American Songwriter » Labels

Tim McGraw-Curb Records Trial Postponed

Ale Delgado — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 14:58:11 +0000

The saga continues between Tim McGraw and his former label Curb Records. Yesterday, a Nashville court granted Curb's request to postpone their trial, which focuses on whether or not McGraw has fulfilled his contractual obligations to the label, until it can examine the circumstances around McGraw's recently announced recordings. In November 2011, Curb Records was denied a preliminary injunction that would stop McGraw from signing with another record label until after their case was decided. Jump ahead six months later: McGraw announced that not only was he signing with Scott Borchetta's Big Machine Records, but he had already recorded 20 sides for his new label. According to Billboard, Curb maintains that its contract with McGraw has not ended and that it still owns McGraw's new music. By postponing the trial, the label will have time to investigate when McGraw's new recordings were made, in order to determine if they are a breach of contract. McGraw's publicist released the following statement: "Tim McGraw and his counsel have received several requests for comment concerning a recent press release issued by Curb Records regarding the lawsuit between Tim McGraw and Curb Records. Rule 3.6 of the Tennessee Rules of Professional Conduct makes clear that it is not proper for attorneys to make such out-of-court statements that will be disseminated to the public. It is proper, however, for Mr. McGraw and his counsel to clarify the record in light of Curb’s press release. The Court’s only ruling was to postpone, at the request of Curb, the trial as to damages claimed by Mr. McGraw and by Curb. There was no ruling about anything else, and specifically there was no ruling regarding the substance of either party’s claims in the lawsuit. The Court’s ruling did not affect, in any way, Mr. McGraw’s relationship with Big Machine Records.The Court’s Order on the postponement and its prior ruling issued on December 8, 2011 are public documents and are available on the web site of the Davidson County Chancery Court Clerk. Mr. McGraw and his counsel believe that the rulings speak for themselves, and that it is not proper for either of the parties to issue a press release regarding these matters." The Court of Appeals has stated that they will hear the appeal of the November ruling "soon," but has not given an exact date yet.

The post Tim McGraw-Curb Records Trial Postponed appeared first on American Songwriter.

Independent, Artist-Owned Labels Surge

Bobby Herb — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:05:10 +0000

Update (1/9/12): Bon Iver's Justin Vernon is launching his own label, Chigliak Records.

As the presence of major labels has begun to dwindle, a surge in independent, artist-owned labels and publishing houses has taken place to fill in the missing piece still needed to fulfill the many tasks and operations involved in releasing a record. Following suit with this trend is Brendan Benson – songwriter, producer, and co-founder of The Raconteurs – with the launch of his new Nashville-based record label and publishing company, ReadyMade. Having plenty of experience under his belt after multiple solo releases over the years and producing 5 albums in 2011 alone, Benson teamed up with manager Emily White to make the dream label he envisioned back in the 90s into a reality. In creating ReadyMade, Benson and White have focused on creating an outlet for well-tailored and creative releases. As White stated, “We wanted a way for Brendan to be able to create music when and how he wants and be able to put out the music sans any barriers. The answer to what we were looking for is Readymade.” With the 2012 slated releases of Benson’s new album What Kind of World, Young Hines’ Give Me My Change, and the Benson produced album from The Lost Brothers under the ReadyMade name, you can expect to hear a lot from ReadyMade in the coming months.

Benson isn’t the only one taking the DIY approach to releases these days though. Artists all over the world are following suit. But what is the point of a release if your music isn’t getting any attention? That’s where Jay Frank comes in. On February 1, 2012, Jay Frank –- music industry executive, blogger, and author –- will be releasing his newest book, Hack Your Hit: Free and Cheap Marketing Tips for Musicians in unison with the launch of his own record label, DigSin, which will be implementing all of the “hacks,” tips, and tricks outlined in the book to create buzz and attention around the label’s releases. With Hack Your Hit, readers can gain insight on ways to not only successfully market new music in the digital age, but to do it quickly and efficiently by utilizing online tools, maximizing social media, nurturing fans, and using other unique marketing techniques outlined throughout the book.

Also hopping aboard the DIY train in 2012 is Ben Kweller. Having spent the last 15 years working with various major labels as most artists of his stature have, the singer-songwriter has announced he will be releasing his latest album Go Fly A Kite on his Austin-based label, The Noise Company. Partnering with Alternative Distribution Alliance, Kweller is set to release his album on February 7.

