Music Business Liabilities

My business consists of every aspect of the show production world. Today I'll be discussing a few liabilities from within my field. I've highlighted a few significant cases:

1. Radiohead's touring company is being investigated the Canadian Ministry of Labor; after a stage collapse at one of their tour venues. In the incident, the band's drum technician Scott Johnson was crushed and died. At this point it is difficult to say who will have to be held uncountable for the tragedy. But I'm sure there is a large settlement in store for Mr. Johnson's Family.
   http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/questions-linger-after-radiohead-stage-collapse-20120623
2. Justin Bieber is being sued for $9m, by an Oregon woman, who claims that she suffered from loss of hearing after attending one of his shows. This sounds silly, since she is mother of a Justin fan, so her daughter probably hates her for even going through with this lawsuit. Just from what I learned in my entertainment law course, I'm pretty sure he wont have to pay up since the tickets she bought act as waivers.
   http://www.tmz.com/2012/07/12/justin-bieber-lawsuit-hearing-noise-concert-oregon/
   
   
3. Both Cristina Aguilera and her label Sony, are being sued for not clearing a sample with its rightful owners. It's for a sample in her song, “Ain't No Other Man.” Apparently Sony cleared it with a company that didn't completely own the work. So TurfAmerica is pursuing a suit against them.
   http://music-mix.ew.com/2011/03/07/christina-aguilera-sued-aint-no-other-man-sample-clearance/

Ankh Marketing

In the ever changing art of Artist Management, there are many different types of managers who come from a long line of varying different art forms and ways of life, all with a common goal, to make their artists happy while still being profitable. While there are many great artist management companies out there I had to find one to research, Ankh Marketing. While their name says they are a marketing firm, their work shows that they have many artists they help manage by properly marketing, the artists, to the right people.

Ankh marketing helps such companies, by producing advertisement campaigns, as Play Station, 2K Sports, The Gumball Rally, Vitamin Water, and The City of Oakland, among many others, by helping them properly market they, in a sense help to manage these companies to their many high levels of success.

While on the other hand they help several artists by promoting events such as, the 2007 Rock the Bells Hip Hop Festival. This festival included the reunion of Rage Against the Machine, Snoop Dogg, The Roots, Public Enemy, Erykah Badu, Wu-Tang Clan, Mos Def and Talib Kweli. By allowing these artists to come through and play at such a large event they are helping their careers, however famous and large the artists may be. This may not be “management” in the eyes of a lot of people, but to me it seems like bringing these people together, especially a reunion of a great band, Rage Against the Machine, would take a large amount of great artist management to make it all work.

This company tells me that there is a way to be a great artist “manager” while still attributing yourself to many other things that can still be lucrative. Ankh marketing shows us all that management can be done in many different ways, not excluding marketing through the proper channels to help “manage” artists to the next level of their careers. I would suggest visiting their website to learn more information about this company to anyone interested.

diddy's managment

Sean Combs formerly known as Puff Daddy, who brought the world artist such as Notorious B.I.G., The Lox, Mary J. Blige, 112, Total, Lil Kim, and a host of other talented artist that contributed to his success P Diddy has overtaken Jay-Z as the richest hip-hop artist, according to Forbes, with a net worth of $550 million.

The Bad Boy Records founder has many business ventures, including Ciroc vodka, which saw a 122 per cent sales spike last year, as well as his Sean John and Enyce clothing lines, his marketing firm Blue and a handful of business start-ups, which have helped him accumulate a huge personal fortune.
Last year's richest hip-hop artist Jay-Z was left in second place with a net worth of $460 million thanks to his recent Watch The Throne tour, which will come to the UK at O2 Arena in London on May 20, as well his multi-million dollar deal with Live Nation, his 40/40 Club chain and cosmetics company Carol’s Daughter. 

The other artists featured in the list are Dr Dre ($270 million), Birdman ($125 million) and 50 Cent ($110 million).

Dr Dre is rumored to be planning a tour with the hologram version of Tupac, which was unveiled for the first time at the Coachella Festival at the weekend. 
Speaking to MTV, Sean P-diddy Combs claimed not to be fussed by the list, commenting: "I think people think that I have that money actually sitting at home in the basement. To everyone calling me for a loan today, I do not have that money today." The list was compiled using the same methodology which Forbes uses to calculate The World’s Billionaire’s list, looking at the past earnings, valuing current holdings and gauging the opinions of financial experts and industry insiders. Reference http://www.nme.com/news/p-diddy/55408

Live Production Consoles

Live sound production has forever and always been a dream and hobby of mine. With newer technologies, it is an ever exciting field to be in. From all the new soundboards that come out there is bigger and better things that happen. Light boards are also very new and exciting. The idea that we can take digital sound and place it into a board then supply the same board with the power to control lights and tv screens and everything that has to deal with producing a live show is really great.

One of my favorite digital consoles that are out there right now is the D-Show by AVID. With this board you can run everything from the sound coming out, while running the audio through a multitrack recorder, all while producing the sound through a dvd player recording everything that is going on. This is very exciting because a number of years ago it would have taken a whole truck full of equipment to do what this console can do by itself. I would love to get one of these consoles for my live venue because it can do everything and anything I set it up to do.

