Kings of A&R

San Diego based Dynamite Walls are beginning to make a mark selling 1,000 EP’s in the 1st month of the release online. The band has been compared as everything from Coldplay to John Mayer, but I also hear radio contempories such as the Fray. For more information contact Jason Burkhart or legal Nick Ferrera.
Aug 7 Los Angeles, CA - BMI
Aug 10 Santa Barbara, CA - Club Soho
Aug 17 Tempe, AZ - The Sugi Tap
Aug 26 San Diego, CA - Epicentre
Sep 8  San Diego, CA - The Beauty
Sep 29 San Diego, CA - Pi Beta Phi Sorority
Kiss and Ride (mp3)
Now (Tell Me) (mp3)

She has a platinum record and a sold out tour that may end up being the top-grossing tour ever by a female artist. She is controversial and always creates a national buzz and is one of the best selling music artists of all time. What’s odd about this is that I rarely heard her new singles on the radio. Radio barely spun first three singles from her latest album.

Hung Up” got middling airplay on mainstream top 40 outlets, “Sorry” was barely played, and “Get Together” has been all but ignored by pop stations. (Her album, “Confessions on a Dance Floor,” has sold a healthy 1.5 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.)

Why did radio shun legitimate Madonna singles that J Lo could never get her hands on? Because she isn’t hip hop enough. I know many at this point haven’t tuned into radio for the last year but your not missing anything. Hip Hop owns radio.

Warner Bros. was aware that the songs on “Confessions” could present challenges at mainstream top 40 radio, acknowledges Tom Biery, the label’s senior VP of promotions. “Top 40 radio is so hip-hop-driven,” he says. “We were coming in with a global pop star who made a dance record.”

If you want to earn your position at top 40 I suggest you lose your artistic vision and write hip hop songs. Nelly Furtado and Mariah Carey took no chances and quickly hopped on the hip hop wagon. Even so called punk rockers Good Charlotte are going to trade in the axe for a rap and has recorded a track with the Game for their upcoming album.

According to Dom Theodore, regional VP of programming for Clear Channel and program director of top 40 WKQI Detroit, today’s programmers consider each Madonna song on a case-by-case basis to determine if it fits mainstream top 40, adult top 40 or both. Or neither. For Theodore, the sound of “Confessions on a Dance Floor” skews more retro-adult top 40 than mainstream top 40, while recent club tracks like Rihanna’s “SOS” have “more hip-hop credibility.” The Rihanna jam may reference an early-’80s dance hit (Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love”) but Theodore believes it does not have the same “retro ’70s feel” as the Madonna tracks.

Are your ears bleeding from the beats of Hip Hop? Then pack your bags and move out of the US (The Home of Hip Hop)

Madonna has had no such problems internationally. Since its release last November, “Confessions on a Dance Floor” has topped the charts in 29 countries and sold more than 8 million copies worldwide, according to Warner Bros. Except for dance radio outlets like KNGY San Francisco, KNRJ Phoenix and KNHC Seattle, Madonna is missing from the terrestrial radio landscape in the United States.

To shun legitimate singles because they are not hip enough is exactly why music is in its lowest life form. But to avoid singles from a career artist like Madonna is even more frightening. This is why terrestrial radio is chopping its own head off and people are tuning out.  (Reuters)

My Luminaries (who are up for grabs for publishing) – will be releasing their debut single on Gronland in Autumn, album out on V2 in January. My Luminaries are an indie rock band formed in London in 2004. NME magazine has compared them to The Arcade Fire and 90’s indie legends Pavement. Check out the track Outsider Steps Inside (mp3)

Decemberunderground
AFI
TW 32,979
Total 461,794
**as mentioned in KOAR’s previous posts, this record has legs and the band has a solid vision. Producer Jerry Finn did a great job on the record, not over-produced. Kids don’t like slick generic records, they need something real. Check out Love Like Winter

One-X
Three Days Grace
TW 18,567
Total 179,338
**This record is the anti-thesis of AFI’s Decemberunderground. Cut and Paste! This is a display of pure laziness! This record is ridiculously over-produced and its ashame because Three Days Grace wrote decent songs that will avoid a sophomore slump. They could squeeze out a gold record.

Louder Now
Taking Back Sunday
TW 16,807
Total 411,805
**I guarantee you that its the last time Warner kicks up big bucks (millions) for a band that can barely skim a gold record. Warner got burned.

