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So you’re Warner Music Group. You’re smarting because your stock price is in the toilet, one of your marquee artists is leaving for heretofore unproven ground, and you’re still pinning your hopes on people eventually remembering that James Blunt exists. Also, you’re still smarting from wasting a bunch of money on a concert-promotion company that wound up being little more than a front for throwing celebrity-studded parties on your dime. So what do you do to turn things around? How about throwing money at a self-obsessed blogger with flattening pageviews, rudimentary MS Paint skills, and a track record of getting more than one percent of his users to buy albums by the artists that he waxes rhapsodically about?
Mr. Lavandeira has been negotiating a deal that would provide him with his own imprint at Warner Brothers Records, a division of the music giant Warner Music Group, he said. This was confirmed by several other people associated with the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity because no deal has been made. The talks are preliminary, and an agreement is not certain, but Mr. Lavandeira could receive $100,000 a year as an advance against 50 percent of any profits generated by artists he discovers and releases through Warner Brothers, these people said.
A lawyer for Mr. Lavandeira and representatives of Warner Brothers declined to comment on the negotiations.
Though the agreement under discussion would represent a small sum for Warner Brothers, it would help support Mr. Lavandeira’s claims that he has an ear for more than the latest celebrity scoop. More than that, though, a label deal for Mr. Lavandeira, whose Web site draws an estimated 2.8 million visitors a month, according to ComScore Media Metrix, would be a recognition of the influence that blogs can wield in generating word of mouth about music.
Later in the article, one of Perez’s pets claims that visits to her band’s MySpace page “tripled” after he promo’d the band on his site, leading one to believe that this new imprint will in fact go beyond the idea of the 360 deal and allow the label share in ad revenue from MySpace pages–or at least get paid by the pageview? On the bright side, though, “Mr. Lavandeira” claims that he’s going to be “really actively involved” in the label–which might mean that he’ll have less time for blogging! (Hey, just trying to stay positive.)
Perez Hilton Could Play New Role: A&R Man [NYT]
[Photo: AP]
man, in that link about perez hilton’s pageviews going down, i also see that idolator is the least read of all the gawker sites. sucks.
Any shred of sympathy I had for the record industry is now gone. It’s over, dudes. Go fuck yourselves.
so is this going to be Stolen Transmission 2.0?
@Weezy F Baby: This is off-topic for sure, but Fleshbot’s readers/commenters ratio is really something to behold.
I can’t/can/can’t believe that it has so many readers.
@Charlie Kerfelds Jetsons Tee: o rly?
PORN FANS IN NOT WISHING TO BROADCAST THEIR INTERESTS SHOCK
Perez Hilton sits in a coffee shop all day reading emails. Where the fuck is he going to discover new artists?
I always assumed the record labels paid him to mention bands on his site.
Everyone knows that people don’t actually read music blogs, they just come for the free music. :P
Relatedly, Warner’s “chief digital strategist” bailed yesterday; maybe Perez sat on him.
That being said did anyone else find this statistic kind of fishy:
I mean, duh. Please tell me that in the methodology of this study, someone realized that there’s more likely to be 40+ blog posts about releases from established artists that have already built a substantial brand presence?
So this tasteless delusional moron is gonna be foisting horrible music upon the public instead of a tasteless delusional moron who works as a record executive at Warner? Oh, well.
@the rich girls are weeping: this was the same study that seemed surprised that most albums came out on tuesdays, so i would say the likelihood of it being *that* savvy is slim. coolfer had a more thorough writeup of it here:
[www.coolfer.com]
TASTEMAKER!
That picture looks like Cyndi Lauper threw up on Melissa Etheridge. I’m not really trying to make a fat joke here, bu the only tastemaking Perez Hilton is going to do is adding flavor sprinkles to a box of donuts.
Goodbye horrible music industry. Die, Die, Die.
