Artist: Major Labels

Rolling Stone has plucked 16 unsigned acts from obscurity and pinned them against each other in a crowdsourced contest that determines which of them will appear on the cover of their print publication. The winner will also make an appearance on an Augest episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and be signed to a label deal with Atlantic Records. And if in a few months after the competition you never heard from said act again and a year later they're quietly dumped from said label to sister label to [...]

All through this coldest month of winter there have been rumbles from murky internet corners that claim Jive records ended its long term relationship with Ciara. Things have been rough between the partner entities for awhile— Ciara's manager and A&R changed before Fantasy Ride dropped and what CiCi envisioned as a three-disc concept album became [...]

Just a week after loosing control of EMI to Citigroup, Terra Firma's Guy Hands says he'd be interested in buying EMI back. "It's about price," Hands said in a speech to that was his first public appearance since losing the label group. But Hands didn't stop there... "Terra Firma and Citigroup agreed on what EMI was worth back in 2007. We clearly both got it wrong. Now, we disagree quite strongly about what it's worth," Hands told a crowd of UK businesses last week. "They are going to auction it, and we will [...]

In what feels like a race to the bottom of the hill, the world's #3 music group, Warners, is pushing hard to be sold before #4 EMI is also on the market to potential buyers. At the same time that Citigroup is busy pouring of EMI's books to ready it for a sale. "The challenge is they are both heading towards a situation where they're going to compete for buyers," said one music industry exec. 20 parties have expressed interest in WMG, according to the NY Post . [...]

Wesley Verhoeve of Family Records was kind enough to remind me via Twitter that if you say bad things about the major labels often enough, it's important to balance out your criticism with some solutions. Well, Mr. Verhoeve I'm working on it. For the last couple weekends, I've dedicated my writing and time to figuring out the problems with cloud-based music subscriptions. To me, they are an essential part of the next music business or whatever we call it now. And I realize that people have been [...]

There may not be much laughter in the executive suite at Warner Music Group this week. On Tuesday, the company announced its 8th straight loosing quarter with a Q1 loss of $18 million. Wall Street promptly responded by punishing WMG with an almost 8% decline and wiping out $100 million in shareholder value. Then yesterday, Moody's analysts suggested that they are about to downgrade WMG's stock. "This decrease reflects the negative impact of industry pressures related to competition and the transformation of music distribution from physical to digital, both domestically and [...]

2011 could prove to be a spectacular year. Spotify may launch stateside. Google Music might start cloud-based music storage off with a bang. Apple may convert into a subscription service. Slacker will offer on-demand music streams and may capture substantial market share. Sony is bringing their own service called "Music Unlimited" to market. Make no mistake, this could be the biggest year that the music industry has seen [...]

Matt Kozlov, who has overseen many of Sony Music's most creative digital initiatives is leaving the label group to lead Creative Mobile Labs , an LA based startup funded by mobile tech giant Qualcomm and talent agency CAA. The new company will pair creatives with mobile developers to create cutting edge mobile apps and games. In an email to associates Kozlov wrote: "I wanted to inform you all of an exciting personal update. I just recently decided to leave Sony Music to pursue an exciting opportunity running a new [...]

CEO Roger Faxon has to be given credit for trying to move EMI forward in very difficult times. Amid staff cuts, lawsuits and now a forced shift in ownership to its banker, Faxon has sought to portray EMI as a music group in transition rather than one in crisis. Keeping his EMI team, buoyed by a few chart victories and yet frightened by an uncertain future, focused and motivated may be Faxon's greatest challenge. In this letter, he sought to bring his staff together and explain how the shift in ownership to bankers was good for EMI. [...]

A new study suggests that people who express creative ideas are less likely to be identified as having leadership potential. In other words, w hen staff members in major label boardroom meetings talk about ways to move the record industry in profitable new directions, questions about their suitability for roles of higher leadership arise. Even though the record industry knows that it needs creative leadership to get it out of the mess that it's in now, the fact is that thinking outside of the box is at odds with the stereotypical [...]

