So, back to MIDEM, and its traditional for there to be a plethora of announcements from music business types during the big Cannes junket, but this year the pleth seems even more abundant, if such a statement makes sense.
But before the announcements, let's return to Paul McGuinness' big speech. While the U2 manager threw his weight behind the record companies' big campaign against the ISPs, he also found time to have a bit of a diss at the majors, as any artist manager of note would surely be expected to.
His concerns predictably centre on those new revenue streams that the major record companies are keen to get control of in a bid to make things add up as the traditional record sales on which their band investments are traditionally secured begin to slide. As previously noted, as record companies attempt to move into other aspects of their artists' careers - whether that be touring or merchandising or brand partnerships - there will be a power struggle between the majors and the managers, the latter of which have come to control those aspects of their artists' careers other than recordings.
Managers will be suspicious of majors who start to demand involvement in their artists' wider careers, because [a] music business common sense has always said artists shouldn't put all their eggs in one basket; [b] it is generally thought that managers have a duty (contractual or ethical) to act in their artists' best interests and that giving too much control to a major music company would be failing in that duty; and [c] record companies may ultimately seek a management relationship with their artists, ie becoming competitors to existing management firms.
It's with all this in mind that McGuinness aired caution regarding the so called 360 degree deals (ie multiple revenue stream deals) that record companies are getting excited about. He's even cautious about record companies developing new revenue streams on existing recorded material - eg the advertising cut agreements that have been done with digital services carrying major label music.
McGuinness: "There is some excitement about advertising-funded deals. But the record companies must gain our trust to share fairly the revenues they will gain from advertising. Historically they have not been good at transparency. Let's never forget the great CD scam of the 80s when the majors tried to halve the royalties of records released on CD claiming that they needed this extra margin to develop the new technology even as they were entering the great boom years that the CD delivered".
He continued: "It's ironic that at a time when the majors are asking the artists to trust them to share advertising revenue they are also pushing the dreadful 360 model. As Allen Grubman, the well-known New York attorney said to me recently... 'God forbid that one of these acts in a 360 deal has success. The next thing that will happen is the manager gets fired and the lawyer gets sued for malpractice'. Maybe it would help if they were to offer to cancel those deals when they repair their main revenue model and the industry recovers, as I believe it will".