"There's a lot of geeky stuff involved, but as a die-hard music junkie and record collector, these things get me excited!" says Kweller. "It's the real deal, not just an artist self-releasing his music. We have a real staff, real funding, real distribution, and I look forward to eventually helping other artists achieve their goals too."

The post Independent, Artist-Owned Labels Surge appeared first on American Songwriter.

Digital-Only Classical Label Takes On Rock And Roll

Davis Inman — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:19:13 +0000

X5 compilations have topped the iTunes classical music charts. Now they're taking on Sun Records catalog. X5 Music Group is a Stockholm-based music startup that is helping to rethink the way labels package and release albums digitally. X5 licenses classical music catalogs and creates attractively-priced digital albums that appeal to a younger demographic. X5's business model is so promising that it lured Scott Ambrose Reilly, a digital music executive with years of experience licensing music as the head of Amazon's MP3 Store, to lead their U.S. operations in a new New York office. Reilly says it's the "digital potential" that attracted him to join X5's team. "All the way back in 1995-96, when I was first doing digital promotions and downloads with bands, all the ways you thought [digital] might change the industry in the way that content was created - distribution changed - but a lot of the other things haven't really come to fruition." X5 was founded in 2003, and soon the founders started packaging content specifically for the digital marketplace, with a focus on the classical music genre. In May 2008, X5 released a compilation album entitled The 50 Most Essential Pieces of Classical Music for $9.99 and the album has spent time at to the top of the iTunes classical music chart. Reilly says the reason he and other X5 executives believe the model has worked is because it's attracting new fans to classical music. "We don't think we sold a lot of classical music to a lot of classical fans," says Reilly. X5's three founders each had backgrounds as songwriters and producers in Sweden and had dabbled in the ringtone business. They decided early on that the new company's model would be exclusively digital. "As soon as they made that decision," says Reilly, "the future was all growth and innovation, which is exciting." One thing X5 hopes to help reshape is the music industry status quo around album releases. "The business model that we're still living under is the LP vinyl business model that got created at the end of the '60s," says Reilly. "An artist needs to not be married to that as the end-all-be-all of how people engage with their music." That means rethinking album lead times and street dates, and even the length of albums. Reilly says all of these things are still tied to physical world, instead of being packaged with digital-first in mind. But aren't even the most innovative artists still nostalgia buffs for the heyday of the music industry? When a fan bought their favorite group's new record at the local record shop and took it home? What about the days when you pulled the record out of the sleeve and gently dropped the needle on fresh vinyl, then sat down and rolled a joint on the LP sleeve and... just listened. "It's hard to know how it evolves," says Reilly about the business of releasing new music. "Is every Tuesday the structure that still makes sense? What artists should be thinking about is how do people listen to their music? You can't change that. Customers are going to buy their music the way they choose to. Your fans and the customer have to lead that discussion. The artists have to go to where the customers are already listening to music." Now X5 will try to apply their model to music outside the classical genre. They recently struck a deal with Nashville-based Sun Records, home to the early Sam Phillips Memphis rock and roll recordings of Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins. "Sun has done a good job of creating packages that service the Sun aficionados," says Reilly. "What we want to do is create albums that will appeal to people who know who Johnny Cash is but don't have any in their collection. Who maybe have never heard of Roscoe Gordon or only know Charlie Rich from his two mega hits that their parents used to listen to." As for branching out into new genres, Reilly, who was calling on potential clients in London when we spoke by Skype, says, "There's a lot to learn and there's a lot of opportunity." One side of the business that X5 has a clear grasp of is bringing classical music to new fans. In November, they will release a 24-track compilation called The Greatest Video Game Music, with the themes from "007: Blood Stone" and the popular app game "Angry Birds" performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. "We think we've brought a lot of young people into classical music. We're thinking: how do we take that even further?" asks Reilly. "Video games. There are great songs in video games."

The post Digital-Only Classical Label Takes On Rock And Roll appeared first on American Songwriter.

