Kings of A&R

The Silicon Bubble: Music site Hype Machine has a $10 million dollar offer according to ValleyWag. The Hype Machine is an MP3 blog aggregator.

Another music site called MOG received $2.8 Million in new financing from Universal and Sony according to VentureBeat. The site offer reviews, videos, music videos.

So far this year, venture capitalists have invested 58 million dollars into music tech companies. Check out the stats and the summary here.

Investors are throwing money around to these music related social networking sites with no guarantee. Even major music labels are getting in the ring and betting on these sites. Investors of these sites claim social networkers are the next generation of broadcasters and are successors to traditional radio.

Critics don’t understand how these sites can be successful on their own even though they talk multiple revenue streams led by advertising. What is the true sticker price for these sites?

Kelli Richards, president of the digital media consultancy All Access Group warns that investors may be disappointed by just how much revenue these sites can generate and compares the rich multiples to the kind of irrational exuberance that valued Facebook at $15 billion. “It’s too early in the game to say definitely what kind of cash flow, what kind of potential these companies are going to have,” concludes Perlson.

At the end of the day, we are going to have happy investors or just another bubble that is about to burst.

Lawsuit Filed Against Project Playlist: The major music labels have filed a lawsuit against a popular music site called Project Playlist. The labels accuse Project Playlist of massive copyright infringement since it does not have a license for any of its content. Once again, this is another example of a music site that profits from artists without giving anything back.

Grand Theft Auto 4 Breaks Record: The newest installment of the controversial video game Grand Theft Auto 4 goes on sale today. The sales expectations are humongous. “The video game industry estimates “GTA 4″ will sell about 6 million copies and make about $400 million in sales worldwide in its first week alone.”

Buzzing: The Canadian band, Age Of Daze has been making some noise with their independent release titled Hollywood Ending. The track ‘Afflicted‘ has been #1 on Sirius Octane for over 8 weeks. The track is also #18 on the Canadian Rock BDS chart.

Miley Takes A Bite of the Forbidden Fruit: Miley Cyrus who is a multi million dollar brand took on a tremendous risk by engaging in a racy photo session that will appear in Vanity Affair. The fact that Miley doesn’t even need Vanity Affair makes this ordeal more shocking. This is an extremely poor business move and will somewhat tarnish her brand. These girls just can’t keep their clothes on.

New Music: Run Kid Run is a 4 piece pop rock band that comes from Illinois. The new record titled ‘Love At The Core’ will be released TODAY through Tooth and Nail Records. The record was produced by James Paul Wisner (Dashboard Confessional, Further Seems Forever, New Found Glory). Listen to the song ‘Love At the Core‘.

32 Leaves who hails from Arizona just came off of tour dates w/ Theory Of a Deadman and Airbourne. Their track ‘All Is Numb‘ is starting to happen at radio.

A Lonely Woman’s Fight Against the Music Biz: The suggested reading for today is an article that can found in Business Week titled ‘Does She Look Like A Music Pirate?‘ After being accused for stealing songs, Tanya Andersen has decided to take the record industry to court for conspiracy laws.

What’s Next For Metallica? Lars Ulrich, Metallica drummer, mentioned that the band only has one album left to record for Warner Brothers under their contract. Lars Ulrich insuinated that the internet plays an important role in Metallica’s future and stated that they were watching the moves of others including Radiohead and Trent Reznor. (cnet)

Top Current Albums:
Mariah Carey - TW (462,000)
Leona Lewis - TW (94,842) Total 300,232
R.E.M. - TW (29,985) Total 192,449
P.O.D. - TW (12,797) Total 42,385
NIN - TW (11,749) Total 50,019
Nickelback - TW (9,789) Total 6,736,276

Confused Idol: American Idol may look into serious changes after the ratings dip according to the New York Post. Since the ratings dip, staffers at Idol have created a survey asking viewers how they would react to possible changes in the show’s format. Even though the ratings have decreased, the show is still HUGE.

“We’re not in denial,” Fox exec Preston Beckman told Broadcasting & Cable, the TV business weekly. “It’s still the biggest show on TV, but that doesn’t mean there are things we can’t do.

iPod Slump: Check out this article in the New York Times how Apple will prepare for an iPod Slump. ‘Apple sold 10.6 million iPods in the first three months of 2008. It has a 73 percent share of the music player market in the United States and a growing share abroad’.