@cockfightbarmitzvah, @loudersoft: the worst part is, he doesn’t have terrible taste in some areas of music. he likes robyn and róisín murphy and girls aloud (who i suppose could be called terrible by some, but not me, not this blog, not most big blogs, really). he’s totally repugnant, and when he posted about one of my favorite bands of the last year i actually wanted to cry and die a little, but at the same time his tastes are not horrible because he cribs from popjustice with no shame at all.
Yeah Idolator has kind of experienced a downswing. I think it may have been when they decided to stop posting their favorite remembrances and lost records and favorites….. though I had assumed that descision was made by the higher ups or to stay out of legal entanglements.
Which sucks, because I bought almost 20 records based on their .mp3 lists alone, just puttering about hearing stuff I never would have if it wasn’t for this site.
So thank you Idolator, your technically helping the industry ^_^, I bought from stores or the artists.
@Charlie Kerfelds Jetsons Tee: Wait, wait. Are you telling me there is money in porn? Is someone looking into this?
Aside from the nauseam I’m experiencing at the thought of that clown (seriously…is that supposed to be some Ziggy Stardust-meets-late-period-Elvis look? WTF???) inflicting his musical taste on an unsuspecting, undeserving world, it makes me even more sick to think of the effect this could have on the other already shameless self-promoting attention whore bloggers that will see this and quintuple their efforts in an attempt to piggyback on a new wave of “record company freak” hirings a la Danny Fields in the late 60s. Gah.
psst, tenno. you may want to look at the numbers before you start pontificating on overall traffic trends.
[www.sitemeter.com]
@Maura Johnston: Thx for the link — I totally missed this. WORST METHODOLOGY EVER. How hard could it have been to get the Soundscan data?
Though, LOLZ: Mainstream reviews (Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, et al) were negatively related to future sales
@kisskisskiss: He doesn’t have horrible taste in music, but his presence at anything remotely interesting is instantly polarizing. I’ve had enough Courtney Love moments for one lifetime, I don’t need Perez moments to go with them. That being said, Perez has never been anything but nice to me. I just don’t understand people focusing these untold sums of money on him.
@Tenno: Whatever the motivations for Idolator dropping MP3s last year (and sure, we all miss them), the so-called “downswing” of which you speak is basically illusory. Pageviews ’round these parts have generally gone up.
I mean, every day here, we chronicle the ways in which this entire industry is fucked, which is the simplest explanation for Idolator’s low ranking in the Gawker universe. But within that fucked music universe, I’d say Idolator commands an outsize and — forgive my flattery here to my friends in the peanut gallery — smarter-than-average readership.
well i dunno if i’d go that far.
j/k.
@loudersoft: yeah i can’t say i disagree there. for someone whose tastes are so clearly derivative of first-line for-real music bloggers like mr popjustice and arjan of arjanwrites, he gets a lot of undeserved attention. especially in the UK where publicists use his mentions to create the illusion of international presence for their hometown artists (leona lewis comes to mind here). i’d much rather see a popjustice record label than a perez hilton record label, not just because one of the two websites does not send me into agonies of hatred, but because the popjustice record label would be unfiltered, at least. perez’s taste in music is kind of the blogger equivalent of forever 21, really, and why buy forever 21 if the high-end brand you’re knocking off is free?
…or something.
@kisskisskiss: i love that analogy!
@JohnDoe: THE John Doe?!
@Charlie Kerfelds Jetsons Tee: Sorry. Dough.
@kisskisskiss: This is the methodology used to justify the U.S.’s relentless purchase of goods manufactured in China. Look what it’s done for us.
@cockfightbarmitzvah:
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
@Charlie Kerfelds Jetsons Tee:just a fan
@Maura Johnston: I should have clarified myself better, I was thinking of comments vs. views, and even then just my personal observation (flawed, I know). Doesn’t change the fact that this is the second site I go to, every day since I first found it.
I had thought the amount of interaction in posts had gone down, which has nothing to do with views.
I know, I know. Foot in mouth.
@Chris Molanphy: There may not be a downswing in Idolator traffic, but there’s no growth either. February ‘08 looks real similar to February ‘07.
