Epic loosens Death Grips

Death Grips decided that their album was information which wanted to free, and so slapped the music up on line. Unfortunately, they'd forgotten they'd signed to Epic, and thus had no longer actual ownership of their own art.

Epic failed them, and got cross:

Epic Records’ Head of Business & Legal Affairs Heath Kudler wrote in the email, dated 1 Oct – the same day as the leak: “Epic is extremely upset and disappointed that the artist decided to release an album without Epic’s knowledge or involvement. As you know, the artist has not only blatantly breached a number of provisions in the applicable recording agreement, it also has wilfully infringed Epic’s copyright rights with respect to these masters. Equally important, without provocation, the artist has made false and disparaging statements on various websites about Epic. All this, despite the fact that Epic has done nothing except wholeheartedly supported the band, even though the band has made certain decisions that have financially damaged Epic”.

Upset and disappointed. I suppose at least when they're telling off the people who made the music the RIAA companies pretend to have emotions - if it had been an ordinary person who had put up an album, they'd have actually just been got a drone strike.

Now, though Epic are going to drop the band - thereby totally alienating them from the product of their labours.

Ghostwatch

Amanda Ghost, Blunt-collaborator-turned-head-of-Epic-turned-xx-collaborator, got a broadly sympathetic profiling and interview in yesterday's Guardian Film & Music:

Sony remains confident enough in her business acumen and knack for spotting talent to enter a joint venture with her new label, Outsiders, allowing Ghost to take Oh Land, a new-school Madonna by way of Björk and Lady Gaga, with her. The Dane was Ghost's first signing at Epic, but her single, Wolf and I, will become Outsiders's first release next month, funded by Sony. Ghost continues to work with Sony-signed artists including Beyoncé, Shakira and John Legend – her co-write with the latter, Getting Nowhere, is the current single for another Sony artist, Magnetic Man, and she says it was one of only three songs she wrote during her time at Epic.

A perhaps more probing piece might have asked how far the Outsiders label is a sign of faith by Sony, and how far it's part of the settlement of her contract; certainly, it's hard to see how Oh Land would fit with the Sony roster.

And that Sony are happy to work with her artistically is surely a validation of the argument that she was a creative who wandered into the wrong part of the business, rather than a rejection of that?

Mind you, when she says things like this, you can see why someone would give her an office with a sofa and a drinks cabinet in it:

[Being an executive] was magical, and fun, and depressing, and unhappy – a multitude of emotions. But ultimately it has helped me as a songwriter and a producer and a record-label boss, because I can see what happens to the product once it's completed – how it's treated, how it's marketed, how it's sold. And it makes me believe even more in the power of content, and how important it is to get that content as air-tightly brilliant as possible before you throw it to the wolves."

Product and content, product and content; and not fans or even customers but "wolves". She can approach music and artists and magic with just as much dead-eyed contempt as anyone who worked their way up from the Capitol accounts department - despite railing against record companies thinking they can treat their business like it was selling toasters.

Her final words are fascinating, though:

"It's very important we realise why the music business is failing," she says, "and I do not believe it's because of the internet. We need to focus on the quality of the music and allow artists time to develop. All creativity should be made, I believe, outside of corporations, and be nurtured with the incredible tools we have. With publicity and television and viral and online and social media, there is no reason why you can't get that music out there – and if it's good, people will respond."

Did she believe that before Sony gave her Epic? Because if she did, why did she ever take the job in the first place? And if she really believes that creativity should be made outside corporations, why is her vanity label a Sony imprint?

Her self-chosen surname is a good one: a creature who floats between two worlds, without a firm commitment to either.

Ghosthunting: Sony admits songwriter president was a mistake

You'll recall the "really?" response when Epic made Amanda Ghost, middling songwriter but of dubious management skills, president of the label.

It's ended in tears, and pretty much ensured that Epic will lose whatever was left of its quasi-independence in the Sony family.

The Hollywood Reporter details the moment where Ghost ensured she would vanish, during a CMJ showcase in New York last month. One of her artists had a small pulse of feedback while performing. Ghost, says the reporter, rushed onto the stage:

Among a string of expletives, says a source: "She was screaming: 'Who booked this fucking place? It sounds like shit! We don't treat our artists this way at Epic. I'm not letting them play another minute!' " -- and pulled the plug on the show. "The room just got silent."

Two weeks later, the plug was pulled on her presidency.

According, again, to the Reporter, it had been coming for a while:

An example: It was commonly known among Epic and Columbia employees from all ranks that Ghost was a more than casual marijuana smoker who would regularly light up in her office and admonish so-called creatives who didn't partake. "Her motto was, 'If you don't smoke pot, you can't work here,' " one former staffer says. "In her A&R meetings, she'd say things like, 'If you're not high, like, how do you like music?' " [Sony Music Label Group chairman Rob] Stringer, who says he's never seen Ghost smoke pot, surmises the conversation went more like this:

" 'You guys have brought nothing good to the table, you ought to smoke pot and hear some better music.' It was a taste issue."

During another meeting, a staffer recalls Ghost throwing a CD across the room to make a point. "She thought it was cool and edgy to do stuff like that. She'd say, 'This is shit; you know we can't put this out!' Amanda was a little manic. One minute, she's totally cool, the next she'd say something completely inappropriate then deny having said it. She was a real loose cannon."

There's a lot else in the story of her time in charge at Epic, a time where the one big success was, erm, the death of Michael Jackson triggering enough catalogue sales to cover up some of the worst of the hole.

