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CMU REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2009: THE ARTISTS AND THE MUSIC 1. MICHAEL JACKSON That turned out to be correct, as on 25 Jun, the singer died of a heart attack brought on by an overdose of the powerful anaesthetic propofol, administered by his personal doctor to overcome insomnia. Suddenly, what was already one of the biggest stories of the year became bigger than any other entertainment news event in recent memory. I could write a book on everything that followed - at one point CMU was averaging five Michael Jackson stories a day - and even then we were ignoring a sizeable chunk of the more tenuous rumour and speculation on offer. But to summarise: he returned, he died, he prospered. -------------------------------------------------- 2. CHRIS BROWN & RIHANNA Residents of the Hancock Park area of LA had been alerted by screams in the early hours of that Sunday. Brown and Rihanna had been travelling home from a pre-Grammy party in Brown's Lamborghini. The pair had already been seen arguing at the party, and this continued on the drive home, until Brown had enough, stopped the car, beat his girlfriend unconscious on the pavement and then drove off, leaving her behind. In August, Brown was convicted of 'assault likely to cause great bodily harm' and sentenced to five years' probation, 180 days of community service and a year of domestic violence counselling. Meanwhile, the rehabilitation of the R&B star's career is ongoing. -------------------------------------------------- 3. LES PAUL Credited with inventing the electric guitar as it is known today, the eight-track tape recorder and numerous recording techniques and effects, Les Paul - it could be argued - is the man responsible for almost all modern music. He continued to perform at New York's Iridium Club every Monday night up until his death, despite crippling arthritis and, still devoted to advancing the possibilities of sound, had been attempting to build the perfect hearing aid prior to his death. -------------------------------------------------- 4. PHIL SPECTOR His original trial in 2007 was declared a mistrial after the jury failed to reach a unanimous decision. Second time around though, the long line of former girlfriends recounting the times Spector had chased them around with guns convinced the new jury that he was responsible for Clarkson's death. He was sentenced to at least 19 years in prison, meaning he will be eligible for parole if and when he reaches the age of 88. His appeal is pending. -------------------------------------------------- 5. PEREZ V PEAS Straight after the attack, Perez attempted to call the police using Twitter. But apparently that has not become the standard way to report crimes. Yet. Perez said Will hit him. Will said he didn't. Both issued lengthy video statements on the matter. However, although Will.i.am initially claimed that it was a fan who had done the punching, the band's manager Liborio Molina was arrested for the assault. After numerous delays to his trial, the charges were dropped in November after he issued an apology to Hilton. -------------------------------------------------- 6. SUGABABES Although the reasons for the split in the official statement were vague, Keisha quickly revealed that it had not been her decision, but denied there was any animosity. Berrabah and bandmate Heidi Range said otherwise, revealing that the former had reached a point where she was no longer able to work with Buchanan. Once Heidi had picked her side, Keisha's fate was set. Jade Ewen has now re-recorded all of Keisha's vocals on the group's new album, now set for release next year. -------------------------------------------------- 7. BLUR REFORM/OASIS SPLIT Meanwhile, at much the same time, Oasis were imploding. Back in March, Liam Gallagher had revealed that he and his brother "haven't got a relationship" and only saw each other on stage. Then, as the band were due to play at the Rock En Seine festival in France, a heated argument and a smashed guitar caused Noel to walk out of the band. He is now working on solo material, while Liam has formed a new band with Oasis members Andy Bell and Gem Archer, currently going by the name of Oasis 2.0. -------------------------------------------------- 8. ELECTRO LADIES La Roux, too, were something of a success. Although the duo features one male member, their public face is very much singer Elly Jackson and her quiff. Their eponymous album peaked at number two, and the pair have had two top ten singles. Fairing slightly less well was Little Boots, who we'd pegged for bigger things. Her album entered the chart at five but quickly dropped out of the top 40, although sales have improved more recently. It was also Little Boots who pointed out in August, "a girl isn't some kind of genre, you know". -------------------------------------------------- 9. EXPERIMENTAL POP Bat For Lashes, Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, The Flaming Lips, Micachu & The Shapes, Grizzly Bear, The xx, Fever Ray, Wild Beasts and Passion Pit all fared better sales-wise than you might have expected. And we also count one of the big success stories of the year in this camp - Florence and her machine. Flo may get a bit of kicking from the indie community, but if