Stephanie, you need to proof your Vuvox – it is not working correctly (there are redundant hotspots and the video is buggy)

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Are you suffering from a broken disc or even a case of the Walkman? Say no more. The music industry has come to your rescue to cure those compact disc blues.

The remedy? The music industry’s 360 contract deal.

This recent agreement has the record label making a profit off of all aspects of an artist’s revenues in order to develop a well-rounded musician. Instead of making money only from CD sales (which are almost non-existent these days), the label gets a portion of the profits from concert revenue, merchandise sales, endorsement deals, ringtonez and other beneficial areas. In exchange, the music label will work with the artist to improve their overall career by using their developed resources, like contacts and press relation officers. The major labels even go as far as to say (WHERE DO THEY SAY THIS) that they have more time to promote their artists because they’re not hunting down record sales to cover their investment.

With CD sales of 2008 slumping 20% from 2007 figures — while the CD’s arch-enemy, illegal downloading, has risen 32% since 2007 — it’s no wonder the music industry feels the need to cash in on all areas of their artists’ success.

According to an article on TechCrunch.com, Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman says that these contracts are mandatory for all new artists who sign with his label. According to Bronfman, about a third of all of his company’s signed artists are already under this kind of contract.

But there has been a lot of controversy surrounding these deals amongst artists, as well as amid music fans. Both groups are concerned that these newly signed artists are not fully reaping the benefits from their work, and that the new approach tends to refashion the artist as a product rather than a talent. Also of concern is the fact that the element of choice is taken away from the artist when these deals are made, since the record label often has control of over 33% of the artists’ profits.

The decrease of CD sales has also led to the music industry becoming more selective with the artists they sign to a record label. The labels need to be very careful of the artist’s they recruit as well as the hit singles they release to the fans because the industry no longer relies on CD sales to establish a accepted musician. The success of the artist relies primarily on the artist themselves but also relies on the influence, power and opinion from the record label.

(TRANSITION) According to a recent Huffington Post article, Atlantic Records was quite successful with profits from digital revenue in 2008 when compared to the labels’ physical CD profit. Popular artists from Atlantic Records, like T.I. and Jason Mraz, are some of the artists who helped to achieve this downloading success.

The record labels have also teamed up with MySpace this past year to create MySpace Music, a webpage solely dedicated to upcoming artists as well as popular musicians. The website has specific links to videos, tour dates and special contests. The webpage allows the musicians and their labels to display new talent to a wide community of music fans around the world with very little promotional effort involved.

The 360 deal is also making its way across the border into Canada. In the United States, the four major music labels have all adopted this new kind of deal but Canada has smaller, independent labels using the 360 deal for their artists. The Canadian music labels vary from their American counterparts because some staffers even stand in as promoters and artist merchandisers for their artist.

The 360 contract first got its origins in the 2000s with UK pop star Robbie Williams who was able to draw large crowds to concerts but wasn’t able to move many albums in the United States. Eventually, major artists like Madonna and The PussyCat Dolls followed the trend which has led to their profitable success.

It seems that the remedy to the diminishing CD sales and the illegal downloading is for the record labels to make more money off their artists. Even in these hard economic times, the music industry seems to know how to drain the last beat from their artists.

I have a couple of ideas for an interface for your piece – let’s talk on Tuesday…

We should talk a little about logistics — I’m not totally clear on the way you’re describing how the piece will be organized. So come to my office hours or grab me after class.

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/stereo-components-on-the-way-out/

If that’s the case, than what you’re really covering is the local reaction to a global phenomenon. I agree that a timeline is a great idea — and that’s where you can do your contextual work, but I am not sure that you need to provide sections on the ipod, etc. What I’d like to see instead are sections that break down all the ways that this story impacts Montreal. In addition to interviews with the label and the DJ,
I could see you going to stores that still sell vinyl, for example (Montreal is known as a place to get records), and interviewing people about the CD’s rise and fall and about whether there will eventually be CD stores that have the same cache as vinyl stores. I could see you interviewing various people who (like me) have enormous music collections scattered on various media players and hard drives and little sense of where anything is, and they could demonstrate the futility of it. You could interview illegal downloaders. You could try to track down someone who does artwork for CD covers locally — I know there are definitely some folks, because I’ve bought local CDs with local artwork.

So I’m thinking definitely video clips, probably soundslides: in the case of the DJ, maybe even an audio interview.