From Hits Daily Double:
Independent bands and musicians who sold their music through imeem’s embedded Snocap music storefronts won’t be paid what they’re owed even after MySpace Music’s acquisition of the site, which includes “certain assets,” but not its liability to more than 110k artists, according to Wired.com. Those contracts mandate they be paid each month if they’re owed more than $20. Some of them have been owed for more than a year, but the chance of them seeing any money is zero.
Archive for category Bad News
According to Hits Daily Double:
Warner Music Group reported a 1% increase in revenues to $861 million (5% on a constant currency basis) for the quarter ending Sept. 30, while digital revenue grew by 10% to $184 million, acoounting for 21% of all quarterly revenues. But not all was good news, as the company posted a loss of 18 million (12-cents per share), the result in part of severance costs. On the year, losses hit $100 million, compared to $56 million a year ago, while revenues were down 9% to $3.176 billion.
So they increase revenues but lost money… because they laid people off.
Business math is fun
Idolator
So what really happened at Idolator? If you’ve been to the site since the sudden departure of Maura (awesome) Johnston, you’ll notice tons and tons of comments upset about the change in format.
Idolator has been a site that has had a great record of unfiltered opinions, but now it just seems like a shill site. Did the majors crack down? Was there a top level commandment that there no longer could be a public lashing of the stupidity of labels?
Let us know if you know anything…
Barbara has the number one album with 180k albums sold, followed by Barbara Streisand (175k) and Mariah Carey (168k).
I don’t know what s more abysmal, that Barbara has a number one album, or that 180k constitutes a number 1 album in this day and age.
Rip: A Remix Manifesto
May 28
I just checked out a documentary called Rip: A remix manifesto about the music industry and music culture as it is today. It really focused a lot on Girl Talk, a mashup artist and the bullshit laws he is encountering with the Music industry.
Although I am not sold on the whole long tail, it’s something you guys should check out. All 1 of you who is reading this.
http://www.ripremix.com
Fancy ad agency Crispin, Porter & Bogusky is whoring its interns out via eBay. This is an interesting way of making money. I wonder if I can eBay my roommate off. However, when I do it, it’s called prostitution.
Crispin Sells Its Interns on EBay – Advertising Age – TalentWorks: “May 19, 2009
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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — We may be in a recession, but this year’s batch of Crispin Porter & Bogusky interns will be getting fatter paychecks. Not that the agency itself will be funding the pay increases for the 40 young talents who will slog away in its Miami and Boulder, Colo., offices on accounts such as ‘Guitar Hero’ and Burger King. Rather, Crispin has launched an eBay auction for their services.
Nokia Cuts Another 490 Jobs
May 19
Nokia is laying off more people, which means more competition for me as I try to get a job so I can tie the knot. Come on people! Get it together. I am trying to be an adult!
Nokia Cuts Another 490 Jobs: “
Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is planning to cull a further 490 jobs as part of its previously announced global cost cutting measures. The Finnish cellphone giant, which saw handset sales fall 19 percent in the first quarter, said it will lay off 170 employees working in logistics, production management and production support, and will offer voluntary resignation for up to 320 of its production employees at its Salo manufacturing plant. Since job cuts began earlier this year, Nokia has laid off over 4,000 of its workers. (Release.)
(Via mocoNews.net.)
Lawyers Paid Not to Show Up
May 18
Time Magazine has an article about how certain law firms are paying new hires fresh from law school not to show up. Man why were things not this sweet when I was graduating?
However, as crazy as it sounds, this may make sense. There are all other costs that are factored in to bringing people on board other than just a paycheck, and they may loose a lot by rescinding these offers (candidates at the top of their class may be this generations Wachtall or Skadden or Paul Simon). Still… crazy
Well I don’t think AMEX is on deathwatch, but this is about bad stuff.
The WSJ has revealed that American Express has announced it will be cutting 4,000 jobs, or 6% of its workforce, to scale back operations and investment spending.
Man this economy needs to get better soon. I mean it sucks for the people that are about to lose their job, but this will only make it more difficult for me to find a job. And if you want this blog to be on deathwatch, you all better hope that I find a job soon
Razr’s Blinding Success Hid “Brutal Reality” At Motorola: “
Sometimes it’s a company’s inability to turn out unique products that sends sales slipping—case in point, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC). But for Motorola (NYSE: MOT), it was having a hit product—the slim, shiny Razr—that started the company on its downward spiral. The success of the Razr, once the hottest selling cellphone, was so ‘blinding,’ that it masked the ‘brutal reality’ that more work had to be done, according to co-CEO Greg Brown in a rueful sounding interview with Businessweek.
Brown, who at one point refers to the Razr as a ‘one-trick pony,’ goes into detail as to what wrong at Motorola: ‘…we developed an unhealthy hubris that manifested itself in us thinking we knew what was best for customers, as opposed to listening in an unfiltered and unemotional way to what customers were telling us. It’s particularly noteworthy on the mobile-devices side. We should have been more in tune with the customer experience instead of focusing on form factors [the physical shape of the phone]. We didn’t adapt with the right level of speed and customer input to where the puck was going.’
Businessweek tries its best to get Brown to pin the blame for the decline at the mobile devices division on former chief Ed Zander, but, Brown known as a careful speaker, sidesteps this by saying, ‘Businesses are only as good as the leadership running those businesses.’ So yes, Zander, known for his outbursts like, ‘Screw the Nano!’ is to blame, just that Brown won’t badmouth him.
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(Via mocoNews.net.)
