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Epic Gives Up the Ghost: Gal President is Fired for Smoking Pot and Being a Bitch
Source:
Moses Supposes
Is the firing of Epic President, Amanda Ghost a sign that women are the new scapegoat for the “failing" music biz? Ah, what happened to the days when being a music executive meant you could party with the acts in your office, sleep late, yell at underlings and get rewarded even if your numbers were bad? Well, we still have them; they're still here, unless you happen to have one important character flaw— a vagina. You gotta read this Hollywood ...
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Jazzwax List: Pardon My Bop
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
If you're familiar with the music of the Doors, then you know that Jim Morrison was a fairly competent lyricist, in a drug-haze sort of way. His Warren Beatty looks made him highly charismatic, and his deep, masculine voice and bedroom eyes had a particularly hypnotic effect on women. On March 1, 1969, a stoned Morrison, angry at his Miami audience for reacting negatively to his sloppy performance, made the mistake of either threatening to expose himself or actually doing ...
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An Argument for Fan Funding: "I'd Rather Be Owned by My Fans Than by a Record Company."
Source:
HypeBot
Brian Hazard rattled some cages with his argument against fan-funding. So much so that several executives from leading fan-funding companies took notice and weighed in their opinions. I thought it was worth challenging an artist on this matter. Bleu, a singer-songwriter-producer, set a goal of $8,000 for his Kickstarter campaign. Almost overnight, 387 fans jumped into the mix and contributed nearly $40,000 to his cause. He didn't need to get the album funded. Rather, he just needed to cover the ...
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How Garth Brooks Harms Music Incomes of Others
Source:
HypeBot
The Copyright Alliance pointed me to a letter that musician Monisa Angell wrote the Obama Administration. If you want to see the arguments in the music industry painted in black and white. Her note is certainly the black. She raises the question, “Can we afford to have a country where the creator has no value?" Well, no. Creators are valuable, as are their creative works, given the optimum market conditions. No one has ever contested that. Most worrisome is the ...
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Sure, Streaming is Better Than Stealing. But Not by Much...
Source:
Digital Music News
If you're in the music industry, chances are you suck at math. But this one just keeps adding up to zero—and the continued rise of legal streaming is at best a half-baked victory. On top of that, illegal downloading really isn't really going anywhere. This isn't a clear-cut game of displacement, as many seem to think. So where's the meaningful upside? Some new data recently washed ashore. NPD Group revealed thatstreaming volumes now rival downloading volumes, with roughly 30 percent ...
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EMI Will Not Die, Says CEO: Calls Journalists "Idiots," for Saying Otherwise
Source:
Moses Supposes
According to CEO Roger Faxon, EMI is having no problem meeting its financial obligations and plans to be around for quite some time.
Moses Avalon
It must be tough to be Roger Faxon this week. On Monday morning he wakes up to find that not only has his sugar daddy, Terra Firma, lost in court to its lender Citigroup, but many bloggers and journalist (me included) had written an epitaph to EMI, the company he runs, essentially throwing dirt on ...
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Plan It or Damn It: Why Album Releases Matter
Source:
HypeBot
Album releases can either be a burden or blessing. For major label artists, it is normally an effort coordinated in a matter of months or years. For independent artists not signed to a major label, the biggest decision they face is distribution: physical, digital or both. No matter where an artist fits on the spectrum, an album release is a stressful and very time-consuming process. With the success for the independent artist entirely dependent on themselves, choices for distribution and ...
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Grandpa's Rainbow.
Source:
Brilliant Corners, a Boston Jazz Blog
By Matt Lavelle Just how and why does anybody dedicate their lives to Art in a fallen world? To make such a choice in 2010 would be over the top from my perspective.When I was a kid in the 70's I had no idea that the gentrification express was all ready rolling along and that standards had all ready begun to fall across the board as to what was actually important and held meaning in every aspect of life.I remember ...
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