“A new day and a new low for what remains of the Madonna-less Warner Music Group. Its stock finished the day at $9.47, then dipped within seven minutes in after-hours trading to $9.36,” Roger Friedman reports for Fox News.
“A year ago, WMG was at $27,” Friedman reports.
“In effect, the company has no value for outside investors. Whatever the insiders have made — millions upon millions — was for them and had nothing to do with the music industry, the record business or recording artists…” Friedman reports. “It’s very naïve, perhaps, to think Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Lyor Cohen had any interest in having a record company. They just wanted money.”
“Where does that leave WMG? Aside from the still-beating little heart of Atlantic Records and the catalog company, Rhino, hidden within it, there’s nothing. If Atlantic weren’t doing business, WMG would cease to function at all. And even then, Atlantic is on its last legs, using Matchbox Twenty’s greatest hits and the not-so-new-anymore Kid Rock album to prop itself up for the holiday season,” Friedman reports.
Full article, with more entertainment news, here.
Eliminate the Middelbronfman.
Great take! Took the words right outta my mouth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principal
Apple needs to make it so all you do is upload. check some boxes and you are selling your music on itunes.
The first 15 year old who sells a million downloads from itunes that he made from g band is what we need next.
Apple make it easy to sell, I mean really easy.
Artists need this integrated with publishing rights and ASCAP and BMI can hit the road too.
All these industries have done nothing, but kill talented artist and push endless mindless crap.
Next wave might be something worth listening to.
Let artist sell / upload right to itunes.
ok done dreaming
now go BUY some
AAPL
The music business was ripe for the Bronfmann scam. A business run by incompetents who still managed to coin themselves megabucks and have fun doing it was a clear target for the serious scammers.
Another Apple related comment from the article:
Britney can take some solace: she’s still number one on iTunes. The Eagles are not available on the popular download service, which makes things really interesting. They’re the first group to buck iTunes totally and come out a winner.
Yes it would be nice if it were easier to get your (The Artists) music onto iTunes but that is half the battle. You need to promote yourself and get noticed as well since you compete with a lot of other artists in the iTunes service.
I recently went through a service called Tunecore that will submit your Music to itunes and various other download services for minimal cost BUT YOU get the profits no one else. Takes about 3 months from submission so it isn’t quick but it’s works. Check them out at Tunecore.com
And if your interested in electronic music check me out at monospark.com (plug! plug!)
His name is Lyor? How appropriate!
Looked up this guy on wikipedia, and it has a mention of MDN’s ‘eliminate the middlebronfman’. Sweet.
@Gandalf
Here is more on how the Eagles are bypassing Apple too:
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2007/11/eagles-direct-d.html
Looks like Warner Music is going to be the first major to bite the dust in the new generation of artist self promotion. The years of record company abuse of artists and fans has been building to a tidal wave of change and that tidal wave is going to rolling in soon.
I think the Holy Bible says something about knowing “…them by their fruits.”
Failure is always a fruit that’s worth noting.
Has anyone here ever noticed about the “Think Different” video? In the middle of the video, theres the Middlebronfman, shaking the champagne, standing and smiling on Burt Ruttan’s experimental plane.
If things are so bad in the music business why would CBS re-enter that market?
Beware the tar pits, Bronfasaurus Rex.
Macview brings up an important point. There are other services that a label can provide for artists beyond just recording and distribution. For years, the majors have used this to shackle artists to them for years.
Technology has created cracks in those shackles. Home studios. Downloads. The ability to do promotion via social networking sites and websites. Portable music devices that obviate the need for the radio (musicwise).
Sure, home studios are not as good as a pro studio, but they are very good. Promotion via the internet allows anyone, anywhere to read about you, but the problem is oversaturation. Still, it potentiates word of mouth on a national and global scale that was not previously possible without a label and the dreaded radio. Downloads are the thing that can be the superior of current methods. That is why labels have been so insistent on making sure that downloads are crippled, either with DRM or poor encoding. Lossless content without DRM available in a la carte – that beats that majors current method.
Guess what? Some labels actually do this. Sure, they are niche players, but they do it and no artists have starved to death and the labels are not in the red. This does not work simply because they are niche players, but because the model used by such labels is different that the majors. This scares the fuck out of the majors because it is counter to their model of promoting a few superstar acts based on their potential for mass appeal. Sure, small labels do put more promotion behind their more popular acts, but they are usually more popular on merit. Such ideas are anathema to the majors.
The majors would have you believe that they are being killed by downloads. However, it is just one of the pieces of the puzzle. Technology is going to kills the current model of the majors.
you can sell on iTunes directly
http://www.tunecore.com/
“Apple needs to make it so all you do is upload. check some boxes and you are selling your music on itunes.
The first 15 year old who sells a million downloads from itunes that he made from g band is what we need next.”
My first signing Jules Manning is on iTunes but nobody’s buying!!. It was very quick and easy to get her album up there worldwide via Emubands, at the recommendation of Apple who considered us too small-fry to bother with directly.
So
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> All recorded on Apple stuff. Logic though, not Garageband, and I’m not 15, oh no. *sigh
Hope I got my html right…
Percy:
Nice! I listened to a few tracks from Jules Manning. I like the style. I’ll buy some of them when I get home tonight.
“Welcome to the Freak Show” speaks clearly to my former self.
I’ll use the Tell a Friend to spread the word. Thanks!
“Apple needs to make it so all you do is upload. check some boxes and you are selling your music…”
This is exactly what TuneFlow.com does.
@ Clyde
If you type “middlebronfman” into the search box at Wikipedia, it comes up with Edgar Bronfman, Jr as a 100% relevant link.
How funny is that?
Well, looks like the middlebronfman will need to sell one of his yachts.
Poor him!
@ Mauritius Kestrel
Hooray!! My pluggery worked! Thanks. Many people like “FreakShow”: It gets well rocky in the middle – the iTunes preview doesn’t do it justice. Full tunes can be heard on the Myspace site: /julesmanning.
Oh, will the plugging never end? Thanks MDN for not deleting the spam.
Percy
x
Percy, no iTunes plus?
Say it isn’t so!
twilightmoon@mac.com:
We didn’t seem to have a choice in that respect. Might be worth an email to our aggregators though. It seems that when you go through a 3rd-party as we have to do, you don’t get much say in the matter. Although, having said that, I didn’t set up the account, so I don’t know what options were offered at the time of application. I’ll look into that, because I’m in favour of DRM-free music certainly.
P
who would those aggregators be?
MDN word “bad” as in DRM bad…