The Detroit Free Press takes a look at the entrepreneurship of the Insane Clown Posse, the Motor City duo who head up an empire that brings in—please take a second to finish whatever beverage you’re drinking—upwards of $10 million a year. They have the Gathering, of course, as well as tie-in DVDs and action figures and T-shirts and a forthcoming sequel to their 2001 film Big Money Hustlas. The combination of capitalist force and music-business longevity has even garnered them something that’s more priceless—respect! MORE »
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The Insane Clown Posse Are Laughing All The Way To The Bank
the biz
Our long national nightmare of not being able to find a sanctioned, high-quality copy of the video for “Dress You Up” on YouTube is almost over: Warner Music Group has apparently inked a deal with Google to stream its videos from the site once again. You may remember WMG’s snit at the end of last year—over money, natch—that resulted in all of its official content being pulled from the site. [Epicenter] MORE »
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The Kids Of Today (Still) Need To Defend Themselves Against The ’60s
Get ready for another wave of Boomer nostalgia to crash over our collective shores during the dog days of late August. The one-two punch of the 40th anniversary of Woodstock and the run-up to the release of The Beatles: Rock Band just happen to coincide with what are traditionally super-slow days in the music press, thanks to a large number of factors that include the waning days of the summer shed season, record labels’ decision to hold off on putting out anything “important” until back-to-school season starts, and the fact that any reporter who actually has to work in the weeks leading up to Labor Day not feeling all that inspired. (Cough.) MORE »
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Katy Perry Hates How The Music Industry Runs Hot And Cold With New Artists
“@katyperry tweeted some pretty universal ideas re: artist development last night… or the lack thereof today,” Dave Navarro noted on Twitter this morning, adding that in his not-so-humble opinion, any Pink Floyd of today would have probably been dropped before they had the chance to make their own Dark Side Of The Moon. (Your mileage may vary on the fallout from that particular scenario, of course.) What did Perry—who, despite not yet being 25, has been in the music business for what could be seen as a long time—have to say? A slightly edited-for-clarity version of her Tweets after the jump. MORE »
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Perez Hilton’s Record Label Is Actually Happening
Even though the reality that Perez Hilton would have his own imprint with Warner Brothers was sort of inevitable, it’s still one of those pieces of news that makes you really glad you can run away from the computer for at least a while once the workday has ended. The Technicolor-haired Internet scourge is going to announce his first signing later this month, according to Entertainment Weekly, and I bet you whatever contract he extends will include a “stick up for the boss to the press” clause. Why, just look at this bit on how people tend to have strong opinions about him: MORE »
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What Was Your Last Visit To A Big-Box Retailer’s Music Section Like?
Last night I visited my local Target, and I decided to swing by its ever-shrinking music section just to see what was going on. What I saw were a lot of depleted shelves (including the new-release area, although that might have been waiting for today’s supply of Black Eyed Peas discs), many copies of Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak, and the fully-stocked display of Sony MusicPass cards that has remained pretty much intact since last year’s holiday season, save one card for Blake Lewis’ Audio Day Dream that was moved into the country section because someone was either trying to be “funny” or realizing that the whole MusicPass thing was pretty much a dumb idea and ditching it before they went to the checkout lanes. There were also two people in there browsing CDs! MORE »
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Jay-Z Doing The Splits
So after lots of speculation over just who would be releasing Jay-Z’s forthcoming The Blueprint 3 and distributing his Live Nation-aided label Roc Nation–and his own declaration that he, personally, would “never have a ‘record deal’ again”–it turns out that Jay-Z is actually getting in bed with both Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment: The former will put out Blueprint 3 on Sept. 11 (the eighth anniversary of the original’s run), while Sony subsidiary Epic Records will be the chief distributing partner for Roc Nation. MORE »
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Will “Vinyl Saturday” Drag People Back To The Record Stores?
The people behind the one-day indie-music-retail blowout Record Store Day are hoping so; they’ve declared the third Saturday of every month Vinyl Saturday, on which limited-edition vinyl releases will be available at participating indie shops. The first installment is Saturday, June 20, and there will be four special releases on shelves that day: MORE »
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Rick Ross Can’t Stop Sucking On Beef
Now that his seemingly neverending squabbling with 50 Cent has resulted in his new album Deeper Than Rap being No. 1 on this week’s album charts (if not much of an in-store draw), Rick Ross has decided to move on to a new target: Known Curtis Jackson associate Eminem, who–what do you know!–has a new album of his own coming out next month. In the above video, which is filmed while Ross is on some sort of expensive vacation, Ross brags about his album sales and kvells over his own personal DJ being overpaid and waves a pair of Kanye West-designed shoes around before taking time to call Em a “hunghkey” (ugh) during Yet Another Tirade About How G-Unit Sucks. I’m sure the pretty much inevitable second-week sales drop-off will result in some Eminem-led counterattack coming from the other side of the table, but for now, let’s look at some figures that a commenter on Nah Right claims are a comparison of budgets for Jadakiss’ The Last Kiss, which came out two weeks ago, and the Ross album: MORE »
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What Happens To An Album’s Pre-Release Cycle In An Era Of Leaks, Low Sales, And Dead Magazines?
One of the main reasons for album leaks is the nature of the traditional press cycle. Press outlets–in particular, print outlets–have what’s called a “lead time,” a reasonable (but sometimes unreasonable) amount of time necessary for them to have the record in order to cover it around its release date. The industry standard is three months, but it can vary based on frequency of publication. And as print media tries to compete with online media for timeliness, some outlets have demanded even longer lead times–which, of course, means more time for a record to be out there, and more time for it to leak. Preventive measures like watermarking can help, but in a big office, it can only take one unscrupulous writer or an intern who didn’t know better to screw the whole thing up. MORE »
