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In an era where music companies are still battling to enforce DRM measures to protect ailing profits, some of the world’s biggest music stars are leaving them behind to embrace new revenue models.

This, from today’s Sunday Times…

HIP-HOP star Jay-Z has always seemed as interested in business as music. From a poor start in a tough Brooklyn neighbourhood, Jay-Z has lived the rapper’s dream, making millions and boasting about it all the way. His hits include Get This Money, I Love the Dough and More Money, More Cash, More Hoes.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, making cash seems to interest him more than spending it. The rapper, real name Shawn Carter, even “retired” from music in 2003 to spend more time with his money.

When Bill Gates wanted a hip-hop star for his spoof retirement video, Jay-Z, long-time partner of pop diva Beyoncé, was the natural choice.

Now Carter has cut one of the biggest deals in music history. It’s a deal that, depending on who you talk to, either points the way to a new model for the struggling music industry or highlights what a savvy player Jay-Z is, while spelling disaster for the company that signed it.

American concert promoter Live Nation hit the headlines last October when it signed a $120m (£60m) deal with Madonna. The pop queen dumped Warner Music, her long-time label, to do the deal, in a move that for some underlined the eroding power of the music industry’s big players.

Music has never been more present in people’s lives or more easily available, but the shift to digital sales has so far proved less profitable than the industry’s last successful business model - promoting an artist by any means it can to make money from CDs.

CD sales remain a profitable business, but as they decline, artists, music labels and concert promoters are all looking past them at alternative revenue sources, from T-shirt and ticket sales to ringtones and licensing songs for use in video games.

“The paradigm in the music business has shifted and as an artist and a businesswoman, I have to move with that shift,” Madonna said in a statement when she signed her deal. Other stars were listening.

Now Jay-Z - 10 years her junior - has dropped Def Jam, the label where he was once president, for a $150m deal with Live Nation.

The company signed a reported $100m deal with Irish rockers U2 last month to handle the band’s merchandising, digital and branding rights, and is also said to be in talks with The Rolling Stones, presently working out their contract at Britain’s EMI.

Like Madonna before him, in straight record sales Jay-Z, 38, is not the force he once was. American Gangster, his last album, sold about 1m copies in America compared with 3m copies of 2003’s The Black Album, but he has also found new artists and pursued other business ventures, such as a clothing line, Rocawear, which he sold last year for $204m, sports investments and a chain of nightclubs. Forbes magazine’s last annual list of “Hip-Hop Cash Kings” ranked Jay-Z first with estimated earnings of $34m in 2006.

The Live Nation deal, which is yet to be formally announced, is a “360degree” deal that will give the concert promoter a financial position in virtually every aspect of the rapper’s career. Jay-Z is expected to get a $25m payment upfront, $10m in advances for each of three albums, $25m towards concert performances and $20m for the publishing rights that he owns. He will also get $25m in overheads to run his side projects with $25m more available to finance acquisitions or investments. He and Live Nation will split any profits 50/50.

Many music executives were dismissive of Live Nation’s move. They pointed out that the major labels were all now doing “360degree” deals and said it was well known that Jay-Z had unsuccessfully touted this same deal to most of the big labels.

“This isn’t a new model,” said one. “It’s ‘let’s take ageing artists past their prime and overpay them’ - that’s a very old business model.”

He said he doubted if they would make back the $10m advances on his new albums and that Jay-Z was not a touring artist of Madonna’s calibre.

Live Nation has a ticket sales deal with Ticketmaster but that expires this year.

David Joyce, analyst for Miller Tabak, said the company was “circling the wagons” by building a roster of big-name artists to help it see off competition when it goes it alone. He said the traditional music-industry players were increasingly looking for a slice of Live Nation’s action. Cherry-picking top acts for top prices is one way to see off that competition.

Music executives said the real test of Jay-Z and Madonna’s deals will come when they have new albums to release. Unlike the record labels, Live Nation is not set up to get CDs into stores or digital music onto iTunes and will probably have to sign up a label to do the release.

Original article is here

Wildscreen.TV Offers 100% Ad Revenue to Users
Wildscreen is a new video site hoping to combine quality content with a social media network. With a focus on quality instead of quantity, Wildscreen distances itself from the YouTube crowd by offering a space in which users can upload as much content as they want, with customized and branded channels.

Aimed at filmmakers, Wildscreen is also hoping to entice users in with the offering of full ownership of the channel, including 100% of the ad revenue going directly to that operator of the video channel. With no upload limitations or revenue splits, wilidscreen’s offering is just different enough to likely catch someone’s attention, as individuals are being presented with a number of experimental alternatives to the monetization of their online video content.