she'd released her album on an obscure Canadian label, they would all have needed a fresh pair of pants. -------------------------------------------------- 10. BRRRAP PACK And it was N-Dubz and Tinchy who were very much the stars of the scene (assuming we're going to call it a scene). Both scored number one singles - on one occasion, with the aptly-titled 'Number One', they reached the top of the charts together - and both released their second albums in 2009. Chipmunk, while not scoring any number one singles of his own, did get three in the top ten, and his album, 'I Am Chipmunk', got to number two, before he was forced to take time out due to exhaustion. -------------------------------------------------- CMU REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2009: THE MUSIC BUSINESS 1. THREE-STRIKES -------------------------------------------------- 2. TENENBAUM & THOMAS The law was on the trade body's side, but neither defendant was likely to actually pay any damages awarded (neither was rich), and their high profile court cases would just further damage the record industry's rep. The RIAA duly won the cases; despite a lot of promises from Tenenbaum's Harvard prof of a lawyer, his defence was rubbish. But the defendants predictably announced they couldn't pay the mega-bucks damages, and the record industry's rep was, indeed, further damaged. -------------------------------------------------- 3. COPYRIGHT EXTENSION And the wider record industry, led by the BPI, collecting society PPL and the Musician's Union, had another good try at doing just that this year. Despite the UK government previously being against extension, when the issue came up for debate in Europe at the start of 2009, ministers said they now agreed with it in principle. However, they didn't agree with the industry's exact proposal of how it would be achieved. That, and all out opposition from some other European countries, meant copyright extension ended up on the back burner once again as the year progressed. Yeah, Beatles people, better get 'Love Me Do' on iTunes while you still own it. -------------------------------------------------- 4. LIVEMASTER Meanwhile in the US, where competition regulators are also considering the deal, the two companies found themselves countering all sorts of bad press. In particular, continued public concern over the growth of online ticket touting turned to TicketsNow, the ticket resale website owned by Ticketmaster. People didn't like the fact the unofficial resale service was promoted via Ticketmaster's official ticketing website. Lawsuits and political intervention followed. None of which helped the PR effort to convince US officials to OK the merger. Nevertheless, the two firms remain optimistic. -------------------------------------------------- 5. 696 AND THE LICENSING ACT REVIEW The form is linked to the 2003 Act because, many argued, that legislation had given too much power to local authorities over live music licensing. As a result, London boroughs had made 696 compulsory for licensing applications. UK Music's Feargal Sharkey led the opposition to 696 (and other bureaucracy introduced by the Act) when the whole thing was reviewed by parliament's Culture Select Committee. He wanted 696 abolished. In May, the Select Committee agreed with him. Though, alas, the government did not. The Met subsequently revised the form anyway and announced their focus moving forward would be on easy-target urban-music clubs. So, opposition is less vocal than it was. -------------------------------------------------- 6. THE MARIAH MAG Probably the most obvious manifestation of record companies diversifying (other than Sony and Universal launching its own ad-funded music video website Vevo, and Warner taking on the ad-sales for its own YouTube channels), was the new album from Mariah Carey. It came complete with a special Mariah edition of Elle magazine, ads in which, we were told, had basically paid for the production of the album. Brands sponsoring artists is nothing new, but record companies (Universal in this case) going after a brand's dollar, and getting it by selling ads on a glorified CD sleeve, is. Mariah's claims that she was reinventing the music business probably overstated the significance of the project, but it was still a landmark moment for the record industry. -------------------------------------------------- 7. FAN-FUNDING One alterative much discussed in recent years is fan-funding. Get fans to stump up-front the money they'd spend on your record anyway, in return for other goodies. It's a concept still in its infancy, but it gained some momentum this year, as Patrick Wolf and Electric Eel Shock released their first fan-funded albums, and more established artists started successfully raising funds from fans. Still, the biggest story in fan-funding, the announcement that Public Enemy would fund an album this way, ended on a negative note - so far they've only raised 28% of their target sum. Nevertheless, I reckon fan-funding will continue to grow in 2010, people just need to work out how and when it can work. -------------------------------------------------- 8. MUSIC RETAIL HIGHS AND LOWS The exception to all this, though, was HMV, who had a rather good year. Though given nearly all their competitors had bitten the dust, it would have