News Bytes: BigChampagne acquired by Live Nation, Rara-who?, Sony & Warner join Grooveshark fray & more
Yesterday evening our Twitter feed was filling up with congratulations for BigChampagne, and founders Eric Garland and Joe Fleischer, following the announcement that Live Nation had acquired the pioneering media measurement operation. While not well known outside of entertainment biz circles, the company is anything but a flash-in-the-pan tech start up – having celebrated its 10th anniversary this year and launching the Ultimate Chart last year, not to mention having their analysis frequently cited and quoted by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and many other publications. Tip of the cap indeed. For more information about how BigChampagne began and an overall interesting read, check our Q&A with Eric Garland from 2009, here… A new streaming music service surfaced this week from the founder of Omnifone. The service is called Rara and it appears to be targeting the segment of online music consumers who want to use a streaming service, but find Spotify, Rdio, MOG and others… too complicated? The service is launching with the help of some built-in links on select HP computers and a discounted 3-month trial price of $0.99 per month… Meanwhile, Sony and Warner Music are reportedly joining Universal Music Group in taking legal action against online music service Grooveshark… The bizarre story of the Megaupload song and video that featured Will.I.Am and a number of other celebrities and artists lauding the file-transfering service, takes another strange turn, Hollywood Esq. has the details… Check marked in the ‘plus’ column for Spotify this week, it was revealed that Arcade Fire’s catalog would now be available on the service in all its current territories. This follows headlines that the new Black Keys album is not being made available on any streaming music services, for now… And for an streaming availability scorecard, Wired published a side-by-side comparison of content exclusive to either Spotify or Rdio.
iTunes Gets The Beatles, EMI Gets a Bump & Hollywood Gets Another Warning Sign
Arrive on iTunes
Today Apple announced the addition of The Beatles catalogue to the iTunes store, which ends a longtime hold out from the group and leaves AC/DC, Bob Seger and Kid Rock among the remaining high-profile acts whose music is not available on iTunes. Reports of the Beatles announcement leaked well before the Fab Four popped up all over Apple.com, the iTunes homepage and Ping early this morning. Many were hoping for a music-streaming or Lala related announcement, but as reports pointed out, there is nothing indicating that Apple has new licensing deals in place with the major labels yet. However, this morning’s announcement does beg the question of whether of not The Beatles catalogue will be left in download-only mode, if and when Apple launches a streaming service, particularly in light of “the long and winding road” it took just to get their music available digitally. Others are pointing to the much needed bump the new pact will give to EMI, ostensibly providing the label with a huge Q4 release in the form of all thirteen of the group’s studio albums, available as full albums or single songs, as well as other popular collections and a digital box set… While all parties involved were lauding the new digital era of Beatles music, there was a stark reminder of the role Apple has played in the industry’s digital music quagmire over the last decade, in the form of a dinner conversation in San Francisco last night. The discussion, which was part of the 2010 Web 2.0 Summit, featured WME head Ari Emanuel discussing among other topics, the film and television industry’s burgeoning piracy problem. In mentioning the recording industry’s plight of piracy, Emanuel asserted that record labels in all likelihood would not have agreed to a 99-cents per song structure had they the knowledge they do now. Others argue that given what has happened in the music industry, the studios should have the foresight to avoid making the same mistakes in holding out on new digital services from Google, Apple and Netflix. Read the full story on SAI… And for even more on Hollywood’s growing digital issues, check out a Q&A with BigChampagne’s Eric Garland on CNET.
[UPDATE: Ethan Smith has more on the backstory of how the iTunes - Beatles deal came to fruition, read it here on WSJ]
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Should the Industry Be More Gaga For YouTube?