New Coldplay Single: Coldplay sent out an email informing the world that they will be giving away their new single, ‘Violet Hill’, as a free download beginning tomorrow. The free download will be available for a week.

New Music: Pop country artist Shannon Nicole has posted a new song
Buses and Trains on her myspace. St. Louis radio station KYKY just added the song.

Recommended Shows: Alternative band, My Getaway, will be performing this Tuesday, April 29 at 8:15 p.m. at the Knitting Factory in Los Angeles. They were voted as #1 unsigned band in Alternative Press.

Recommended Listening: Raincoats by U.S Royalty. For fans of Deathcab.

Starbucks has decided to walk away from the recorded music business.

Instead, ‘Starbucks will hand over day-to-day management of its year-old music label to Concord Music Group, as it strives to contain costs and rejuvenate its coffee shop business’.

‘Just recently Starbucks unveiled its Hear Music label with great fanfare. Paul McCartney was the first artist to release an album under the Hear Music label, which has since also released CDs by Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, among others’.

Ken Lombard, who oversaw Starbucks’ music unit for much of its existence, is also leaving the company.

This isn’t the first time Starbucks had a failure. In 2006, Starbucks promoted a movie, “Akeelah and the Bee,” which turned out to be a box office flop.

‘It also scrapped a plan to allow customers to create customized CDs in its stores’.

‘In recent months, however, the chain’s overall fortunes have soured due to a sharp downturn in U.S. consumer spending. On Wednesday, the company blamed hard-hit housing markets in California and Florida for slowing sales and warned that its quarterly and 2008 profits would be below expectations’.

“There are people who can handle it better,” Bob Goldin of industry research firm Technomic said of Starbucks’ music business.

Mariah Carey’s Monster First Week: Mariah’s new album moved 463,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, making it the pop diva’s biggest debut sales week ever. Only a handful of artists in the past year have sold 500,000 out of the box in the first week, hence, this is an amazing story.

Yoko Ono Randomly Wages War: Yoko Ono, the queen of peace, is ready to pick up her rifle and sue the filmmakers of “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” for the unauthorized use of John Lennon’s song, “Imagine.” “Expelled” documents how teachers and scientists alike are being ridiculed daily, denied tenure and even fired believing there is evidence of “design” in nature and challenging the current orthodoxy that life is entirely a result of random chance. It’s a bad day for Darwin…

It’s A Beautiful Day: 10 Years has a new video for their single Beautiful which has become an instant hit on Youtube, making it the #1 most watched rock video for the day. The video was directed by Paul Boyd (The Cult, Blind Melon) looks at the co-dependent atmosphere spawned by the Lindsay-to-Britany-to-Paris media-merry-go-round that has swept up the paparazzi and American tabloid culture. The female lead in the new clip is Rebecca Ginos, the significant other of Maroon 5 lead vocalist Adam Levine. The new album “Division” will be released May 13th.

Recommended Listening: Endlessly by 7th Son.

An interesting column is posted on Ad-Supported Music Central titled ‘The Myth of Music Discovery’. Idolator also comments on music discovery in their posting ‘Do You Really Care What Your Friends (Or Some Dudes You Don’t Really Know) Have Been Listening To Lately?

At the Leadership Music Digital Summit yesterday there was a session on investing in new music opportunities with the idea that “The next big thing is going to be music discovery”. But Mark Cohen thinks differently, in fact he says:

“The first is that people don’t seek to discover new music - it just happens. They don’t listen to the radio, watch TV or talk to friends for the purpose of discovering new music. This is a byproduct of the intended object of the interaction. The Internet music discovery sites, even with their social networking skins, assume the primary object of interaction to be music discovery. This misunderstanding of consumer behavior will be fatal”.”The second conclusion I draw is that historically the number one source for music discovery - terrestrial radio - is a type of ad-supported music. The extent to which music discovery becomes a successful Internet business is wholly dependent on the success of streaming ad-supported music, as it is the on-line equivalent of terrestrial radio”.

Idolator proclaims, “putting sites that have music discovery as their primary goal in social-networking drag is ultimately a losing game”.

Of course, we believe the internet needs to be cleaned up. To much flow of information and amateur content makes it impossible for the the human mind to sift through the options. Our minds are built to organize and we need a better system that organizes. It’s time for a spring cleaning….

