Kings of A&R

• New, old media lines blur: AOL CEO
  AOL’s new chief, Randy Falco, sees the line dividing traditional and new media blurring even further as he takes the reins of the online division of the world’s biggest media company Time Warner.
• Check out Coolfers post “More On Hip Hop Sales: Is It Entrepreneurship Or Is It Danger Mouse”? and “Hip Hop’s Transformation Into A Singles and Ringtone Business”.

And………

Check out “Not a rapper, just a hustler that can rap good”.  Read excerpt Below.

I think 2006 will be remembered as the year that The Hustler trumped The MC as the prevailing icon of the culture. The year that rappers became so busy trying to be entrepreneurs and pitchmen and Hollywood actors that they didn’t have the time or the inclination to make dope music anymore. The year that being a rap artist—someone who sincerely aspires to spit mind-blowing rhymes—became, well, kinda corny. The year all your favorite rap stars started adamantly denying they were rappers.

Where, exactly, does that leave rap fans? If it’s corny to make rap music, is it corny to listen to it too?
I have nothing against hustlers per say. There’s always been hustlers in hip-hop, and a good lot of them have managed to make hot music. The problem with so many of the hip-hop hustlers today is that hustling is their sole focus, their primary purpose, their reason to be. That and the fact that they’re often peddling Bull#!# products. Their goal is to charm you with their slick persona/sexy swagger/dramatic backstory/titillating beefs—and then get you to shell out for a mediocre album, or some ugly sneakers (word to Ice Cream), or a weird energy drink. In some places, guys like that are called con artists. And nobody wants to feel like they’ve been conned.

Based in the Jacksonville area, Veronicas Veil are rapidly expanding their fanbase with their unique brand of dueling vocal heavy progressive rock. Fronted by both Randy Winter and Jordyn Jackson, they have been described in press as ‘the direction Evanescence should have gone.’ Veronicas Veil have sold roughly 8,000 copies of their demo cd ‘Middle of Nowhere‘ through their sold out gigging in Florida, grabbing the attention of major and indie labels. Atlantic and Virgin have been out to see the band very recently, with a second Atlantic showcase scheduled for tomorrow in Florida. No management or legal attached. For more information, contact Randy Winter 904.226.4490. Check out the tracks Echoes and Self-Destruct

• The Futureheads who were a biz buzz band a couple years ago have been dropped from their Label.

• Google stock price surpassed $500 for the first time Tuesday, marking another milestone in a rapid rise that has catapulted the Internet search leader into the corporate elite. Google’s remarkable success has minted Page and Brin, both 33, as multibillionaires along with their hand-picked chief executive, Eric Schmidt. Hundreds of other Google employees are millionaires because so many investors want to own a piece of a company that has become the Internet’s most powerful financial force while building a brand so ingrained in society that it has become part of the English language.

Google will be a driving force in delivering new music. You Watch.

• Last week Jay-Z was sued by a little known outfit called Bridgeport Music Inc, over samples he used in the 2003 single, “Justify My Thug.” The forces behind this suit are a new sort of nuisance for the music business, a growing set of companies who produce nothing and only generate income through lawsuits to protect intellectual property portfolios of which they’ve gained control.
• Textango, a new Los Angelesbased company allows any artist to sell their music by premium text messaging. Textango did the math, and found that about 89% of teenagers in the USdo not have credit cards, a requirement when buying music off of digital download services. They also found that only 1% of phones can handle full Mp3 tracks, let alone albums. Textango’s solution? Let the biggest music buying demographic in the world bill the music to their cell phones, and get the music on their computers.
  Textango has already entered into an agreement with Victory records, and is said to announce other major label agreements soon.

Unsigned artists can go to www.textango.com and sign up for an account.

• Check out the review of Microsoft’s Zune from the Washington Post.
• A group of leading international record companies has lost a lawsuit against against Baidu.com, one of China’s largest Internet search engines, for the alleged illegal downloading and sharing of their music.

