MusicNewsTidBits.com

Every now and then I like to post information about the business side of music.  This is an interesting story by Pollstar on the Concert Industry Stats comparison for the period of 11/23/17 – 5/23/18 versus 11/22/18 – 5/22/19.

“The data shows that the concert industry is relatively stable. Though down single digits in overall gross and ticket sales, the concert business saw an impressive increase in average tour gross. While the Top 100 Worldwide tours declined 3.79% in total gross from $2.14 billion in 2018 to $2.06 billion in 2019 and total ticket sales dropped 6.14% from 22.27 million to 23.73 million, the Top 100 Worldwide Tours average gross per show increased significantly from $836,984 in 2018 to $915,095 – a 9.3% jump. That rise was in part fueled by more tickets per show: 9,901 in 2019 versus 9,282 in 2018 – up 6.67%.”

Now I’m no Spice Girls fan but I thought this was just crazy. Spice Girls recently reunited (no doubt they needed the money) and so far they’ve earned $78 million on their 2019 Reunion Tour in England. The only one missing from the group is Posh Spice.  All this money after an 11 years hiatus and they come back and earn that much. I didn’t realize people love them so much.

Rick Farman, co-founder of Superfly Entertainment who started Bonnaroo, wont be part of the Festival after 2019.  Back in 2015 Live Nation purchased a controlling interest in the festival and kept Farman on until this year.  Now it plans to purchase the rest of the festival from the remaining minority owners.  Going forward the festival will be produced by AC Entertainment and C3 Presents, which of course Live Nation owns.

This happened a few weeks ago but there is so much music news out there it’s hard to stay on top of everything. This was too interesting to pass up.

Grandmaster Flash has just become the first DJ to win the Polar Music Prize aka Nobel Prize for Music. Other winners from this award include Led Zeppelin, Metallica, BB King and others.

Flash had this to say:

“(I accepted this) in honor of every DJ, every rapper, every graffiti artist, and every breakdancer. This thing that I did had not existed before, and I am one of many where I come from. It ended up being called hip-hop, taking the drum break from pop, rock, jazz, blues, funk, disco, R+B, and using duplicate copies of records. I would take one section and repeat it over and over again.”

Universal Music Group is being sued by the estates of Tom Petty, Tupac, Soundgarden, Steve Earle and Hole.  Back in 2008 there was a huge fire that destroyed an estimated 500,000 master recordings by artists ranging from Nirvana to Billie Holiday.  They were held in a facility that UMG had rented from NBC and value the losses from the fire at $150 million.

According to the lawsuit its looking for:

“50% of any settlement proceeds and insurance payments received by UMG for the loss of the Master Recordings, and 50% of any remaining loss of value not compensated by such settlement proceeds and insurance payments.”

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Jim Smeal/BEI/Shutterstock (766815b)
Plume of black smoke rising from the back lot
Fire at Universal Film Studios, Hollywood, Los Angeles, America – 01 Jun 2008
Fire erupted early Sunday morning June 1, 2008

Beginning today, June 14, 2019, Phish is launching their own station on SiriusXM called Phish Radio on Channel 29.  The first broadcast is their live performance from Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival.  Page McConnell had this to say:

“My bandmates and I are thrilled to have a home at SiriusXM where Phish fans can hear music from over three decades of us making music together.  We’re excited to make Phish Radio an extension of who we are as a band and a welcome home for fans old and new.”

New York has dedicated a street after Notorious B.I.G. Its on the corner of St. James & Fulton in Brooklyn and the full name of the street is Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace Way. Lots of fans along with Lil’ Kim, Lil Cease and B.I.G.s mother came out to celebrate under the rain. Here’s the street sign:

On June 19, 2019 Aerosmith will open their own museum in Las Vegas, Nevada.  The museum will showcase tons of items they’ve collected over the last 50 years!  Here’s some of the items:

*The actual stage flooring Aerosmith played on during their last tour

*Steven Tyler’s actual drum set from High School

*The bands first press kit

*Original lyrics for ‘Walk This Way’

*Over 20 guitars played over the years

*Steven Tyler’s signature scarfs

Next time I’m in Vegas I’m definitely checking this out

For the first time in history, a hip-hop artist has reached $1 billion in worth.  Yes, Jay-Z is now the first hip-hop billionaire due to his partnership with liquor brands ($410 million), Tidal ($100 million) and Roc Nation ($75 million.  Then there’s his $220 million in cash and investments.

I know a lot of you, like me, thought Dr. Dre already hit the billion dollar mark when he sold Beats By Dre to Apple for $3 billion but Forbes claims that his net worth is at $850 million.

Whitney Houstons sister-in-law, who handles Whitneys estate, is finally allowing a great deal that could put out an album of unreleased music, a Broadway Musical and a Hologram. The upcoming show is titled ‘An Evening With Whitney: The Whitney Houston Hologram Tour.

Rolling Stone spoke with BASE Hologram CEO Brian Becker who is creating the hologram said:

The concert will feature “a complete band onstage, backup singers, dancers etcetera. We will substantially increase our use of the creative elements that are available to us with this technology because it is cinematic, which means we can do animation and special effects to really enhance the show.”

Now this is very interesting.  The people over at https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/ put out an incredible story about the methods that 13-17 year olds listen to their music.

The survey asks these teenagers which format they have used in the past three months only.

I wish I had this many options to listen to music.  It used to be Car Stereo or buy CD’s.  For me, now, I personally would break it down to

Streaming Music 80%

Sirius 20%

If anyone would like to share how they currently listen to music, please email me and I’ll compile a list if there is enough responses.

Kendrick Lamar was signed with Reebok earlier this year and it looks like he moved on over to Nike now. He’s been seen wearing Nike Corez’s in his concerts and Entertainment representatives have officially announced, he moved to Nike.

Not sure about you but I listen to SoundCloud a lot.  Mostly for those hard to find funky deep house mixes.  I knew they were in trouble but almost being shut down is rough.  Well don’t you fret, they just received $169.5 million in emergency funding and the Co-founder Alex Ljung will step down as CEO.

Ljung said “Recently you heard me say SoundCloud isn’t going anywhere. And today I’m here to tell you the exact same thing once again. I’m happy to announce that together with investors The Raine Group and Temasek we’ve just wrapped up the largest financing round in the history of SoundCloud. This financing means SoundCloud remains strong, independent and here to stay. As I said, we’re not going anywhere.”

Apple’s fiscal second quarter, which ended on March 30th, brought in $43.6 Billion…yes BILLION. This is much better than the $39.2 Billion a year ago. They are reporting that the overall net profit however declined from $11.6 billion to $9.5 billion.

That’s crazy money there!

Ok this is completely crazy. The Bank of England are looking at choosing a celebrity to appear on the 10 (pound) banknote. Their list, chosen by the public, will replace Charles Darwin who is currently on the Series E token. The list is short and has none other than Mick Jagger at the top along with the Beatles, Churchill, David Beckham and others.

No word on a decision yet.