David Gray Releases Live Album Through Groupon

Davis Inman — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 21:14:10 +0000

On Monday, June 27, fans of David Gray can visit their local Groupon website for an exclusive daily deal on Gray's new live album, Lost and Found – Live in Dublin 2011. The album, a $13 value, is available one day only for the price of $6. Gray recorded the album in Dublin this year and his record label, Downtown Records, worked with Groupon to put together the special social commerce offer. Downtown Records is no stranger to the fast-growing world of group coupons. The label's joint venture with tech entrepreneur Peter Rojas, RCRD LBL, had previously launched RCRD DEALS with Topspin Media. Groupon has appeared to be quietly eying the music space for some time. Some music venues have already used Groupon to sell tickets for select shows, and the company also recently announced a ticketing partnership with Live Nation called GrouponLive. [Full disclosure: American Songwriter has also used the group buying behemoth to ply our wares.] While Gray's camp has plans to release the live album in a physical format later this year, the 24-hour digital promotion appears to be an excellent way to kickstart early sales of the album and draw instant publicity. Groupon promoted the daily deal across their vast chain of local markets. On Chicago's site, for example, the album had sold 179 copies with some 8 hours remaining. With major music e-Commerce players like Topspin already exploring the daily deals territory, it wouldn't be a surprise to see more and more albums going the way of the two-for-one drink special.

The post David Gray Releases Live Album Through Groupon appeared first on American Songwriter.

Tim McGraw Responds To Curb With Counter Suit

Davis Inman — Wed, 25 May 2011 13:11:14 +0000

Things are heating up between country star Tim McGraw and his once-amiable record label, Curb. Last week, we reported on McGraw's legal tussle with the Nashville-based label. Curb filed a suit alleging that McGraw began work on what would be his final studio album for the label prior to the 12-month window allowable under his contract, which ensures recordings be "topical and new." Now, according to Billboard, Tim McGraw and his legal team have fired back with a counter suit. In addition to holding firm that Emotional Traffic was recorded in 2009 and 2010 - not in 2008, as Curb's suit claims - McGraw's team points out that Curb never asked any questions about the chronology of previous material. McGraw again points out the disproportionate number of compilation albums that Curb has released in recent years. In addition to three separate volumes of McGraw's Greatest Hits compilations - and two limited edition releases of the same albums - Curb dropped Collector's Edition and, most recently, Number One Hits in 2010. Four of the releases came in between McGraw's 2007 and 2009 albums, Let It Go and Southern Voice.

The post Tim McGraw Responds To Curb With Counter Suit appeared first on American Songwriter.

Top Indie Publisher Starts Record Label

Davis Inman — Mon, 16 May 2011 19:09:31 +0000

The Ettes have been signed to the new label, Krian Music Group. The Royalty Network, a New York-based independent publishing house that represents a diverse spectrum of songwriters and producers from the likes of Pete Seeger and Justin Townes Earle to Buck$ and Sizzla, has just announced the formation of a sister record label called Krian Music Group. Krian, which will be distributed by Universal/Fontana, will release upcoming albums from Nashville's The Ettes, dance-rockers VHS Or Beta, as well as Buck$ and Richie Loop. Interestingly, Frank Liwall, the President of both Royalty and Krian, says the company was inspired to launch the label after seeing a gap in the marketplace. "We looked at artists we had been publishing, with successful film and television licensing histories, and realized a number of great acts were without a label home," says Liwall. While record labels have done their best to weather the downturn in the sales of recorded music, publishers have stayed afloat in the changing industry by maximizing exposure for artists through things like film and T.V. placements, as well as lucrative video game placements. With Royalty's lead, it wouldn't surprise many in the industry if more publishing entities used their existing networks and relationships to provide label services for artists.

The post Top Indie Publisher Starts Record Label appeared first on American Songwriter.

Google Music To Rival Amazon Cloud

Davis Inman — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:46:29 +0000

Google execs confirmed to Billboard yesterday that the company would announce their long-rumored music service - to be called Music Beta by Google - on Tuesday at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco. As has been reported recently, Google all but gave up negotiating with major record labels for licenses for a music service that included features like scanning and syncing a user's library. As a result, Google has decided to push forward without licenses from record companies and will offer a passive locker, where users can simply upload their music to Google's servers for storage but will not have sophisticated syncing and sharing options or an music purchasing platform. Thus, Google's music service looks remarkably similar to Amazon's cloud drive. In lieu of a built-in music store, Google will announce a new music playing app for Android devices, though the app will not be able to access music stored in Music Beta by Google, according to Billboard. Music Beta will be free to users, though will be available in the beginning only on an invite-basis. Users will be able to upload 20,000 songs to the Google cloud, and Google will likely roll out tiered pricing plans in the future.

The post Google Music To Rival Amazon Cloud appeared first on American Songwriter.

