Madonna leaving record label too

You don't need to be a star, just really good. Quote from wikipedia:
"Colbie Caillat (born 1985 in Newbury Park, California) is an American acoustic-folk singer-songwriter from Malibu, California. She is noted for her MySpace profile which led her to become the number one unsigned singer in her genre for four months. Her popularity on the social network was partially due to her song "Bubbly". Her profile has garnered over 17 million plays."

Sweet! This is great news

From what Wednesday's WSJ article laid out - and WMG's gross, but not untrue, rebuttal report - I don't know how much this is really going to impact Madonna's recording music career. I mean, I love Madonna, have seen her on each of her tours since 2001 (which was the first time I was really able to see her, seeing as she took the 8 year touring hiatus back when I was 10) - and I'll continue to see her in concert, but WMG still retains her back catalog - released on her own imprtint, Maverick, and they still get one more album out of the existing deal. The new deal is fantastic for Madonna, but realistically, I'm not sure how relevant or even profitable it is in terms of actual recorded music. Madonna will be 60 when the contract ends - and her biggest draw from a financial standpoint is touring and catalog sales -- not new recorded music (Music was a pretty substantial hit in 2000, but American Life and Confessions haven't been nearly as successful (I think both of her Greatest Hits albums still sell more per year than anything else)), which is why it makes sense for her to sign a pact with the largest touring/promotions company. If they want to distribute her post Warner album that comes out in 2008, hey - I look forward to buying/hearing it - but I think Madonna was smart enough to realize that she makes way more touring than she does off of new music, and with the industry in flux over the whole digital download thing, a guaranteed $120M for touring is substantially more than she could expect to receive based on record sales (not to mention having to fork over a percentage of tour profits to the label, as I feel certain that was part of the old Warner contract, as it is for most artists).

The only people taking an actual risk are Live Nation - and frankly, even if all of her recorded albums tanked, another World Tour like Confessions and they'll make their money back and then some (we're talking $80 a ticket minimums, $110 if you want good seats, not to mention t-shirts in the $50 range, and higher -- and I'm just one of the many morons who will pay that with glee to see Madge do her thing).

I think Madonna's deal isn't comparable to what Radiohead, Oasis and even the Eagles are doing, just because I see it as a restructuring of her financial portfolio -- putting the focus on what she knows will make her money - rather than acting as a new way to distribute content. I love Madonna, but I don't ever expect to see DRM-free MP3s (unless it is the industry standard by the time her first Live Nation release comes out), and she would never do a set your own price thing -- she's a business woman and she can still reach people through the old channels. Radiohead and Oasis want to challenge the system, in part, because they have never had the control that Madonna has had essentially since 1990 -- the Eagles are just trying to get the music out to people who I guess, they think will buy it. They might have the best selling album of all time (it's so close between Eagles Greatest Hits and Thriller), but really, who cares about the Eagles, like at all?

What this move does signify is how the profit centers in music have shifted -- record sales aren't the biggest boon for the artists - it's touring (and we've known this for a while, but this just shows how much the situation has shifted).

As for the question, can a nobody get Madonna-like success from MySpace? At this point, no. I'd say the best that an online phenom can hope for would be an Ani DiFranco situation. Granted, in the DIY movement, DiFranco did much of what the web was doing before the web existed (though to her discredit, Righteous Babe has not embraced the online world the way they should have -- but she probably claims that's about artistic integrity) -- and even though she's one of the 50 highest grossing touring artists every year, her mainstream Q rating is really low (12 years ago, it was high - but not now) and her supporters, while large, are their own little world. That's what I see happening with MySpace bands -- they might have success in their own little groups or worlds, but in the big picture - no, they won't be able to compete with the huge acts or the hugely promoted new acts -- at least not for a while. The entire recording industry system is not broken - the distribution chain and the dispersion of wealth is a big problem -- but radio, to a lesser extent music videos (which have been supplanted to a small degree by YouTube and to a larger degree by placement in TV show soundtracks) and the publicity machine that can only come with a seasoned, well-connected publicist (and not a MySpace page run by the drummer's girlfriend) are what make stars. A label might find someone online and they might become huge, but I don't really think that the online world is going to produce the next Madonna on its own -- at least not for quite some time. Taking over distribution is only part of the equation; I personally feel that the biggest problem with the music industry is radio - not the CD sales method -- and overthrowing corporate radio, the ClearChannel and Cumulus's of the world, isn't going to happen from things like MySpace or SNOCAP.

I understand why Radiohead and NIN did this, and I think its awesome.

Madonna, When are you going to die? No one likes you so stop being an attention whore and doing what you think everyone else is doing.

and DAMN will too much crack change the way you look, hideous.

I like these articles you've been doing lately. Its true we are in a music revolution, but if you think about it, its really going back to grass roots and getting away from this prepackaged crap that is force fed to us by the record labels. Back to how artists were originally recognized and marketed. And now the record labels are realizing that Cd's arent worth the plastic they're printed on, but they dont want to accept that the actual content is what everybody wants. Raw, unfiltered music....give it to us in high fidelity and with no resrictions and we'll be happy to pay money for it.

But anyway... the point of this post is to point out a new artist that has embraced the online music revolution and has used it to his benefit. The way this kid promoted and marketed himself through online mediums..everyone new him before his hit song took over the country.

Good job Soulja boy, tell em how its done.

We are in the age of the internet. Record labels don't have as much impact and control as they once did over artists because anyone can now easy distribute their products online. However, I do believe that many artists DO still need record labels for financial purposes and worldwide exposure.

I actually wrote a detailed article about this over at http://bfeatherstone.blogspot.com titled "Do Artists Really Need Labels?"