Joe Fleischer
Which is a bigger gauge of Lady Gaga’s success, 15-million albums sold or 1-billion YouTube views? That’s the question posed in a piece on Fast Company yesterday, with BigChampagne’s Joe Fleischer commenting, “When you look at Lady Gaga hitting a billion views, I think that’s a very positive wake-up call for the industry–that we need to think about the metrics of success differently,” – BigChampagne’s newly minted Ultimate Chart was recently tapped as this year’s source for American Music Awards nominees. Read the full article HERE…
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Friday Round Up: Sony Music Top Spot, Face Off Over EMI, CMJ & More…
Bandier Enters the Sony Music Fray (L) Hands Set for Face Off (R)
A story in the New York Post this morning threw Sony/ATV CEO Marty Bandier into the mix of names swirling in the bid for the top spot at Sony Music, indicating his neutral position in the ongoing “civil war” within the company as a plus. Citing unnamed executives, the piece also speculated that current RCA chief Barry Weiss might land at Universal Music Group if he isn’t named as successor to current Sony Music CEO Rolf Schmidt-Holtz - a scenario being floated by more than a few folks in-the-know… Meanwhile the buzz around the courtroom showdown between Terra Firma and Citigroup over EMI continues as the WSJ reports today that talks between the two sides failed this week, though there is still time for a settlement to be reached over the weekend. Informal talks could continue even after the trial’s start on Monday if an 11th-hour pact isn’t reached – Guy Hands is expected to take the stand first… No stranger to firing rumors, gossip that Island Def Jam ruler L.A. Reid is as good as out continued this week. While a move to television in the form of an American Idol or X-Factor judge position was previously floated, insiders share that a quiet departure with a label-imprint in hand seems a more likely scenario… In other updates, Steve Aoki has entered into a world-wide co-publishing deal with Warner/Chappell Music, the A-Team’s own B.A. Baracus (aka Marc Wilson) signed the producer/writer/DJ who has upcoming projects in the works with Rivers Cuomo, Chiddy Bang, Travis Barker, Will.I.Am and Sky Ferreira… The CMJ Music Marathon 2010 kicks off next week in New York City, including a keynote address from Jason Flom – other panelists slated to speak include David Boxenbaum (A&M Octone), John Boyle (Hello Music), Lindsey Cook (RCA), Eric German (MS&K), Jon Pikus (Lava/Kirkwood Ranch) and many others… The label action continues to wind up around Seattle’s The Head and The Heart after whipping A&R folks into a frenzy with their L.A. shows last week. Zeitgeist’s Jordan Kurland has picked up the band for management… IAMMEDIC continues to generate label interest, taking multiple meetings after their EP-release show last week. A collaboration with Far East Movement is set to take place on the heels of their remix of the band’s “Like A G6″ – the top song on BigChampagne’s Ultimate Chart this week… Catch Las Vegas act And She Whispered at the House of Blues Hollywood this Saturday (Oct. 16), as they open for All That Remains on their current North America tour. The band has received airplay on LV’s Extreme Radio and has been drawing big crowds in their hometown… IN THE MIX: Amanda Ghost, Fearless Records, Chappo, OFWGKTA and Box.net
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It’s All About the Data, Baby…
Data was the topic de jour in much of the industry dialogue last week with the launch of The Ultimate Chart from BigChampagne. The chart is a new weekly list of top songs and artists based on more traditional metrics like sales and broadcast, along with newer online stats like watching, listening and fans, friends and followers on social networks. While BC is at the forefront, and has been, for online metrics, others are hard at work to capitalize on the growing importance of online data too… Check out a missive from Ethan Kaplan, who heads the Emerging Technology group within WEA, on the importance of data in building a better fan experience. And elsewhere CBS owned Last.fm continues to grow, generating a reported 30-40 million pieces of listening data every day, which it plans to integrate into the CBS network of radio, tv and online properties…
Thursday Bits & Pieces: New Music Seminar, Google’s New Legal Gun & More…
BigChampagne's New Ultimate Chart Tracks Popularity Across Many Platforms
The New Music Seminar (NYC) wrapped up yesterday after featuring a number of speakers and presenters including Tom Silverman (NMS Co-Founder), Eric Garland (BigChampagne), Corrie Christopher (Agent, VP APA), Ariel Hyatt (Ariel Publicity & Cyper PR) and Peter Kafka (All Things Digital) among many others. There was a wide range of topics discussed, all focused on the future of the business, including media, touring and breaking through. BigChampange’s new Ultimate Chart, which measures artist and song popularity using a number of metrics including the three F’s (fan/friends/followers), also created a lot of discussion following its unveiling by Eric Garland during the conference’s State of the Internet Address… Google has hired veteran music attorney Elizabeth Moody, formerly of Davis Shapiro Lewit & Hayes, presumably to help them through the label terrain as they move closer to launching their much-discussed new music service likely to be known as Google Music… July 31st will see a first-of-its-kind star studded event in India for the release of the audio to the new film Endhiran, composed by Oscar winner AR Rahman who became a household name in the West after winning Best Original Score for Slumdog Millionaire. South African label Think Music has acquired the rights to Endhiran’s audio, beating out a number of larger labels who were rumored to be vying for the rights… Elsewhere, Atlantic Records has signed Christina Perri, the overnight sensation who performed her song “Jar of Hearts” on So You Think You Can Dance recently. Perri is also the younger sister of former Shinedown lead guitarist Nick Perri… Linkin Park has teamed up with MySpace Music, Indaba Music and TopSpin Media for a new online fan collaboration contest… And Forbes discusses music in the cloud with Thumbplay Music chief exec Evan Schwartz…
