wax&wires

Singles sales have been crushing album sales ever since the development of the digital marketplace. How do Apple and the big four major record labels team up to combat that?

I predicted back in January that one thing to watch for in 2009 would be Guy Hands to pawn off EMI to the highest bidder, with Warner as a strong contender. It looks like a chain of events has kicked off that could lead to such a conclusion.

Trent Reznor just put up a few quick thoughts on how to be successful as an unknown artist.

Amanda Palmer, of The Dresden Dolls, has made noise on the internet before and now has written a blog post on how she made $19,000 in 10 hours on Twitter.

Elektra Records has been dormant since 2004. Now, the founder of Fueled By Ramen will try to inject some new life in the 60-year-old label.

Danger Mouse, most notorious for being half of the Gnarls Barkley duo, is in the midst of a legal dispute with EMI prompting him to release the album artwork for his new album with a blank CD-R in lieu of the album itself.

I had no idea how much Reznor actually made last year. Here, Masnick breaks down why his business model works, and if and how it would work for lesser known artists.

We’re running out of graves for the few indie radio stations left, so it seemed about time for a check-in on big radio.

I snagged this video from Kyle Bylin. There are some very interesting points made in it, and a fair amount of animosity to boot.

There’s been a lot of buzz about the Ticketmaster/Live Nation deal, especially after the fallout concerning Bruce Springsteen tickets in New Jersey. Just prior to all of that, WSJ had an article on Live Nation’s Chief Executive Michael Rapino, and how he hopes to replace the record label as the artist’s primary industry partner. Rapino [...]

The struggling music units of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG merged in 2004 so that a combined company could better fend off illegal file sharing and shrinking CD sales.
The new recording company, named Sony BMG, was expected to wield the kind of resources that could challenge Universal Music Group as the largest of the four [...]

Back in March of this year, Warner Music Group brought on digital music guru Jim Griffin to consult on how to combat illegal file sharing and recoup some revenue from an ever depleting amount of CD sales.