![]() |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NOTE: Make sure you 'enable images' to see this e-bulletin properly. WHAT IS THIS? You are receiving this e-bulletin because you are subscribed to the CMU Daily. Unsubscribe information is given at the bottom of this e-bulletin. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
WORK AT THE HEART OF THE WORLD'S BIGGEST FESTIVAL Office Manager Distribution Manager Junior Designer To apply for these roles send a CV and covering note to [email protected] stating in the subject line the job title of the role you are applying for. Limited space is available in the ThreeWeeks flat in Edinburgh, so it may be possible to accommodate good candidates not based in Edinburgh who apply for these roles. If you are not based at an Edinburgh address you should state if you would need accommodation in your application. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() DRUG AGENCY INVOLVED IN JACKO INVESTIGATION As previously reported, Jackson's personal medic Dr Conrad Murray has denied administering any drugs to the singer in the hours or minutes before his cardiac arrest. But a nurse who provided nutritional advice to Jackson and his children, Cherilyn Lee, claims he had previously begged her to get him strong sedatives to help him overcome chronic insomnia. She refused, but said that a few days before his death she received a panicked call from one of Jacko's staff reporting that the singer was ill. The symptoms described, she says, suggested he had taken some sort of drug that affects the central nervous system. Other people close to the singer have made claims about the drugs he took to keep up his strength, and there were reports at the start of the week that police officers had searched his LA home for any substances which may have contributed to his death. Anyway, according to the Associated Press, the LAPD have now requested the assistance of the Drug Enforcement Administration in its Jacko investigations. The federal agency provides expertise in and knowledge of common drug abuse, of the sorts of prescription drugs normal police officers may not be familiar with, and of illicit drug makers known as "pill mills". If the aforementioned toxicology reports do show drugs caused Jackson's death, then presumably the police will be interested to know who in the singer's inner circle supplied them to him. -------------------------------------------------- PHILLIPS REMAINS BULLISH ABOUT JACKO LOSSES - IP SHOULD HELP As previously reported, there has been much speculation as to how much of the Jacko residency was properly insured. Some was, but it was known long before Jackson's death that the promoter was struggling to get insurance for the full fifty-night run, such was the general cynicism in the music industry regarding the singer's ability to fulfil such a big commitment. AEG CEO Randy Phillips has been a bit vague regarding his company's insurance situation, though has admitted that even those insurance policies that were in place for the Jackson project may not pay up if it's shown Jackson died of an existing condition or a drug-based misadventure. But despite all that Phillips remains bullish. He denies this will bankrupt his company (a result that was never all that likely, given the size of AEG and its venue empire), and says that the negative financial impact is not likely to be anywhere near as big as some commentators are predicting. That optimism does seem to be based mainly, however, on the value of previously reported recordings of Jackson's rehearsals. Billboard quote him as saying: "We own the intellectual property. It is our responsibility and fiduciary duty to the estate to monetise as much of these assets as we can under the original contract, because the majority of the profit would go to the estate". Jackson never released a live album, so there is definite value in both the audio and video content AEG compiled during the rehearsal process. Coming so close, as some of it did, to his sudden death, the content also has an extra appeal, if a slightly sinister one. Whether that content could really cover all of the live firm's losses relating to the Jacko project - which some reckon could surpass £40 million if insurers refuse to pay up, and when lost venue hire revenue is taken into consideration - is very debatable. Especially as distribution and publishing costs would have to come out of any revenue, plus, this being Jacko, it wouldn't surprise me if any IP commitments made to AEG don't turn out to be in breach of some other contract with some other music company somewhere. There's sure to be legal costs aplenty. And, as we all know, the real big money for premiere league artists these days is in live activity, that's why Jackson signed up to the O2 residency in the first place, the potential revenue was just so much higher than with any sort of recordings-based project. Ironically AEG have previously said they have no intention of following their main rivals Live Nation into the recordings business. Though they have expressed an interest in partnering with major record companies, so some sort of AEG/Sony alliance on Jacko content might