Warner Music Sold To Russian-Born Billionaire

Davis Inman — Fri, 06 May 2011 16:09:34 +0000

Warner Music Group has been in the news a lot lately. Just last week, they were making deals with Apple for an upcoming cloud music service. Warner, which comprises notable labels like Atlantic and Reprise, has also been on the auction block for some time. Earlier this week, news spread that the company, which is headed by Chairman and CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr., had been in talks with a range of suitors, including Sony/ATV Publishing and Ronald Perelman. Today, Reuters first announced that Len Blavatnick, a billionaire businessman born in Russia who emigrated to the U.S. and made his fortune largely in the industrial sector, would buy the music giant for $3.3. billion. Blavatnick's company, Access Industries, will be paying $8.25 a share for the Warner Music Group Corp, which trades as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange. The company's shares closed on Thursday at $7.90, though they have traded as low as $4.00 over the last year. Of course, the sale of a major music record label to a private business group is reminiscent of Guy Hands and Terra Firma's 2007 acquisition of EMI. That deal eventually led to Citigroup, which had been the main lender, taking back control of EMI, as Terra Firma was unable to sustain the acquisition under the existing debt load. Warner is reported to have around $2 billion in debt. But, some see the sale of Warner Music in a positive light. EMusic, the music download service, signed Warner Music Group on as a partner in January 2010. Adam Klein, eMusic's CEO, says he's pleased with the deal. “It most likely creates greater economic stability and better positions Warner Music Group to realign its operating costs around the ever changing realities of the digital music space," says Klein. "We trust that the new owners understand and appreciate consumers’ new expectations of the digital music industry.” Klein hints that there may be more deals of this nature. “This is just the beginning of the repositioning of the major music industry players,” he says.

The post Warner Music Sold To Russian-Born Billionaire appeared first on American Songwriter.

Cloud Report: Apple, Amazon, SoundCloud

Davis Inman — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:52:54 +0000

Life in the clouds. While we've been writing about Apple's cloud music service - and the recent coup of signing Warner Music to a licensing deal - on Wednesday GigaOm reported that the Swedish company Xcerion was putting their domain iCloud.com up for sale, reportedly for around $4.5 million. Xcerion was running a storage cloud service off the domain, but has now rebranded the service as Cloudme. Today, AllThingsD has confirmed that Apple is the buyer, though the price remains unspecified. iMac. iTunes. iPod. iPhone. iPad. iCloud. Welcome to the future. It appears all is not well in Amazon's Cloudland Canyon. Amazon surprised competitors and the music industry by unexpectedly launching music streaming and storage locker services in March. Those services - which had not obtained licenses from music publishers and record labels - were met with scorn by the industry. Now, Amazon is dealing with a public relations nightmare in another of their cloud-related business matters. Amazon Web Services, which provides a range of cloud-based services to companies like Foursquare, The New York Times, and Reddit, reported an ongoing failure last week, affecting scores of companies. AllThingsD has several lengthy analyses of the debacle. Amazon has apologized for the issue, but at a time when Amazon would hope to be treading lightly in the cloud, a public outrage of this nature surely doesn't bode well. Last up, in a bit of optimistic cloud news, the Berlin-based music startup SoundCloud tells VentureBeat about an idea for "social sounds," or a sort of Twitter or Facebook status update with sound. CEO Alexander Ljung also says it's time to redefine the state of the music industry, citing the fact that there are more music creators now than ever and also that the musical products industry is twice as large as the recorded music industry. Innaresting guy, this Mr. Ljung.

The post Cloud Report: Apple, Amazon, SoundCloud appeared first on American Songwriter.

Apple Signs Warner Music To The Cloud

Davis Inman — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:33:37 +0000

Last Thursday, All Things Digital reported that Apple had signed two of the four major labels to licensing deals for the company's yet-to-launch cloud music service, though they were not able to confirm which companies. Now it appears, based on a report on CNET this morning, that Apple has signed a licensing agreement with Warner Music Group for the said service. The news seems a sure sign that Apple is finally closing in on their new music service, which has been in the works for quite some time. In other scores around the league, Apple competitor Spotify has already signed deals with Sony and EMI for their service in the U.S., with Universal reportedly close to a deal, and Warner officially still holding out. Recently, reports have also surfaced that Google is frustrated with the record labels, as the search giant has fruitlessly tried to come to terms with labels in order to launch a cloud music service of their own. It's even been suggested that Google ought to buy an existing music platform like Pandora, and the company is also said to be considering a partnership with a service like Spotify. Coupled with the news of Apple's EMI deal is an exclusive report from Reuters that Apple has completed development of their new music service, and has only to iron out the licensing logistics before an imminent launch.

The post Apple Signs Warner Music To The Cloud appeared first on American Songwriter.