been rather amiss of them not to see some uplift in sales. Nevertheless, HMV impressed City types with more than just increased revenues, interest also grew in their clever diversification strategy. They launched high street cinemas through a partnership with Curzon, bought half of high profile MP3 sellers 7Digital and entered the live sector via a JV with the MAMA Group. The master's dog did well this year. -------------------------------------------------- 9. THE CONTINUED RISE OF MAMA The London-based company saw its profits rise ten-fold this year, resulting in an optimistic (and knocked back) takeover bid. Among MAMA's big announcements were the JV with HMV, which saw some of the group's bigger venues shifted over to a new company, owned 50/50 by the two firms, and operating under the iconic Mean Fiddler name MAMA had acquired in 2007. On the management side a new venture with Brian Message's ATC Management and Terry McBride's Nettwerk, while as yet unproven, might just change the way the whole music industry works. I'd keep an eye on MAMA throughout 2010. -------------------------------------------------- 10. YET MORE EMI RUMOURS After orchestrating the biggest roster and headcount cull in the record industry's history, Hands seemed to wash his hands of EMI this year, making increasingly candid statements about what a bad idea it had been to buy the company, and, as 2009 closed, suing the bank who financed the acquisition, partly because they refused to write off a sweet billion of the music firm's debts. All of which led to a renewal of the good old EMI/Warner merger rumours; so much so, that when Warner boss Edgar Bronfman Jr decided to move to London some people suggested he did so to engineer an EMI takeover. Such talk is highly speculative, though with enough substance that I'm going to predict an EMI/Warner will exist by this time next year. See you back here in twelve months to see if I was right. -------------------------------------------------- CMU REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2009: THE MEDIA AND THE INTERNET 1. THE PIRATE BAY Not that they paid the damages or served the prison time. Claims of judicial bias and various appeals were launched. Defendant and Bay PR man Peter Sunde resigned. Then, in another court case in the Netherlands, the Bay's lawyers denied any of the four defendants had ever actually owned the infamous BitTorrent tracker and search service anyway. For a while it looked like the Bay would be bought by a company called GGF, who were going to turn it all legit. It was a bold plan that never quite happened and nearly caused GGF to go broke. The Bay did turn off its BitTorrent tracker in the latter part of the year, though for technical rather than legal reasons. Despite everything, in a year in which illegal file-sharing of all kinds continued to grow, The Pirate Bay still operates and dominates. -------------------------------------------------- 2. YOUTUBE V PRS ETC The issue? YouTube thought the labels and collecting societies were overcharging for their content. The music bodies thought they were being underpaid, and demanded a bigger share of the multi-billion dollar profits Google were making. Both sides were right and both sides were wrong. Record companies and music publishers always overvalue their content, and fail to see that charging less money now might result in more streams and downloads later, resulting in more cash overall. However, Google and their like undervalue content, while their business models, based around providing low-cost net services and selling bargain basement advertising, can't really support it. Still, agreements were made between Google, Warner and PRS, so for now music videos are streaming on YouTube (outside of Germany that is). -------------------------------------------------- 3. SPOTIFY The other major attraction of Spotify was the size of its catalogue, aided by the fact that they launched with all four majors and indie digital rights body Merlin already on board. Much of this year has been taken up with debates over whether or not the company can actually make enough money to survive and if they're paying artists properly, but the catalogue continues to grow, the player remains popular and mobile apps for premium account holders have upped subscriptions income. One day the venture capital funding all this will run out. Let's hope together the record industry and Team Spot can ensure their business is viable before that day. -------------------------------------------------- 4. MYSPACE MUSIC However, by the time it all kicked off in the UK this month, Merlin were in the mix, having been given sufficient benefits to justify joining the MySpace Music party. The service still came in for some criticism though. That said, CMU Daily's Business Editor Chris Cooke noted that it was "not as shit as you might expect". Though whether that's enough for MySpace Music to both succeed, and save the flagging social network to which it is attached, time will tell. I'm guessing not. -------------------------------------------------- 5. GATELY, MOIR & TWITTER CAMPAIGNS Columnist Jan Moir called Gately's lifestyle into question and, seemingly, suggested that it was his homosexuality that ultimately caused his death. Outrage spread across Twitter within hours, blog commentaries