Liberation Transmission
Lost Prophets
TW 9,643
Total 50,642
**First single “Rooftops”
Chorus
Standing on the rooftops,
Everybody scream your heart out.
Standing on the rooftops,
Everybody scream your heart out.
Standing on the rooftops,
Everybody scream your heart out.
This is all we’ve got now.

This is one of the reasons rock seems to be extinct. We have rappers talking about guns and rockers singing about rooftops. Still blaming illegal downloading? C’mon guys, who’s fooling who!  If I purchase “rooftops” for 99 cents do I get a free pair of windshield wipers? Another badly over-produced  record that will fall between the cracks. Cut and Paste and put it on Myspace.

Appetite For Destruction
Guns N Roses
Total 18,000,000+
**First Single “Welcome to the Jungle”
Welcome to the jungle
We got fun ‘n’ games
We got everything you want
Honey we know the names
We are the people that can find
Whatever you may need
If you got the money honey
We got your disease

A dirty nasty gutter band from the streets of Los Angeles. Beautiful! Again, kids want something real. They don’t want to be standing on their rooftops screaming their heart out.

NY Attorney General and music industry nemesis Eliot Spitzer is running for governor. Big Hollywood stars and media moguls including Netscape founder Jim Clark are contributing to his campaign. As you know Eliot Spitzer served subpoenas against record labels in an investigation into “payola”, the illegal compensation of radio stations for playing certain songs. I believe Spitzer would be much more suited as a VP of A&R rather than a NY Governor. Apparently, Spitzer knows the different between a hit and a stiff even commenting that J Lo can’t even hum her own tune. Considering his background and credentials I predict that he would learn the record business rather quickly.

-Producer management company, Worlds End, have started a new indie label called Beverly Martel Music. They just signed Long Island’s Madison Prep and Sacramento upstarts Track Fighter.

When a record is played on “terrestrial� broadcast radio in the United States (i.e., over the air), who makes money?  Since a radio broadcast is a “public performance� of the song in the record under the U.S. Copyright Act, the songwriters and publishers make money through their performing rights organization, whether ASCAP, BMI or SESAC.  But does the artist? Does the session drummer? Does the record company?

Not in the United States.

If the same record is played in Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, or any one of a host of other countries, not only do the songwriters and publishers get paid a royalty through their PRO, but the artists, session players and copyright owner of the recording also get paid through a sound recording PRO. (more…)

Unsigned Virgin Millionaires who we featured in KOAR’s Higher Learning has outsold major label artist releases during the same six week period in their hometown market Indianapolis.
 

Virgin Millionaires - N/A - 1,834 units (6 wks) Top 40 Soundscan, first 2 wks Top 10
Wreckers – Warner Bros. - 1,666 units (6 wks)
Raconteurs – V2 - 2,059 units (7 wks)
Wolfmother – Interscope - 1,396 units (9 wks)
Blue October – Universal - 1,196 units (6 wks)
Angels & Airwaves – Geffen - 1,777 units (6 wks)
Taking Back Sunday – WAR - 2,633 units (8 wks)
Snow Patrol – ANM - 1,216 units (7 wks)
Goo Goo Dolls – Warner Bros. - 2,482 units (10 wks)
Mark Knopfler – Warner Bros - 2,257 units (10 wks)
Flyleaf – Octone - 2,893 units (15 wks)

Solid spins on WZPL (Indy) and WRZX (Alt). Sold-Out 7/1 Concert @ Birdy’s Live

This is a success story that A&R’s should be looking for.

1) an unsigned band services song to radio
2) radio station likes song therefore spins song
3) consumers go to store and buy record.

Hence, this is a solid radio/retail story. Where are the A&Rs?

Check out the tracks

For more information contact legal Nick Ferrera.

-Metal act Ill Nino has been dropped from RoadRunner.

-Due to security threats some Canadian businesses are beginning to ban iPods and other mp3 players from the workplace to their ability to act as high-capacity portable storage. Who would ever think that songs would be looked at as files and data..(Globe and Mail)

-The EMI/Warner drama continues as the NY Post ran an article Music Deal’s On Ice (EMI-Warner Unlikely). As KOAR mentioned, the European court decision to overturn the 2004 SonyBMG merger has put heat or (ice) on the potential EMI/Warner Merger.