Check out the full interview with Vice Chairman of EMI David Munns. Here is an excerpt below.
On Breaking a ‘new’ artist………..
Munns: Back in the early ’70s, you put a single out, and then you worked it. Maybe three weeks later Radio 1 added it or Radio 3 in Holland, and a few weeks later maybe it became a hit. Now, you work it and then you put it out. You go on the road, you build up a fan base, you get a MySpace page. You do this and you do that. Then you’ll get some radio play, maybe. Radio is starting to use the Internet as a sort of research program as well. You’re working those taste-making communities and trying to get to some attention there. You don’t go to radio straightaway. And then when you’ve got your record somewhere up the chart, you come with your album. It certainly used to be the other way around.

On Myspace…….
Munns: We look at all of those (social networks), and then we start to get to a picture. It’s allowing you to see the consumer directly, consumer response directly, the good and bad. So the marketing techniques are switching from sort of mass market to a more fragmented approach. Not every artist we have “works,” and not every record we have “works,” so it’s enabling us sometimes to find out more what the consumer and the taste-makers think about our music before we spend a lot of money. That in itself it will act like some kind of filter. But the reason we love this business is (that) you don’t know. You can play me a record that I think is absolutely the most wonderful thing in the world, and it won’t sell a copy. And you can play me a record I think is crap, and it’ll sell a million. Do we have some idea that we’ve got people who are good? Sure, but it’s not an exact science.

On Radio……..
Munns: I think radio is still pretty important. But in some countries, it has got itself too narrow-cast, and it’s too worried about what the other guy is doing. Some radio stations, some radio programs are better than others on that front… They’re migrating some listeners to satellite or digital radio or online radio, which is perhaps even more adventurous, but still radio and its concept isn’t going to go away.

On the Singles Business…..
Munns: The singles market and the album markets coexisted very comfortably all through my life. So the concept of the single, hearing your track in isolation on the radio, buying a track on its own, taking a track off YouTube–the concept of the track business has always been there…There’s nothing wrong in an artist having a huge hit all around the world and not repeating it

Universal Music Group is sueing Myspace for copyright infringement.

The owners of the site have “made infringement free and easy, turning MySpace videos into a vast virtual warehouse for pirated copies of music videos and songs,” the complaint says. They use “extensive efforts to encourage members to upload pirated videos to MySpace servers.” The site reportedly has more than 50 million unique visitors per month and more than 200,000 new registrations each day.

The complaint includes an example of a MySpace page showing a pirated video of “Beautiful Day” by UMG artist U2. It was viewed more than 2,000 times according to the site, the suit says.

“Businesses that seek to trade off on our content, and the hard work of our artists and songwriters, shouldn’t be free to do so without permission and without fairly compensating the content creators,” a UMPG spokesperson said in a statement. “Our music and videos play a key role in building the communities that have created hundreds of millions of dollars of value for the owners of MySpace. Our goal is not to inhibit the creation of these communities, but to ensure that our rights and those of our artists are recognized.”

The suit, filed in the federal District Court in Los Angeles, includes claims for direct copyright infringement, secondary copyright infringement and deceptive business practices.

• Shows to check out:
  My Favorite Highway - Nov 17 Jammin Java, VA
• Check out the new track Fire Away  from Kill the Alarm. For more information email Veken.
• Poison The Well has signed with Ferret. Poison the Well released two albums with the label Trustkill and recently departed from Atlantic.

Check out unsigned South Carolina act Leslie a three piece rock act in the lines of Jet, The Who, Wolfmother.  Currently getting some spins for their song “Sick” on 96.1 WAVF - program director Dave Rossi is a huge fan. Performed on Nov 1 @ Sin-E in NY, NY for the ASCAP showcase for CMJ and in October @ Atlantis Music Conference. Touring the southeast for the remainder of the Fall and into the Spring. Have toured with Blue Dogs, Will Hoge, Limbeck, and Valient Thorr among others. Just recorded 3 new songs with Eric Bass (The Working Title, Tyler Read) that are available for free download at www.myspace.com/leslierock.

Upcoming hometown show on Nov 18 @ Windjammer in Charleston, SC (show is sponsored by 96.1 WAVF). For more information contact manager Josh Terry -864.907.9523 or or Legal Reid Hunter - 212.245.7300.