More on this is here

In 1995 eBay sold a laser pointer online and kicked off the online marketplace for selling physical goods. As networks improved in the intervening years, the idea of what can be bought and sold online has grown to include digital goods, such as music, e-books, and videos as well. Zipidee wants to be a market for those digital goods, and is expected to launch some time in the next week.

It’s by no means a new concept, there are several sites out there that trade in digital bits: Payloadz, Tradebit, e-Junkie, Lulu, Edgeio, and more. eBay already sells digital goods, with delivery often handled through these third party sites. iTunes can also sell your content, but requires an approved label if you want to get paid.

However, Zipidee will offer considerably more control over pricing and distribution than these other sites. Merchants on Zipidee will be able to create their own virtual store where they can list their digital wares for sale on the site directly or across Zipidee’s website widgets. It’s an ideal setup for anyone selling an instructional video series or their own audiobook.

zipidee_player.pngAudio and video can be uploaded to the site to be rented or bought at whatever price the creator wishes and consumed via downloads or streams. Other services often only allow downloads.

You will be able to track the sale of their good in real time and adjust the price accordingly using their analytics dashboard. Creators will also have the option of protecting their product with Zipidee’s own DRM system. DRMed goods come with a license to play the media through their web or downloadable player on any computer with your Zipidee credentials.

Zipidee will make money through a $1 listing fee (waived to start) and roughly 80/20 split of the purchase price, like Lulu (Zipidee takes a smaller cut for higher priced goods).

To start, Zipidee will focus on digitizing the kind of media now sold at conferences and trade shows as DVDs or Books. For launch, they’re digitizing materials from a series of consultants and speakers such as DreamUniversity and MightyVentures who currently sell millions of dollars in physical merchandise directly to their customers.

Yet, there’s still a big question over whether and where people will buy “long-tail” digital content. Zipidee is fighting the trend toward free digital content (wikipedia, 5 min) and people are reluctant enough to even pay for big-media’s content (most songs on iPods do not come from iTunes). There is also a question as to whether the best way to sell this content is horizontally in a single marketplace, or vertically by topic. There are a great number of digital content verticals out there already that could serve as points of sale for independently produced content (DocStoc, Scribd, Amie Street, 5 Min, Snocap). We’ll have to see how it all pans out when Zipidee launches.

via Techcrunch

Imeem Partners with Sony BMG to Legally Stream Music
from Mashable! by Adam Ostrow

Imeem, the service that offers a widget for sharing your music playlist, has reached a deal with Sony BMG to legally offer their music to users. In exchange for allowing Imeem users stream Sony BMG music in their widgets, the record label will get a cut of the advertising revenue. Imeem previously signed a similar deal with Warner Music, after the record company first tried to sue them.

Additionally, the company is reportedly in talks with Universal Music Group and EMI Group about similar content deals.

from Mashable! by Adam Ostrow

Summarised from Mashable! by Kristen Nicole

Revver announced it’s pay out of $1 million over the past year, meeting a milestone for the amount of money drummed up and split with content owners that promote and leverage Revver’s video-sharing network.

As one of the first video-sharing networks to offer a rev-share model with content creators, many flocked to the site hoping to have more control over their content and, more importantly, earn extra cash.

As a standard in the rev-share video communities, Revver has also benefited from the popularity of videos like the infamous Pepsi and Mentos experiment, and several indie directors and film creators, including Hollywood notables, are promoting their series on Revver in order to take advantage of the ad-supported model that lets them reap the fruit of their labors.

While most content owners are not yet bringing in the big money from this model, there’s no doubt that content creators will only gain more control and financial rewards from their online content, and Revver will probably continue to position itself as an advantageous distribution platform for user-generated content. It’s already incorporated a new advertising option for pre-roll ads earlier this summer.

Revver was one of the first and currently is one of the few hosted video sites helping monetize social video for independent publishers. Metacafe currently has a producer rewards program where they pay $100 per 20,000 views. Dailymotion and Youtube are expected to pay their users through advertising revenue as well.

Bebo has indicated that it won’t be making user profiles available for marketing purposes, which is a tactic Facebook has recently adopted, to the dismay of some.

There is certainly a recognition that doing things that exploit users is not advantageous. In the past it was possible for companies (in all markets, not just websites) to exploit their users because of the lack of consumer choice (competitors with laregly similar offerings), but today when competitors spring from nothing to come to the fore you can’t piss of your users or they will flee. What companies need to always do is focus on what value they can give or share with their users. When users are getting value they are happy for the host to make money.