followed, a Facebook group explained how best to complain, and within days the Press Complaints Commission had received over 25,000 complaints - more than they'd had in the whole of the previous five years. Moir was forced to apologise, though also found column space to portray herself as a victim of the newly empowered Twitterati. Though, ironically, given the PCC can only act if a family member complains, it was actually the one complaint that arrived last week, from Gately's widower Andrew Coyles, that potentially had real power. -------------------------------------------------- 6. SUBO In the end, she lost the final 'Britain's Got Talent' viewers vote, and started to lose her mind under the tabloid glare. Still, combine that momentum, Simon Cowell and a decently produced covers album and the world is your oyster. Within three weeks of releasing debut album, 'I Dreamed A Dream', Boyle had sold over six million copies worldwide, over a million of them in the UK, smashing all kinds of records along the way. Even Cowell surely couldn't have predicted just how big a goldmine his 'BGT' franchise could become thanks to the power of social networking. Though, of course, the social networkers turned against him when it came to his other TV show - and so the 'stop X-Factor getting to number one' campaign began - but presumably Cowell's interest in social media next year won't be in stopping future 'anti-X' projects, but in trying to repeat the SuBo phenomenon for a second time. -------------------------------------------------- 7. OBSERVER MUSIC NEVER Conor McNicholas may have surrendered the NME editorship this year (so that both rock weeklies - NME and Kerrang! - now have ladies in charge, which is nice), but his strategy of brand extension will have to stay on the agenda of any music magazine wanting to survive the next decade. Web-TV services, radio stations, club nights, tours, books, you name it, diversification is the name of the game. We've all known that for a while, of course, though I'm still not sure anyone has cracked how to ensure there's consistent editorial identity across all the spin offs. Conor got close, but, frankly, we could all do better. -------------------------------------------------- 8. DAB DISAGREEMENTS In 2009, the radio industry focused more on battling to get rid of industry regulation from OfCom, and agonising over what to do about digital audio broadcasting, the flagging digital radio network into which the radio industry has pumped millions. Still theoretically the most efficient way to broadcast in the digital age, the BBC is still backing DAB, even though many commercial digital-only stations have been closed and sales of DAB receivers, while up, are still slow. The commercial sector is still split over what to do about DAB, so much so its trade body, RadioCentre, has lost two of its smaller but significant members, who fear big boy Global Radio's thoughts on the issue are getting too much attention. These are squabbles set to continue, distracting radio types from the real challenges at hand. -------------------------------------------------- 9. EVERYONE HATES THE BBC It's a tricky one. We all love to diss the Beeb, despite most of us probably thinking they make most of the better British telly programmes, operate the superior radio stations, and provide one of the best websites on the internet. One hopes that, especially if the Tories win next year's General Election, BBC top brass can get Corporation spending back into the real world, but without letting the politicians and commercial media moguls cut its services into pieces. -------------------------------------------------- 10. IT'S END OF THE MEDIA AS WE KNOW IT, DO YOU FEEL FINE? All of which means that the media industry, who have been reporting on the plight of the music business for years now, have suddenly realised they are facing exactly the same issues as their record company counterparts. The public is more eager to access music and media than ever before, and it's easier and cheaper to provide it. But the internet has conditioned everyone to want all of this for free - either because that's how content owners have been providing it so far, or because others have been distributing it illegally. This is all well and good, but with a limited amount of advertising money available, and content still costing a sizable sum to make, how can this all add up? The future is surely subscriptions. Whether that be Spotify's premium service, or Rupert Murdoch's planned pay-to-read Times website, or Virgin Media's add-premium-content-to-your-ISP-bill proposals, somewhere out there there's a model that will work. If you find it on your travels, do dust it off, it'll be worth a fortune. Will we find that dream business model in 2010? Possibly, though it'll take a good few years to hone, I suspect. But, as 2010 approaches, I'm more optimistic than ever that - while the big music and media firms may, in some ways, be fucked for now - the future for all of this looks rather rosey. This, people, is the big period of flux. It's risky, but it's fun. And it's certainly great to write about. Hopefully you like reading about it too. So keep it CMU for another year, and let's see how it all turns out together, shall we? |
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