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Quotable: RM64 2009 in Q&A’s
In 2009 we were lucky enough to sit down with individuals from all different sectors of the music industry to hear how they are operating in the new music environment, what has led them there and what they see for the future. We appreciate all the time, insight and perspective they shared with us. Below is a recap and links to the entirety of each Q&A…
Andrew Brightman / Brightman Music
“… now A&R people are more used to hearing finished masters, things that are ready to put out…” (Read Q&A)
Bill Armstrong & Joe Sib / SideOneDummy Records
“Ultimately, I think the future label model is one that’s lean and can move quickly, but still be competitive on a big level.” (Read Q&A)
Jason Reynolds / MySpace Records
“I don’t really know how much awareness there is in the music business community as to what we do; which is fine. I guess now they’ll probably all find out won’t they?” (Read Q&A)
Damon Booth & Tom DeSavia / Notable Music Publishing
“I think in general, publishers are in a great position in this climate. If they can be smart about their role, they can help an artist do anything they want to do.” (Read Q&A)
Eric Garland / BigChampagne
“…10 years ago our idea was to provide insight, analysis and measurement in this space that companies like Nielsen have always provided offline. Somebody has to do that online and we should be that company. We’re still here and basically that’s still the mission.” (Read Q&A)
Missy Worth / Artistic License Mgmt
“I’ve learned that a band has to have conviction and a viewpoint, if they don’t have that then no one knows what they are working towards. This all begins and ends with the band and their songs and their story and we all need to remember that.” (Read Q&A)
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Champagne Superhova: Q&A with BigChampagne’s Eric Garland
In our most enlightening Q&A to date, BigChampagne CEO Eric Garland shares his insight on the issues facing the music and technology business in the last 10 years. It’s a must read for industry insiders in the online and offline world. He recently stopped by RM 64 headquarters to sit down with office janitors Berko Pearce and Scott Sheldon where they also discussed the finer points of Joe Fleischer’s hair.
RM64: Can you give us a little background on yourself and how you got involved in the music & technology business?
EG: I’m a kid from Texas, most of the family is still there and I’m the one that got out. I take great pleasure in turning SXSW into like a three-week boondoggle and visit every distant relative and hang out on the lake. I played in bands unsuccessfully, knocked around Texas, then did the whole fraternity/sorority circuit for a while when I got out of school. I went to work as a management consultant and got the bug, being entrepreneurial, that is to say basically having a paycheck but not having a boss. So when I got really restless at that, I realized there was no less legitimate place to go, you’re already a consultant, so you can only go to unemployment. So I decided to start a company, what would become BigChampagne really. It was sort of set off like everything was in music and technology at that time, with the explosion and popularity of Napster. Napster happened and we thought there has to be an opportunity here for artists.
BC's Eric Garland, nice white teeth
RM64: Did you use Napster?
EG: Um, I had an occupational interest in Napster (smiles).
RM64: Strike that from the record.
EG: No, no, no, that’s actually a good story, the one part of my personal story that’s worth telling. I was helping out artist friends who had been helpful to me when I was trying to be an artist. One of my friends at that time, a great artist named Glen Phillips who had been the front man for Toad the Wet Sprocket, was starting his second career as an independent artist. I was sort of quasi-managing Glen, helping him a lot and I launched his first website. He wanted to do the whole e-commerce thing and sell his first solo record on his website, this is late ‘90s or early 2000’s. We were sitting around in the bar at Largo long after closing one night after he had done a little solo set, and he said, ‘What do you make of Napster?’ I said, ‘Just between you and me, I think it’s really cool. Does that offend you?’ And he said, ‘No! And that’s my problem.’ Everybody was so upset about Napster. Lars is going on about it, and Hillary Rosen is banging the drum and everybody’s threatening lawsuit. And he said, ‘As a guy who used to be in a band that people really loved, and as a guy who’s trying to draw some attention to what he’s doing now, I just wish I could let those people know that I’ve got a record and that I’m coming to town, or that I have a T-shirt that comes in lady’s sizes.’ You know, and his take was just so different. He was like, ‘I just think for most artists the first reaction should be that this is a community and it should be a tool set for me, and how do I exploit it to my advantage?’ And I was like, ‘that’s kinda cool.’