make sense, and could be profitable. Though I still don't see it bringing in £40 million in clear profit for the live firm any time soon. Perhaps they're hoping the previously reported 'buy your cardboard ticket for fifty quid' scam will make up the difference. In the meantime, if you're wondering what sort of content AEG are sitting on, a little bit of it has been given to CNN, and you can see it here. -------------------------------------------------- PHILLIPS INSISTS JACKO PASSED MEDICAL WITH "FLYING COLOURS" Following the singer's death, which is sort of a sign that he wasn't 100% healthy, some speculated that no such physical exam had, in fact, happened. But Phillips insists it did. Billboard quote him thus: "He absolutely, 100%, had a close to five-hour physical. The carriers flew in a doctor of their choice from New York and he did an extensive battery of tests. We were obviously never privy to the actual medical reports, because this was confidential medical information between the doctor and the patient. However, we were told that he passed with flying colours". For me that's the weirdest part of the whole Jacko RIP story. How the hell could he pass a five hour physical exam "with flying colours". I mean, did they look at him? I'm sure the test did happen and AEG and their insurers did get positive reports, but come on, there's either incompetence or corruption going on with those tests isn't there? Surely, once they've ascertained what drugs were involved in Jacko's demise, and who provided them, the authorities must then turn their attention to exactly who it was that, just months before his death, gave him a clean bill of health. -------------------------------------------------- IS ROWE GOING TO APPLY FOR CUSTODY? As previously reported, there were reports Rowe had vowed to get custody of her two children with Michael, twelve year old Prince and eleven year old Paris, shortly after Jackson's death, but her attorney quickly issued a statement saying her client's only thoughts at that time were for the well being of Jackson's family and all of his children. Jackson's will, filed with the LA courts this week, expressly left Rowe out in the cold, not giving her any custody rights to Prince or Paris. Custody, according to the will, lies with Jacko's mother Katherine, or Diana Ross should anything happen to her. Following news about Jackson's will, Rowe apparently spoke to an NBC affiliate and, in a long interview, said she would fight for guardianship of the two children. Responding to allegations reported by TMZ that she wasn't actually the children's biological mother, she said she would take DNA tests to prove that wasn't the case. As previously reported, the gossip site claimed that, while Rowe had given birth to the two children, neither Jackson's sperm nor Rowe's eggs were used in conception. However, despite that interview, Rowe's lawyer - a different lawyer than the one who spoke last week I think - told reporters: "I am representing to you now; Debbie has not reached a final decision concerning the pending custody proceedings". A court hearing to discuss the long term custody of Jackson's three children had been scheduled for next week, but will now not take place until the following week. R KELLY'S PEOPLE RESPOND TO NEW RUMOURS Reports had said that Kelly's home had been raided by police seeking a young woman rumoured to be staying with the R&B star, on the eve of his recent tour of Africa, and sources were quoted as saying that police were "gathering evidence that included signed affidavits from several witnesses within R Kelly's circle". Police Chief Jeff Chudwin has said that Kelly did indeed come under investigation, but that officers "found there to be no crime and the matters have been closed". Meanwhile, Kelly's people have called the reports "wildly exaggerated and inaccurate", saying: "No police ever showed up at Kelly's house with a search warrant nor was his house ever searched. It is also not true ... that any such girl ever stayed overnight in Kelly's house or that she had been there but left shortly before some mythical police search". As previously reported, Kelly has been charged of having sexual relationships with underage teenagers before, but was acquitted of those charges last year. ABBA TO REUNITE FOR AEG? GROHL, HOMME AND JONES IN THE STUDIO -------------------------------------------------- FOALS CHAP TALKS ABOUT NEW MATERIAL He added that he expects the new LP to be ready next year. MY MORNING JACKET MAN TO RELEASE HARRISON COVERS LIL WAYNE POSTPONES EUROPEAN DATES A statement read: "Multi-platinum selling, Grammy Award-winning artist Lil Wayne regrets to announce the postponement of his forthcoming European shows due to illness. Wayne, his band and crew arrived in Europe with full intention of performing but were forced to cancel the dates due to doctor-mandated rest. Management is actively working on rescheduling the shows and expects to have a new set of dates confirmed for later in year. Lil Wayne extends an apology to his fans for the short notice of this postponement, but looks forward to returning for the performances and visitation with his fans. Fans should