While not as bad as some analysts had expected, there was not much to smile about in Burbank as Warner Music Group filed its 1Q report with Wall Street this morning. For the quarter ending Dec. 31, WMG posted a loss of $18 million or 12 cents a share on $789 million in revenue, compared with a loss of $17 million or 11 cents a share a year earlier. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast a loss of 19 cents on $798 million in revenue. Digital Grows, But So Do Severance Packages: [...]

In an extensive round of media interviews and meetings with staff yesterday, EMI CEO Roger Faxon sent a singular message: Citigroup's acquisition and recapitalization relieves pressure on the music group and makes it possible for EMI to "pay attention much more directly to the operating performance of the business and to driving for growth in the future." "One of the things that people don't appreciate is that EMI was able to pay the debt service on that £3.4bn." Faxon told Music Week . "I think this will relieve that pressure. And I would say that, [...]

EMI, the world's fourth largest label group along with a successful publishing division, are now controlled by one of America's largest banks. As predicted, Citigroup seized 100% of EMI Group Ltd. from financier Guy Hands and his Terra Firma group in a restructuring that saw the company's debt cut from nearly $5.5 billion to just under $2 billion USD. Trying to put the best face on a difficult moment for the music group, CEO Roger Faxon said in a statement: "The recapitalization of EMI by Citi is an extremely positive [...]

The utopian dream of the Internet is that it makes artists equals. Each can have their music available on iTunes and have a webpage to call their own. But do major label artists make more money per stream on Spotify than the indies like the xx? New reports hint that this may be the case. It's not that Lady Gaga may get paid more than an indie artist just because she's Lady Gaga. [...]

After being told that there was "no format" that would play Justin Bieber on the radio, manager Scooter Braun decided "hand-to-hand combat" was his only option and took the young singer to stations across the country. "There's not a DJ who can say they haven't met Justin Bieber," says Braun. long the way Beiber tweeted fans who swamped the stations at each stop. Watch the video :

Reports indicate that Spotify is close to signing a deal with EMI. If a contract is signed, it will give the company an additional toehold in their quest to launch in the US. Two weeks ago, the company landed a deal with Sony Music. Taken together, Sony and EMI represent a 37% market share of music sales in the US. Still, in order to fill the largest catalog hole, Spotify needs to get Universal Music Group onboard, as it has 31 percent of the market. These advancements in [...]

E than Kaplan, the popular SVP of Emerging Technology for Warner Music Group has left the company. Kaplan has not announced where he'll land, but he will continue running the R.E.M. fan site Murmurs.com. While praising his team, Kaplan was also not without criticism: "This business is changing, and one of the things that has always remained constant for five years is the entropy inherent to half century old company having its very foundations seismically shift," said Kaplan "We worked to predict where things were going, call BS [...]

The major label roller coaster ride has intensified over the last few days with a series of staff cuts, executive changes and sale rumors that should radically shift the major label landscape. But will they lead to real change? Last week, new UMG CEO Lucian Grainge began his reign with 50+ staff cut across the U.S. operation. Finance, IT and administrative services appear to be the heaviest hit. Over at Warner Music Group, CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. seems to be trying to have it both ways. At the same time that [...]

Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman is either looking to exit the music business in a big way or delve deeper in. A report from the New York Times indicates that he has hired investment firm Goldman Sachs to help find potential buyers for WMG. Simultaneously, he appears to be thinking about acquiring EMI. While this may seem like an "unusual two-track process" as The Times calls it, Goldman Sachs will make money either way, Peter Kafka aptly points out. Meanwhile, Warner's private equity owners are either [...]

Just a quick flight from where the world's music industry is gathering in Cannes, a court in Paris has found Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warmer Music Group's Chairman and CEO, guilty of charges that he mislead investors in Vivendi Universal when we worked at that company in 2002. As a result of its finding, the Court imposed a fine on Bronfman of U.S. $6.7 million and a three year suspended sentence. Bronfman said in a statement that he intends to appeal today's court decision to the Paris Court of Appeal. Under [...]