawlings, said the ConDem coalition would support the proposals, subject to a few tweaks, and push them through parliament so they become law. It will make it easier for pubs and other smaller venues to stage live music. Since new rules in 2003 made such things harder, many in the grass roots music community say a lot less venues are now staging live music. CMU report | NME report
04: Qtrax returned, with out of the blue launches in the US, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. What was originally going to be a licensed file-sharing network is now an ad-funded download store – music is free, but ads may play as songs are downloaded, and tracks can only be played through the Qtrax player which also comes with ads in-built. Three of the majors have licensed the service on a short term basis. One UK lawyer, Ian Penman, has used the launch to note that he is still owed nearly twenty grand from the digital firm for work he did two years ago; until the relaunch he assumed the company was insolvent. CMU report | Billboard report
05: Lucian Grainge became chair of Universal. He will do the Chairman’s job at the world’s biggest music firm in addition to his existing role as CEO. The extra responsibility follows the news that the major’s former Chairman, Doug Morris, who originally took on the Chair role after handing over the CEO post to Grainge last year, is leaving Universal Towers to become CEO of Sony Music. CMU report | Telegraph report
And that’s your lot. Look out for more week in view chatter in the good old CMU Weekly podcast later today.
Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU
