Author: JD
Sorry, Coke and Pepsi. (Uncensored)
SodaStream’s commercial for the Big Game 2014. Scarlett Johansson shows us how to save the world with a soda that’s better-for-you and all of us. Less sugar, less bottles. www.sodastream.com http://youtu.be/zxq4ziu-wrI
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.” -Jim Morrison
VISA #welcometobrazil Worldcup 2014 Campaign featuring The Simpsons & Star Wars
FRESH!!!!! VISA Card Brazil presents a fantastic new campaign to promote the upcoming FIFA Worldcup 2014, hosted by the South American country. For the #welcometobrazil campaign VISArecruited The Simpsons and the Star Wars casts,
Lyor Cohen Unveils 300 Partnership With Twitter During Midem Keynote
Lyor Cohen used his keynote speech at Midem in Cannes, France, to announce that his new label venture, 300, has partnered with Twitter to develop A&R tools that will benefit the whole music business. Speaking to a packed room at Cannes’ Palais des Festivals centre, the former Warner Music Group chief revealed that he closed the deal on Saturday (Feb. 1), and that the partnership would focus on the creation of “A&R tools to find artists early and help develop them.” Lyor Cohen: The 2014 Billboard Power 100 “In the modern A&R business we are all looking for talent in various places, and certainly Twitter is a terrific place to look at talent,” Cohen said. “If you want to get signed, you have to engage with Twitter, and of course YouTube, and we’ll be looking to try and develop tools that the rest of the music community can utilize.” Interviewed by Tommy Boy CEO and New Music Seminar executive director Tom Silverman, Cohen’s engrossing and, at times, highly entertaining keynote, marked the first time that the veteran exec has publicly discussed 300 — the Google-backed independent music company he co-founded with long-term music partners Todd Moscowitz and Kevin Liles. “The mission statement is to create a lasting reputation for high quality and artist development,” Cohen told the audience, which included a front-row seat for longtime U2 manager and Billboard’s 2014 Industry Icon honoree Paul McGuinness. Lyor Cohen Unveils 300, New ‘Content Company’ with Atlantic Deal, Google Backing and Ex-Warner Brass “It’s a creative hub that goes beyond the creation of music and songs. It’s a place where artists, managers, agents can access experience and tools so they could be highly participating in the artist development process,” he continued. The company’s mission statement took six weeks to finalize, Cohen said, and retained an important role to “define concisely what we want to wake up and do every day.” Asked by Silverman why he felt that now was the right time to launch an independent music company, Cohen responded, “I think this is an amazing opportunity for entrepreneurs to be independent, especially in the music business. I see macro business models that are not on some chalk board, but that actually are reality. I certainly believe in streaming as being the future of a very healthy business and I want to be a part of that.” Todd Moscowitz Teases 300 Entertainment, First Signees Perform at Pre-Grammys Celebration Cohen continued, “We definitely are going to see a few bumps. But as subscription grows and it gets to a mass scale I think it will be a lovely business.” As for what still fuels him in his forth decade in the music industry, Cohen said he has had the same singular thought for the last 32 years: “Maybe today will be the day that I bump into an artist that will change my life and possibly change formats and pop culture. That’s my drug,” he said.
Eclectic Method’s ‘A Brief History of Sampling’
Eclectic Method – A Brief History of Sampling from Eclectic Method on Vimeo. Visual remix ace Eclectic Method – this time tackles some of the “most noted breaks and riffs of the decades” and their usage as it relates to popular music. In his own words it’s, “A chronological journey from the Beatles’ use of the Mellotron in the ’60s to the sample dense hip-hop and dance music of the ’80s and ’90s. Each break is represented by a vibrating vinyl soundwave exploding into various tracks that sampled it.”
Investors Put $2.4 Billion Into Music In 2013, Streaming Tops List
The big got bigger and the rich got richer in 2013. In the 57 investment deals totaling over $2.4 billion tracked by Billboard, nearly 9 in 10 dollars invested went to a traditional music company, an EDM concert promoter or a company that streams music. Most of the investments were made in small, digital startups. Some are trying to improve how people discover concerts. A handful of them are changing how people create music. Warner Music Group’s acquisition of Parlophone Label Group was the biggest single investment in music in 2013. The $765 million deal, representing nearly a third of the year’s music investments, gave Warner not only Parlophone and Chrysalis but EMI’s operations in a handful of European countries. Also in this category was the acquisition of Nettwerk Music Group for $10.3 million in April. SFX Entertainment accounted for the next-largest bucket, concert promotion, worth $480 million. The EDM-focused company’s initial public stock offering in October raised $260 million. It also acquired three EDM promoters: ID&T for $130 million, i-Motion for $21 million and Totem OneLove Group for $69.1 million. In spite of a reputation for difficult business models and costly licensing fees, services that use licensed music attracted $838.8 million, or 49% of all investments. Four deals landed by Internet radio companies raised $443.3 million. Following Pandora’s $393.3-million secondary stock offering were smaller venture capital rounds by TuneIn ($25 million), DeliRadio ($9.4 million) and Songza ($4.7 million). There is a catch: TuneIn is merely an aggregator of Internet radio streams and doesn’t itself pay any royalties. Investors in streaming music were attracted to scale, potential and momentum rather than profitability. Services that provide on-demand streaming either audio or video raised $406.5 million. The largest deal was a $250 million investment in Spotify, an unprofitable company that’s a category leader and has 24 million active users — not all of them paying customers — across 55 countries. A similar company hoping to disrupt the recorded music market is Beats Music, a subscription service that launched Jan. 21. An offshoot of Beats Electronics, the maker of the popular Beats By Dr. Dre headphones, Beats Music raised $60 million from Access Industries, the owner of Warner Music Group. (A year earlier, Access placed $130 million in Deezer, a competitor of Spotify and Beats Music.) Investors backed numerous companies that help consumers find music they like. The smallest investment was $100,000 in Bop.fm, an online tool that aggregates songs from various digital music services. Two other startups that offer aggregation tools, Songdrop and MFiveLabs, received funding. Investors also backed numerous companies that help people discovery music or concerts. Most such deals were small, but music identification app Shazam received a $40-million investment from the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim.