Following in the hallowed tradition of Ultragrrrl and, uh, Ultragrrrl, blogger Perez Hilton is still planning to use his acclaimed pulse-fingering talents by starting his own label. “Obviously I have an ear for talent and obviously I have a track record of getting that to translate into sales,” says the music industry’s very own Superman, who promises to do “whatever it takes” to rescue the CD format. What are his novel ideas? Lower prices and “interesting partnerships with companies!” Woah, woah, woah, Perez! Are you sure the music industry is ready for this?
“I wanna get people to buy music again,” he says. “Maybe I’ll give CDs away for five bucks, or create interesting partnerships with companies. Look at what that Apple ad did for Feist. We’ll do cool partnerships with Wal-Mart or Target. Whatever it takes.”
There’s still, however, the small matter of ironing out the Warner Bros. deal — which, according to rumors, could net him $100,000 a year against 50 percent of the profits generated by any artist he discovers. Uncharacteristically, [Hilton] is keeping his mouth shut, at least when it comes to the numbers surrounding the deal. But even if Warner Bros. doesn’t end up ponying appropriately up, he’s already resolved to carry on. “I’ll do it myself. I want to shake up the music business.”
Already shaken, dude. Already shook.
The Next Clive Davis? [Angeleno via Songs For Soap]
I’m not a Perez fan, but in reality I think this is probably something he’s suited to do — even if he hasn’t cracked the original idea shell yet.
@loudersoft: suited to do, sure, but not worth six figures. how many of his actual “successes” didn’t have major major-label money behind them? the leona lewis juggernaut was probably more kicked off by the oprah/american idol one-two punch, and universal was really aggressive about doing press for amy winehouse. meanwhile, the robyn record sold bupkis, even on the more generous curve of 2008, and the kylie record had a freaking reuters story about its sucky sales.
[idolator.com]
@Maura Johnston: Agreed. I can’t imagine that Tom Whalley is excited about this, but who knows. Maybe it was his idea.
“Obviously I have an ear for talent”
I’m guessing that the only part of him that has any…
@Maura Johnston: You and I agree. I think Perez frequently “accepts” too much credit for a lot of the successes that he’s “attached” to. Further, I think they’re giving him too much rope (aka too much money) for what he’s purporting to do. Perez Hilton, as much as he’d like us to think differently, is not now nor will ever be David Geffen.
or wait did I mean Clive Davis
” … I’ll give CDs away for five bucks … “
Priceless!
“cool partnerships with Wal-Mart”
That dude has pulse all over his finger.
Are all of the album covers going to have cum bubbles crudely drawn on them?
Wasn’t Tila Tequila suppose to bring the revolution to the music industry, too??
Obviously if he’s ” giv(ing) CDs away for five bucks” he’s not giving anything away. That would be selling.
@kathotdog: he’s also parking on a driveway. what is his deal!
When he crashed and burns at this, further taking WB down the economic sinkhole they are in, will we finally stop hearing about this idiot?
@Maura Johnston: You are my favorite.
A) Tom Whalley is an idiot.
B) Perez may still launch a label, but it won’t be with WB
C) He’ll do better than most A&R ‘execs’ who already have gigs that pay WELL over 100K
i wish perez the best of luck with this. it’s certainly not easy having a record label. recording an album, finding a producer, getting funds to record, choosing good songs, finding the single, getting the artist to agree with you on the single (or anything else), dealing with online marketing, offline marketing, touring, getting tours, paying for tours, getting videos done, getting videos played, finding a budget for those videos, getting press, more marketing, dealing with artists, getting cds in stores and shipped, dealing with the industry when nobody is making money, dealing with a major that wants records to be sold when you yourself are very used to stealing music… it all takes away from what makes you, you. i hope he has someone else running the ship for him so that he can focus on being perez and having his main contribution be blogging about the artists whenever they have something coming up. otherwise, he might see the same fate as ultragrrrl.com, which for all intents and purposes went by the wayside so i could focus on all the above things. social life gets kissed goodbye. as does health. as does happiness, and with that goes the reason why you’re there to begin with, which is your love of music.
perez probably wouldve been alright off if he did this without warners and hired some sort of label manager for $50k/year (specifically one that got fired from a major) to take care of all the things a label needs to worry about and got a private investor or use his ad revenue pay for things a la rcrdlbl.com …
@owenmeany:
A) Whalley and Ted Field signed 2 Pac to his first solo deal at Interscope back in the day. I’ll always have a soft spot for him, even tho Field prolly did all the work. And there is the little matter of, ahem, the Paris Hilton album. Everybody blamed the Disaster Twins, Lyor and Edgar, for Madonna’s departure. Wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t engineered, in part, by Whalley. Madonna was jacking up his sales numbers way before the twins arrived.
B) Good. TVT perhaps?
C) Anybody can. The industry, in part, is in the shape it’s in because of bloated A&R salaries.
@owenmeany: but wouldn’t hiring the popjustice editors cut out the middleman, since that’s pretty much where perez gets all his stuff anyway?
@Ultragrrrl: If Perez is smart he’ll form a publishing company, not a label. Fuck a CD sale. Get me those film/TV syncs and mechanical royalties!
@Maura Johnston: Nah - why not get the scout AND the platform to expose?
@Ultragrrrl: outsourcing outsourcing outsourcing. That’s what unemployed people are for, right?
@owenmeany: again, you need a person with connections to make that sort of thing (film/tv syncs) happen. working/dealing with those negotiations is a full time job, so i hope he has someone to do it for him. again, i’m not saying that he cant, because i’m sure he can… it’s just that it’ll take a lot of his time. time he can spend focusing on breaking stories/artists/people on his blog.