My personal feeling (and I’ve been a reader since day one) why Idolator continues to hover near the bottom of the Gawker network is because it seems like every other post nowadays is about hip-hop. Regardless of how one feels about hip-hop, I suspect that the typical Gawker reader is not that interested in rap. And the rest of the Gawker network is Idolator’s biggest marketing opportunity.
On Valentine’s Day, Jezebel did a simple post about favorite love songs that received 799 comments. Why that wasn’t originally posted on Idolator and cross-linked to Jezebel, I’ll never know.
If I could have one wish, one wish only. It’d be for the Idolator collective to descend like blogging locusts on SXSW in force and wreak ye havoc there.
Rick Astley style.
Imagine if you will.
[www.collegehumor.com]
@extracrispy: Every other post is about hip-hop? Have we been reading the same site?
There’s only two roads for blogs these days.
* Be a smart blog that takes risks
* Be a blog that guarantees hits but has to either a) be dumb and sleazy, b) offer free downloadable shit, and/or c) be purely tech/geek oriented. The former two overlap somewhat. In all cases, a popular blog has to suffer inane/spammed-out comments boxes for its eternity.
See the popular Gawker sites, and the patterns are clear.
Also, lol at cobwebs-and-crickets blogs who take stabs at more popular blogs while trying to promote their own, shocker.
(NOTE: talking about blogs who specifically try to zing more popular blogs on their own comments turf, that is)
[www.pineconeattack.com] ^_^
Lol.
But seriously, Perez? =( sad face.
I want the lede Perez jpg as a life-sized poster. Make it happen, Idolator.
@extracrispy: I don’t notice a lot of hip-hop oriented posts at all. If anything, I wish there were more posts in general on Idolator! Jezebel has a lot of posts and a lot of interesting discussions going on. Is there not enough stuff happening WRT the music world that merits a post?
On topic: not all of Perez’s suggestions are horrible but the fact that he might become a nationally-recognized pseudo-tastemaker makes me shudder. He also tends to gush over artists that most respectable music blogs have already covered.
I’m secretly guessing that Perez leans more towards musicals and the campiest of camp. Anything else i just butter on the roll for him.
Oh dammit. ‘is just butter’…. sigh.
@mackro: You’re not implying the Fleshbot is dumb, right? Sleazy it may be but they seem a pretty sharp bunch over there. Sure, smut’s fun but it’s pretty hard to take seriously, and they seem to get that.
Erm, not that I ever visit it…
About our humble hosts: I, too, have been reading, on and off, from the git-go, and it’s all the American Idol posts that make my eyes glaze over. But, I guess, that’s the music industry these days. And I’m old, so what do I know? But, hell, they haven’t booted me yet, so I’m pullin’ for ‘em.
@extracrispy: Yeah, you’re right in pointing out Jezebel’s favorite love songs post and how many gigundo hits it got. It could’ve been an idolator post easy.
Perhaps I exaggerated about the number of hip-hop posts. But I stand by my point that the hip-hop coverage on Idolator has increased significantly over the last year.
I guess the reason I find the rap posts so glaring is that the vain, over-commercialized, dumbed-down world of today’s hip-hop seems so contrary to the sharp, sardonic, independent spirit of blogging, particularly the Gawker blogs. If you’re gonna cover hip-hop, at the very least write about The Roots or Talib Kweli instead of fucking Soulja Boy and T-Pain.
@Tenno: And any variations of Rickrolls crammed within the SXSW coverage.
@extracrispy: Ah but Soulja Boy allows for snark and humor. You can’t crack wise on The Roots, most of us like them too much.
@rad_matter: Yes, it’d be like an interactive minefield that would never, ever let you down, or hold you back.
With all the content kvetch on this thread, sounds like Idolator needs to do a “Reader Produced” day, week, etc.
@extracrispy: Seriously? Could you stuff a little more hay in your strawmen? Or maybe return the “real v. mersh rap” argument to 2001?
@MTS: It’d be a dark week of lolcats, hip-hop jabs, hometown bands and Rickrolls my friend; hardly what the masses need.
Mr. Potato Head and a Bucket of Cash.