Check Your Pulse: Pulse Recordings, a full scope entertainment company, which was founded by music producer Josh Abraham has inked a exclusive distribution deal with Universal Music Group indie distribution arm Fontana. Known for its work on the debut album of “American Idol” Elliot Yamin, Pulse next will release Filter’s “Anthems for the Damned” on May 13 along with new releases from the Outline, Ima Robot and Lukas Haas will follow.

EMI Drama: What are the issues affecting the restructuring of EMI? Well, the key crucial issue is the provision that allow superstar artists to leave a label if a “key man” such as a label president or A&R executive who signed the act leaves or is fired.

New Music: Listen to Suitcase Afternoon by Ricky Young. This is for fans of Wilco, Neil Young and Dylan. These tracks are perfectly fitting for a Sunday drive on the Pacific Coast Highway.

A Troubling Time For Magazines: Ad pages for the three biggest music magazines slid 26% in the first quarter and now the the auto industry has cut magazine ad spending by 21% in the first quarter. Regardless of the the grim outlook, magazine publishers are still optimistic about the future claiming that the Internet has increased their value to readers. “They need a credible guide,” says Mr. Madden. “Nothing online can be that guide.”

Blender $11 million (down 9% from first quarter 2007); 110 pages (down 20%)
Rolling Stone $31 million (down 27%); 195 (down 33%)
Spin $8 million (up 27% from 2007); 146 (up 22%)
Vibe $18 million (down 19% from 2007); 185 (down 22%)

Amazon Removes Idol Contestant: ‘American Idol’ contestant David Cook’s album “Analog Heart” was available for downloading on Amazon’s MP3 site. It skyrocketed to #1 beating out the latest release from Mariah Carey. Amazon yanked the digital album from its site along with all the snippets.

Recommended Listening: Listen to How To Ruin A Reputation by
Return to Arms. Of course emo/punk bands are dying a slow death, but we will always recommend artists with a good sense of songwriting no matter what style - except for rap!

I heard this track yesterday titled Should’ve Known Better on Music Choice yesterday and it caught my ear. Call me cheezy, I can take the heat. Regardless, it’s a good up-tempo rock song by a band called Cinder Road. The band is being managed by the same team who manages Nickelback.

Kings of A&R: You heard it before and you will hear it again and again. We want to hear new music from new artists. We want to hear music from artists with substance and style. Give us some great songs and we will give something back. Email Tips@Kingsofar.com with a link to your myspace and a song that we should be listening too. Never let us scour through your Myspace music player trying to find a good song, that’s not fair and you should be your own best critic…

Nokia Partners With Sony BMG For Free Music Offering: This is the day and age where just about every manufacturer of mobile telephones is teaming up with major music labels. This time, Nokia will offer free 12-month access to music from artists of Sony BMG. Nokia struck a similar deal for its “Comes With Music” phones with the Universal Music and expects all labels will come to the table.

Pitchfork Media: Ad consultants claim that the hipster site Pitchfork pulls in at least $5 million a year. Sounds fishy to me….

New Music: Listen to Blink Of An Eye by Hodges. It Definitely has top 40 flavor, except without a story.

Study: According to a new study LimeWire is the #1 peer to peer application. After LimeWire, the most popular P2P application is µTorrent, followed by BitTorrent, Ares, and Azureus.

One More Reason: OLR also known as One Less Reason gives us another reason how today’s artists can position themselves to be successful. The band who happens to be a Myspace cult band, just licensed their song
‘A Day To Be Alone‘ for the movie ‘Heroes Wanted’ and their track
‘Sadly Smiling‘ to the clothing retailer Buckle. The track will be played in 327 stores in 38 states. The band will be performing with One Republic tomorrow night at the University of Alabama.

Guns N’ Roses To Release New Album? According to the bands website Guns N’ Roses is “in negotiations” for the release of its long awaited album ‘Chinese Democracy’.

Breaking Artists: Congratulations to KTCL, the Denver Clear Channel tastemaker station who have been taking chances by adding new artists to their playlist without major label backing. KTCL is known for breaking baby acts and getting them national exposure. KTCL recently broke Meese, Flobots, and Tickle Me Pink.

Blogs will be Record Labels, and Bloggers will be the new Music Moguls: Digtital Music News wrote an interesting column that gives an imaginary glimpse into the future. Within 2 years, the leading music blogs will become what used to be called ‘Record Labels’. The people running them will be those sharp, tuned-in, hyper-networked and resourceful BlogJs formerly known as bloggers.