Another one of the consoles that I really like that is out right now is the Hippotizer by Green Hippo. This is a fully functional Multimedia, show display. It can run everything from audio through it to video and lights through it. A quote on the website says, The Hippotizer was the only media sever capable of creating the complete multimedia, fully interactive, audio visual performance that Andy C required”, Andy C is a drum and bass DJ that just participated in Electric Daisy Festival. One of the largest Electronic Music Festivals around. I had the opportunity to use the Hippotizer here at Full Sail. It was a great experience.

As technology advances so will the boards and consoles utilized and I can’t wait until I get to own and use bigger and better things.

Dreamer Management

For my first Artist Management blog, I decided to review a website that deals with artist management in the town of Atlanta, Georgia, a place where I would love to someday work. The website is www.dreamermanagent.com. Right away on the home page of the website, you can easily see that Dreamer Management had attended the 2012 BET Awards. The members from their team that attended the event were, William Scott, Jarvis Bowman, and Bradford “Jazzy” Smith.

Since the webpage probably won’t show the entire event, or have that posted on their front page for long here is a link to read the entire story.

 Dreamer Management Attends 2012 BETAwards

            This shows me that this company is very professional, and knows something about the game of artist relations. Next I decided to click on their Talent option. From this we can choose from several different levels of artist management that they handle. It is a very impressive list of clients they are able to successfully manage. This list includes, Artist Management, Model Management, and Entertainment Management. To be this diversified, shows that the company means business and really know what they are talking about. After perusing through all 3 of the links, it affirmed that they in fact do know what they are doing.

            The last thing about this website that I really liked was the fact that under the Talent drop down menu, they had forms to fill out to apply for theirmanagement. Their list just has a few, but much needed things in order to see if a client is ready for their level of service. They also have a place for a referral code, which I could only assume would be for people who have been told directly, whether it be at a party, event, or just walking down the street, to come and apply because the talent scouts were interested.

            All-in-all this website looks great and I would gladly use it, or send some higher level talent, I couldn’t handle to this company.

NDM blog

In order to be successful in this industry, negotiations are very important. Thebest way to learn about how to successfully negotiate would be to actually talk to someone who does negotiations for a living. So what better way to learn than from actual negotiating consultants. K and R negotiations are the foremost teachers to the business world, that can teach all of what is needed to know to do well throughout negotiations.

            First of all, I learned that the best way to make sure to get my bottom line is to have a BATNA established and ready before the negotiations begin. By doing so people will often know when and where they should stop their bottom line.

           

            Secondly, avoid using dirty tricks and tactics. If the person I am negotiating with starts to try to use dirty tricks, I have thought them all through. If I decide to try to use dirty tricks, I should just be able to learn to stop before the opposing negotiator finds out, otherwise the deal could go sour.

           

            Thirdly the website goes on to say that, leverage is huge in any negotiating scenario. Use leverage from other, smaller negotiations to help leverage the things that I really want and need. By making something small, like for example a hairstyle choice in an artist contract, seem large ­then I can use it to leverage something I actually care about, like actual money made per compact disc sales. If I can make it seem like it is a big deal to me, then I will use the leverage to properly negotiate what I want out of the contract.

There are many things that K and R negotiations can teach, and one day I would love to take several of their classes to better my negotiating skills. And I feel much more intelligent after looking through their website.

Largest concerts ever

The idea behind being a live venue owner is trying to make as much money as you can, while still maintaining your integrity. Now one way to make a ton of money is to sell out the venue every night. If the venue is sold out every night and lets say it holds two thousand people, well the average show that I have been to has been anywhere from ten to fifteen dollars. This means that that venue alone on ticket sales would bring in anywhere from twenty thousand dollars to thirty thousand dollars. That is a good chunk of change for any venue owner to get every night they have a show. So this got me thinking, “how much money did the largest show in history make if the tickets were at an average of ten dollars a ticket?”

            Well we could not just start with the largest show in history so we will go with the top four. The forth largest show in history is: the Monsters of Rock show which had Metallica, Pantera, The Black Crowes and headlining was AC/DC. The total number of people at the show was 1.6 million which means at ten dollars a ticket, which I am sure they were much more, that company made sixteen million dollars for just one large show.

            The third and second largest show in history were performed by Jean Michel Jarre, who is a large name in France. The show was put on by MTV France, so I would assume there was a huge following. The third and second largest show in history was a live MTV event. The third largest had 2.5 million people in attendance and the second largest had 3.5 million in attendance; which means that the concerts took in two hundred and fifty million dollars, and three hundred and fifty million dollars respectively.

            The largest show in the history of mankind was by the artist Rod Stewart, which had 4.2 million people in attendance, which if you ask me is ridiculous, but at an average of ten dollars a ticket those venue owners pulled in a whopping four hundred and twenty million dollars. That is amazing.

            There is a ton of money out in this industry and I can’t wait to start making some for myself.