It's hard not to feel sympathy at the way her juggling of family commitments - which in a success would have attracted admiring op-ed pieces - is turned against her as evidence of other "unreliable" behaviour. But when you read details such as her signing of an artist who she also had publishing rights for, and how eighteen tracks on the artist's first album had her co-writing credit on - there's no sign how this could have ended up anything other than badly.

Ghost has faults, clearly - but the real problem is with Sony. They should never have put her in this role in the first place, and once they had, they should have offered her support. Not the patting-on-the-head style of support, but proper training and advice.

A failing business can succeed with a maverick approach. But the maverick needs to know what they're doing.

[Thanks to Michael M]

Rubin along slowly

In the week when Sony have put Amanda Ghost in charge at Epic, it's worth remembering that having someone with a music background at the top of a label isn't quite as new as we all thought. Only the New York Times remembered, and it perhaps says a lot about how ineffective Rick Rubin has been at Columbia that nobody responded "what about Rubin" when Ghost was talking about how this is a new model.

Certainly, to judge by the Times piece, Sony weren't going to be keen to push the parallel. Especially as it's precisely because Rubin isn't drawn from the business side of the, um, business, which might explain why his record ain't that great:

Associates of Mr. Rubin, some of whom spoke anonymously because they did not want to anger him, described the situation as one in which Mr. Rubin has steadily lost influence over the organization because his style is so different from that of the usual executive and because he is often absent from the corporate offices. The impression from these interviews is of a power game within Columbia in which Mr. Rubin refuses to participate.

Rubin himself wouldn't talk to the paper; his spokesperson did:

In an e-mail message, Heidi Ellen Robinson-Fitzgerald, his longtime publicist, referred to “misconceptions and false gossip that have been running rampant of late” in the music industry concerning Mr. Rubin.

Well, perhaps, but isn't the music business the sort of place where the "false gossip" drives the story? And if you're a wonderful success, that tends to stop the sort of vacuum developing in which misconceptions flourish.

Ghost for President

Can this be right? Epic have appointed a songwriter to be President of the company?

Alright, it might only be Amanda Ghost - whose credits sit on the more disappointing parts of I Am Sasha Fierce, the theme toon to Journeyman, and You're Beautiful - and President of Epic, being occupied territory, means being a puppet for the Sony organisation. But still: a musician in the boardroom. A proper musician.

Ghost has already praised the Sony overlords:

“I’m not a conventional choice as an executive in the music business, but it is testament to the new mood at Sony where content is now king and the music business is being put back in the hands of creative talent such as myself," says Ghost. "I’m here to draw on my experiences as an artist, songwriter and producer to make the new and existing artists signed to Epic as brilliant and successful as possible”.

She has run a label in the past - Universal gave her her own imprint, Plan A, for a while back in 2006. Which managed - as far as we can tell - just the one release. Almost certainly a bar which she will leap now she's at Epic.

Bedingfield to UK: Feel the rain on your own bloody skins

What are we to make of the excuse given for Natasha Bedingfield pulling her UK tour?

"It is with the greatest regret that Natasha Bedingfield has had to cancel her forthcoming U.K. tour. "This is through no fault of Natasha herself, but due to her American record label insisting that she remains in the U.S. to promote the release of her album. All tickets will be reimbursed."

Clearly, if it's economic to pull the tour in the UK, while having to desperately pump the album in the US, there's something going wrong somewhere in the Bedingfield camp.

Certainly, critical reaction to Pocketful of Sunshine has been somewhat muted - it scrapes 66 on Metacritic. The label isn't that impressed with the album, either; it had previously shelved the release last Spring (Pocketful Of Sunshine is the record released as NB in the UK, with some new tracks trying to pad out the collection.)

It's also amusing that Sony BMG are putting the blame on Bedingfield's "American label" for the cancellation - Bedingfield being on Epic in the US, which is a brand of Sony BMG. So when they say "her American record label", they mean... erm, "us".

Epic records "one step away from handing out deals at random"

While we can understand modeling agencies tying up with Tyra Banks to offer contracts to winners of ANTM - after all, if they're that bad, they can always be made to stand in the background - if the music industry is doing as badly as they say, it is really wise for Epic Records to agree in advance to sign a band who wins some sort of online talent show? They're down to the last five now - and Epic execs must be wondering if what they'd thought would be a PR-friendly way of hooking up with a band with a small but dedicated fanbase is going to turn out instead to be the equivalent of discovering a demon child left on their doorstep?

We've voted for Rudy and The Rhetoric. That'll show 'em

An Epic comeback

Almost determined to wear out the "deckchairs on the Titanic" metaphor, Sony are relaunching Epic Records in the UK:

Announcing the launch, SonyBMG UK chief Ged Doherty told CMU: "This is an
important move for the company. It gives us another significant destination
for artists who want to sign to us by giving them the opportunity to sign to
a label with huge history and resonance within the industry. I've been very
happy with the progress of the Columbia and RCA labels since we brought them
back last year, and we need to expand our A&R capability still further to
help us grow the company in line with our overall plans. I'm delighted that
Nick Raphael will be leading Epic, he is a hugely talented and capable
executive with a track record of making successful albums with a wide
variety of artists and this is the perfect role for him".

We're still trying to work out what, exactly, the point of this is - are they expecting fifteen year olds to go "blimey... it's the record label that the Bee Gees used to be signed to; I'll definitely buy their downloads"? If the point of all the mergers and buyouts Sony have indulged in is to reduce costs, then what is the logic in increasing them again by reactivating an imprint? Does anyone have any real idea what they're doing?