hold onto their tickets and wait for news of rescheduled dates". -------------------------------------------------- GRIZZLY BEAR ANNOUNCE SHOW WITH LSO Tour dates: 18 Aug: London, Koko (Sold Out) -------------------------------------------------- CLINT MANSELL ANNOUNCES LIVE SOUNDTRACK SHOW The performance will take place on 20 Jul, with the soundtrack album released the same week on 13 Jul and the film itself out on 17 Jul. Awesome. BLOOM FESTIVAL RELOCATES Not sure exactly why the event was forced to move; organisers cite "unforeseen issues" with the original site, and are now apparently quite happy about it all. Olivia Chapman says this: "This really has been a blessing in disguise. We've discovered that actually, Chepstow couldn't be more perfect for Bloom 2009, it's been a complete silver lining. Bloom is our heart and soul -it's all about the people and we always strive to make it a superb, quality experience. The new location is faultless and we're now even more excited about August's festival!". ALBUM REVIEW: Paper Route - Absence (Universal Motown) Buy from iTunes MICROSOFT SPONSOR NICKELBACK TOUR SHARKEY MEETS WITH THE TORIES' CULTCHA TEAM -------------------------------------------------- EDGE, APPOINTMENTS, GOOD PERFORMANCE Anyway, confirming his appointment to Edge, Wadhwani told CMU: "I have been through a long nine year journey with Ingenious, working with small, fast growing companies, helping build a business from scratch, and I look forward to bringing this experience to Edge to help build the group. [Edge founder] David [Glick] and I share an ambition to create the premier next generation investment and advisory business, serving media and entertainment, one of the most important sectors of the UK economy. We will provide investment from a range of funds together with specialist advice to help promising media businesses achieve their full potential". Glick added: "The appointment of Sanjay Wadhwani marks the beginning of the next phase of development for Edge's business. To date our investment strategy has been focused on providing finance for entertainment businesses using tax efficient structures. Disruption in the media landscape continues to create opportunities for companies to rapidly build earnings and value, and Sanjay's appointment signals our intent to significantly step up both our range of investment products and our overall investment activity in the creative industries". As previously reported, while at Ingenious Sanjay Wadhwani was caught up in the collapse of Trinity Street, the music-focused e-commerce company that suddenly went into administration earlier this year. Ingenious had invested into Trinity Street after it had been acquired by David Robson and Andrew Murray. Robson and Murray were fired from the company a few months before its demise, and they launched legal proceedings against Ingenious and Wadhwani personally in relation to their removal. That litigation, as far as I'm aware, is ongoing. Elsewhere in Edge news, the investment business, which invests in all sorts of mainly live entertainment ventures, has announced that all of its 2006 investors have now made back their original investments, which is pretty good going apparently. -------------------------------------------------- UNSIGNED GUIDE LAUNCH NEW ONLINE SERVICES SO, WHAT THE EXACTLY IS THE BIG PLAN FOR PIRATE BAY V.2? I think he's probably in for a bit of a shock when he has his first meeting with them. There have been numerous attempts to legitimise and monetise P2P file-sharing, but the record companies remain unconvinced. Even if they were willing, the royalties they'd demand are likely to be much more than TPB's new owners would be planning to pay. And that's assuming the record companies would be willing to do business at all with their least favourite online enterprise, even if it's under new ownership. Hans Pandeya, the boss of TPB buyers Global Gaming Factory, has told Business Week that his grand plan for The Pirate Bay is to build a massive worldwide P2P distribution network that could be used by companies looking to get content out to a mass audience but concerned about the bandwidth costs of serving content directly to every single user. Such a network would also be of interest, he reckons, to internet service providers, who are concerned that the increased use of multi-media services by consumers is draining bandwidth, pushing up their operating costs and hitting their profit margins. A number of video-based content services have previously dabbled with the idea of utilising P2P technologies to ease the bandwidth use and therefore cost of delivering such content - each P2P user becomes a substation in a massive distribution network, so that people downloading content need only connect to a near-by user on the P2P network, and not all the way back to content source. If that makes sense. It sort of works, providing none of the substation owners is on a limited bandwidth internet package, in which case they might find other people use up their monthly allowance. Anyway, it's that kind of super-distribution network that Pandeya reckons is a viable business, and he hopes to use The Pirate Bay