Sin City's Parade of Lights signs co-pub deal with Imagem Music USA

Independent music pubco Imagem Music USA has announced the signing of RM64-tipped act Parade of Lights to a worldwide co-publishing agreement. The Las Vegas-based band is comprised of core members Ryan Daly and Anthony Improgo, previously of Hellogoodbye and Metro Station, respectively, and is managed by Seth Keller for SKM Artist Management and Brian Saliba for Bogus Productions. Parade of Lights, signed by Imagem’s L.A.-based Creative Director Jon Pikus, who commented “I am excited to help them on their journey to reach a larger audience, and additionally to place Ryan and Anthony into co-writing situations with others,” has had numerous TV placements and is currently working on their latest EP Born to Live, Born to Love. http://www.facebook.com/paradeoflights

Neil Young addresses labels, piracy & more

Vevo CEO Rio Caraeff, made the first public statements regarding the video site’s profitability at the digital media conference this week, putting it plainly, “We are making money, yes,” with a reported $150 million in revenue last year. In terms of the future, Caraeff predicted that the joint-venture, which includes Sony Music, Universal Music and EMI, could be a billion dollar business in a “short period of time”… Meanwhile, Edgar Bronfman Jr. lauded Spotify as being artist-friendly and not detrimental to download sales, during his interview, and called Google Music an oxymoron, explaining that there’s no “beef” between Warner Music and Google, but they need to decide if they want to be a content platform… And Neil Young addressed a number of topics including audio quality, record labels, piracy and how he and the late Steve Jobs has discussed how to reconcile the current issues facing the digital music era by combining all three.

Edgar Bronfman Jr. speaks with AllThingsD's Peter Kafka

Speaking at the Dive Into Media conference yesterday in California, on what was his last day as Chairman of Warner Music Group, Edgar Bronfman Jr. didn’t mince any words when it came to the topic of Universal Music Group’s planned acquisition of the EMI recorded music division. “It does strike me as hubris particularly for Universal to think it’s going to be easy to buy EMI, and frankly to think they can buy EMI at all,” said Bronfman, also saying that the merger would create a “super-major” that would not only control the future of recorded music, but “the future of all digital media.” He also confirmed that Warner Music would indeed be fighting the deal, as was expected with the recent news of WMG’s hiring of an anti-trust lobbyist firm. Bronfman also denied that the failure to successfully acquire EMI was the impetus for his departure as chairman, and that his biggest regret looking back was his misjudgment in the mobile space, saying that the platform “took longer to mature than I thought at the time.”

Independent distro company The Orchard in partnership with Frenchkiss Records and label founder Syd Butler, announced today the formation of the Frenchkiss Label Group, which will serve as a potential new home for developing labels, in spirit similar to indie powerhouse Secretly Canadian. “Playing music and operating a successful music label is what I know and love. The Frenchkiss Label Group presents an opportunity for developing labels to learn from my achievements and mistakes,” says Butler. The formation of the new label group comes after The Orchard recently expanded its relationship with Frenchkiss Records, home to acts like Local Natives, Les Savy Fav, Passion Pit and The Hold Steady, by adding physical distribution duties to an existing global digital deal. The group’s daily operations will be headed by Jordy Trachtenberg, formerly of Gammon Records. FKLG is currently accepting label submissions.

Jimmy Cliff is among this years performers at Sunset Sessions

Next month the annual private industry event, Sunset Sessions, will celebrate its 15th year running of putting new and established acts in front of radio programmers and music supervisors for films, TV shows, videos and commercials. Past artists to perform at the event include The Black Keys, AWOLNATION and GIVERS among many others. This year the showcases will feature Jimmy Cliff, Wayne Coyne, Lucinda Williams and others as well as alumni Jason Mraz – who along with his label Atlantic Records, attributes much of the artist’s past momentum to his performances at the event. A number of industry heavyweights will speak on event panels as well, including Danny Goldberg, Kevin Lyman, Alex Patsavas and Bill Armstrong. For more info on the history of Sunset Sessions and its founder Michelle Clark, read the recent profile on UTSanDiego.com.