So I went and found this computer scientist buddy of mine and said, ‘what do you know about Napster? Tell me everything about Napster?’ Just by total chance he had met a group of other developers who had been working in this area of peer-mediated computing. He said, ‘Well, there are a lot of things we could do…’ And I said, ‘I’ve got this artist friend who really wants to find his fans on Napster and let them know what he’s doing now.’ He said, ‘let me think about that.’ Twenty-four hours later he tells me ‘I think I have something for you. I’ll have a prototype tonight at 7.’ Sure enough he showed me this amazing thing that he had very quickly thrown together. It was essentially a search engine that was collecting information about what people were searching for on Napster, what people were downloading and which artists people were adding to a playlist. Then we could segment that for purposes of marketing. So we did this little pilot with Glen Phillips where we approached Toad the Wet Sprocket fans and said, ‘hey, it’s Glen from Toad. I have a new record out and I’m giving away some mp3s, I have a tour calendar, and here it is.’ The conversion rate was unreal, it was getting like 20-25 percent conversions, we sold thousands of his independently released CDs off of glenphillips.com, a website that I was maintaining at that point out of my apartment in Fairfax. We just thought, ‘this is it. This is the future of the music industry.’ Little did we know that 10 years later that would almost be true. We were very eager and excited about what that first 6 months would hold, which was mostly pain and suffering.
RM64: So how did BigChampagne come into being?
EG: We did a few more of these experiments with artists after Glen Phillips. There was this sort of word of mouth thing in the artist community. Along the lines of, ‘these guys are doing this crazy stuff with Napster and online marketing.’ Then we started doing a lot of them. We worked with a whole bunch of L.A. bands, Bay Area bands and we got some press for that, and it was like, ‘hey these independent artists have a different attitude about Napster and they’re working with this technology start up.’ At that point there was still no name for it, you know, it wasn’t BigChampagne. It was just some guys.
Then I got a call from Jim Guerinot. And Jim said, ‘we get it, we think Napster is amazing.’ The Offspring wanted to put out their new record on Napster. That did not end up happening for reasons that had nothing to do with Guerinot or The Offspring, which I’m sure you know. But it started a really good conversation, and we did do some stuff to market and promote not just The Offspring, but a bunch of different bands of Jim’s. And through Jim we met the lawyer, of course. They always march the lawyer in, and that was Ken Hertz. He was effectively my co-founder, in that he was the one that looked at this little experiment of ours and said, ‘let’s turn this into a business, let’s build this. This could really be the path for the music industry with respect to Napster. This could be a better approach.’ And so it is, in a roundabout way, Kenny’s fault that I met Joe Fleischer.
RM64: Now at the time did you know of their (Ken & Joe) work with mp3.com?
EG: I was doing real-time research. I was Googling furiously. I guess this is before Google, so I was Yahooing to try to find out what I had fallen into. And yes, I was aware that they had worked together with varying degrees of success in the past.
RM64: Was this right after mp3.com?
EG: It was, it was virtually the same time. It’s when all these companies were falling through the door, were pouring into L.A., mostly from Northern California. And I will say this, completely unabashedly but also un-cynically, it could have gone so badly for us. This is the thing I think back on more often than anything else, you had a couple of smart geeks that had an idea and a little bit of technology. We basically showed up in Hollywood and said, ‘does anybody want to buy a watch?’
In hindsight, we could not have done better. We sort of fell into this little Largo community, where people loved music, were passionate about art and were all friends and invested in one another. That was great and really lucky. Then we caught the attention of slightly more powerful people in the business. During that time we sat down with everybody. And they were dazzled and wowed by the possibilities. It was cool to be knowledgeable and valuable to these people who were legendary. Who were we? We were somebody who knew something about Napster and that was a real currency, the elevator definitely got off on the top floor.
Kings of Pop: BC's Joe Fleischer (left) & Eric Garland (right)
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