Music Industry News

R & B Singer Jill Scott Sued by Record Label

Source: All About Jazz
February 4, 2010

R&B superstar Jill Scott was sued this morning by her longtime record label, which is accusing the multi-platinum songstress of skipping out halfway through a six-album contract and potentially owing millions of dollars in damages. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by L.A.-based Hidden Beach Records, claims that the label and its founder, Steve McKeever, helped launch Scott's career and nurtured her into a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter but was unceremoniously dumped in October after a 10-plus year relationship. Hidden ...

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Terry McBride and the Emotional Power of Music

Source: HypeBot
February 4, 2010

Nettwerk Music Group CEO Terry McBride has always been a thinker as we as a successful music entrepreneur. This year his main project is a rejuvenated Lilith Fair tour that will certainly bring back wonderful memories for many.  In this speech at TEDx in Vancouver, Terry explores the emotional power of music and its ability to bookmark moments in our lives that we can return to again and again.

Understanding the power of those moments has sustained substantial careers for ...

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Senator al Franken Comes Out Swinging Against Comcast - NBC Deal

Source: Michael Ricci
February 4, 2010

Doesn't look like comedian-turned-senator Al Franken is planning a return to NBC's “Saturday Night Live" anytime soon.

In his opening remarks about the proposed Comcast - NBC deal at a hearing held by the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, Franken (D-Minn.) ripped into the deal and the risks it could present to not only consumers but media competition as well.

Franken, who was a regular on NBC's “Saturday Night Live" for years and also had a ...

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John Topper: 10 Questions from My 8 Year Old

Source: HypeBot
February 4, 2010

Guest Post: John Topper is a successful manager (moe and Cornmeal) and music industry entrepreneur. Occasionally he shares his wit and wisdom with the rest of us. 10 questions my 8 year old daughter will ask me by the time she gets to college.1. What is a record label?

2. Why did people carry around such big cell phones?

3. Did the radio ever play music?

4. How come Live Nation is building condos where all the amphitheaters used to ...

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Who Really Benefits from Intellectual Property Law? And Who Should?

Source: Michael Ricci
February 4, 2010

Economic policy bloggers, Matt Yglesias, started a kerfuffle the other day with a frighteningly commonplace point about the vain fight of creative producers against free content online, especially vis-a-vis music file-trading. In short, he proposed that in a perfect marketplace for music.

The price of a song ought to be equal to the marginal cost of distributing a new copy of a song. Which is to say that the marginal cost ought to be $0.

In a followup post on ...

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Live Concert Business is a Broken Model

Source: Michael Ricci
February 4, 2010

It's hard to think of Tim Leiweke, chief executive of AEG, which owns the L.A. Kings hockey team, as an underdog.

He's orchestrated concerts for the likes of Bon Jovi, Black Eyed Peas and Celine Dion. His company, Anschutz Entertainment Group, owns some of the world's biggest venues, including Staples Center, Target Center and The O2, a 20,000 seat arena in London, just to name a few. Leiweke also pulled the strings to develop the new $2.5 billion L.A. Live ...

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Fred Hersch = Lebron James?

Source: Inverted Garden by Eric Benson
February 4, 2010

Fred at the piano is like LeBron James on the basketball court. He's perfection. – Jason Moran

David Hajdu's recent New York Times Magazine profile of pianist Fred Hersch is an odd amalgam of hyperbolic praise (above), made-up trends ("A new movement in jazz has surfaced over the past few years—a wave of highly expressive music more concerned with emotion than with craft or virtuosity"), and out-of-the-blue pot-shots ("Fred's ego is enormous.") That said, there's a pretty moving ...

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ARC for the Week of February 1, 2010

Source: Two for the Show Media
February 4, 2010

ARC for the week of February 1, 2010: Music industry news and label headlines from the Artists Recording Collective (ARC). SUMI TONOOKA/ERICA LINDSAY - ARC is pleased to announce that Initiation, the dynamic new Artists Recording Collective CD by pianist Sumi Tonooka (pronounced To-NO-ka) and tenor saxophonist Erica Lindsay, entered the JazzWeek Charts at #39 and continues to garner both, significant terrestrial radio airplay and positive review commentary from jazz critics and music fans alike.

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