U2 Paul McGuinness Says Radioheads’s ‘In Rainbows’ Backfired: U2 won’t be given an album away for free anytime soon. ‘McGuinness said that U2’s forthcoming new album, which he said is likely to be released in October, would not be released in the style of ‘In Rainbows’. McGuinness said that most fans who downloaded the album did so through illegal means, despite the album being available for a nominal amount legally. “60 to 70 percent of the people who downloaded the record stole it anyway,” he told BBC 6 Music’s Music Week, “even though it was available for free.”
McGuinness said, “We will obviously work with whatever technology is available to make the release of the new record as interesting as possible. “[But] for U2 physical sales are still an enormous part of our business and we still sell a lot of actual CDs.” No one can claim that Radiohead was thrilled with the results…
Trink Is Out: It has been confirmed that Capitol Records President Lee Trink is resigning from the label, and will step down from his position as of Monday, June 30.
Trink said the decision to step down was based on a based on a ‘philosophical difference’ with changes EMI’s new owners were making. Their view is that is no local management says Trink. There is no such thing as a president of Capitol Records going forward. I believe that’s a mistake – and not just because I happen to be the president of Capitol.
Also, Jason Flom could be entitled to a hefty settlement payout according to sources.
Signings: Indie Ambient act, Paper Route, has signed to Low Altitude Records and will be distributed through Fontana. Listen to All We Are Forgotten.
The Charts: Disturbed’s “Indestructible” lands on top of the Billboard charts with 250k in sales. That’s pretty darn good. This has to be one of the biggest opening weeks of the year.
The War on Piracy: Read this article written by Billboard’s Susan Butler titled ‘ Inside the music industry’s piracy battle’. The war isn’t going to be easy, but war is never easy. We are in a land where people feel they are ‘ENTITLED’ to steal music.
Quote Of The Day: I never hear new music in the right context to buy it says new EMI Digital exec.
He also says..
‘When I listen to radio, I’m listening to NPR to catch up on the news. The good local music stores are all gone. When I’m working, I want to hear music I like, so I have a very low threshold for experimentation. Coworker’s iTunes shares provide a hint at something new, but DRM and the hassles of being on the wrong computer – working on a desktop when my music is on my phone and laptop – keep me from jumping onto the iTunes Music Store to make a purchase.’ (Silicon Alley)
wow, flom has been used and abused!
What Disturbed does (like them or not) is very impressive. They make good sounding hard rock/metal songs and tour a lot.
The band seems “recession”-proof. Their last 3 albums have all come in at #1 selling between 200-250k each opening weekend, unlike other big artits who still come in at #1, but each new album sales are less than their previous.
I’d be more impressed if he can make a U2 album that doesn’t suck. After Zooropa…bad, bad, bad.
yeah, Coldplay took the place of U2 – meaning Coldplay writes music, U2 maybe will write a single for radio.
Radiohead is all talk and no go too. Haven’t made a album since KID A.
They need to take lessons from Coldplay…
Look here, I like reading Kings of A&R but I find your insinuations about filesharing/copying as if it was some kind of stealing very distasteful. It’s not stealing because it doesn’t deprive anyone of financial gain. Most of the records thar people download nowadays wouldn’t be heard at all if it wasn’t for filesharing and P2P. If a music fan likes what he heard he will buy the record, go the live shows, buy some merchandise and so on. If you, as A&Rs, can’t accept this and adapt to the digital environment you’re finished. Stop bemoaning what every music fan is doing and look at Sellaband and Slicethepie for inspiration.
Miguel – I dont know how find stealing tasteful. Why do you dress up stealing to mean sharing? Isnt that like stealing a car only to share with others?
Stealing/Sharing does prevent financial gain. It costs artists and the US music biz billions of dollars a year. China itself is evidence alone.
Listen here, the music biz is paving the way, its old passe free thinkers like yourself that aren’t keeping up with the times.
For instance, old passe thinkers didn’t want ISP’s or GOOGLE blocking ANYTHING. GOOGLE is changing and just announced they will BLOCK and REMOVE all news groups that discuss underage sexual stories/content. This was announced yesterday.
The internet is changing whether you like it or not and the music biz will change whether you like it or not.
To say a music fan will buy a record if he likes it, is a baseless claim. Look at the radiohead record, most chose to steal, but all those who stole said they generally liked the record. Get with the times….
Quit stealing music Miguel.
Miquel – so i guess all the music you share/steal you don’t really like..uh huh!
So more people downloaded the radiohead record illegally than legally… what does that REALLY mean?
1) A lot of people obviously didn’t know about the radiohead.com deal.
2) A lot of people couldn’t get radiohead.com to work.
3) People prefer centralized systems.
The thing about file sharers is that they aren’t necessarily fans. So much more music gets transferred from computer to computer than is actually listened to, it’s almost impossible to comprehend. This was never about converting file sharers, who oftentimes tend to download almost indiscriminately, it was about getting Radiohead fans to participate. And to that end, they did very well. Of course the promotion wasn’t without it’s kinks… the site obviously couldn’t handle all of the traffic, probably wasn’t efficient enough, & then there’s the task of drawing folks away from where they’re used to acquiring their music.
But aside from that, they made plenty of cash on a comparatively small investment.
McGuiness doesn’t get it.
I agree that Radiohead was probably not too thrilled on the results but I know they gained financially, I’m sure.
Paper Route is an amazing band! Glad they are getting press on KOAR.
Miguel, could I come over and just take your computer?