community to build it. In fact he reckons he can make enough money from the service to not only pay content owners, but also the community members who provide a substation. Pandeya: "The technology will use the community of file-sharers to cut costs of data traffic for ISPs by more than a half. Users will earn money by joining, which can be spent on Pirate Bay's other services [such as music] or transferred to their bank accounts". The other services would also carry advertising, which Pandeya hopes would also help fund the operation. It's an interesting idea that's for certain. And ambitious. Whether it will work is another matter entirely. Many commentators aren't convinced. Net firms already exchange bandwidth and might not want to involve a third party (and they would, essentially, be buying back their own bandwidth), content owners might not want to work with a company with such a big piracy history (licensing content or using their distribution services) and other ad-funded content platforms are admitting it is taking longer than anticipated to grow ad revenues. Speaking to Business Week, Forrester Research's Mark Mulligan said simply: "This doesn't appear financially viable". FUCKED UP DAD jessbaumung.com/addnews/data/upimages/edgefest_06.20.09_007.jpg -------------------------------------------------- U2 MAY BE FINED FOR BEING TOO LOUD The group were apparently given permission to rehearse until 10pm, but, according to local newspaper El Punt, continued on until midnight at sound levels of 70 decibels. The council have declined to comment on how much the fine might be, but El Mundo said on its website that fines of up to 15,000 euros are possible. A statement from the council said: "The District of Les Corts has fulfilled its duty in attending to neighbours' complaints and has acted administratively in the face of a possible failure to comply with time and noise creation regulations". Meanwhile, local businessman Alfons Huescar told reporters: "While business outlets cash in on fans flooding in, residents can't even open their windows at home". -------------------------------------------------- CAREY HUSBAND DENIES EMINEM REFERENCE So, yes. That's that cleared up. -------------------------------------------------- GAGA BRANDS HERSELF "SOULLESS" Here's what she told Maxim: "Warhol said art should be meaningful in the most shallow way. He was able to make commercial art that was taken seriously as fine art ... [and] that's what I'm doing too. When you listen to a song like 'LoveGame', is it communicating my soul to you? No... I make soulless electronic pop. But when you're on ecstasy in a nightclub grinding up against someone and my music comes on, you'll feel soul". -------------------------------------------------- LA ROUX BRANDS R&B "HOLLOW" She told the BBC: "[R&B is] very kind of empty, like hollow and not rooted in anything good or healthy. Lyrically it's just like really really bad - I think a lot of it just doesn't mean anything. I think a lot of it is, 'Baby I love you, I want to kiss you'. It's just like what are you on about? Shut up. It certainly doesn't make me feel anything special, or doesn't make me think, or go somewhere else in my mind. I just don't get it". She continued: "The clothes... I just think it's like basically naked. It has been like that since the nineties, it's not just now. I just don't think it's good and there's lots of girls in pop that are 17/18 and they're half naked and it's just 'Why?'. And you wonder if you weren't half naked would you be selling any records? Which obviously is just wrong. You shouldn't be selling records because you're half naked - if you want to do that be a porn star". She added: "I'm probably expressing my opinion where it's not wanted". |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
SUBSCRIPTIONS>> CMU Daily is a free daily e-bulletin for people working in the music industry and music media, delivered direct to your PC each morning. If you want to stop receiving this e-bulletin click the 'unsubscribe' button below and follow the instructions. If any of your colleagues want to receive the CMU Daily tell them to email their name, company, job title and email to [email protected]. If you would like to recieve the CMU Daily as a text email, send a blank email from the email address you are registered at to [email protected]. MEDIA PEOPLE>> If you are looking for an independent quote on anything to do with the music business, or you need someone to come on your TV or radio show and talk music business, then we can help. There's nothing we don't know about. Email requests to [email protected] or call 020 7099 9050. CMU is published by and (c) UnLimited Media - www.unlimitedmedia.co.uk Send news stories to [email protected]. If we don't respond directly, we do apologise, only we get sent hundreds of emails a day and don't have time to respond to every one of them. However we do check every email sent to the musicnews email address, and do pull out stories that we feel are relevant to our readers. Send CDs for review to CMU, UnLimited Media, 221-222 Shoreditch High Street, London, E1 6PJ. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||