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If you're filing for protective bankruptcy to avoid having to pay people what you owe, there are some things you might not want to be doing.
50 Cent has declared himself to be bankrupt:
In papers filed with the US bankruptcy court in Hartford, Connecticut, on Monday, 50 Cent, real name Curtis Jackson, reported assets and debts in the $10m to $50m range. According to the petition, 50 Cent holds primarily consumer debts, which are debts “incurred by an individual primarily for a personal, family or household purpose”.If you'd like a full Ozymandias moment, might I suggest you turn your attention to 2009's Business Insider piece, 50 Cent's Massive Business Empire. There's a parade of the piles of cash which, it turns out, 50 Cent has managed to lose:
50 Cent, you'll recall, is the raised-from-the-dead, shot-9-times rapper, produced by Dr. Dre and Eminem.It's probably all that vitamin water which accounts for how he's pissed it all away.
But fame did not make him the big bucks, smart business moves did (Just ask Gary Coleman).
Once you're it, says 50 Cent, there is no time to rest on laurels. It's time to market the hell out of yourself – thus, getting more exposure.
Most importantly, you have monetize your popularity. From book deals to vitamin water to moisturizers, 50 Cent is dabbling in almost everything.
The bankruptcy report arrives three days after a jury ordered the rapper to pay $5m to Lastonia Leviston, of Pembroke Pines, Florida, for buying her sex tape, editing it with his own narration and posting it online without her permission.Nah, 50 Cent wouldn't file a bankruptcy claim just to avoid having to pay the money he owes to a woman who he humiliated "for a laugh", would he? Because that would be even harder to swallow than his foul-tasting Street King energy drink.
Mutya Buena has been declared bankrupt, apparently due to unpaid taxes.
BBC News tries to cheer her up by suggesting that it's quite the thing these days:
Mutya Buena is the latest in a line of pop stars who have struggled financially.It's like a guest list from a Liberty X gig, isn't it?
Blue band members Duncan James, Simon Webbe, Antony Costa have all filed for bankruptcy as have Westlife singer Shane Filan, S Club 7 singers Jo O'Meara and Paul Cattermole and Fazer from N-Dubz.
Kerry Katona from Atomic Kitten has been declared bankrupt twice.
The collapse of megaclub company Gatecrasher is going to leave 230 creditors with losses, after the company was taken into a totally legal flatpack insolvency. The Birmingham Post explains:
A progress report into the ‘pre-pack’ administration of the Birmingham-based nightclub group reveals that 233 creditors have been left out of pocket to the tune of £2,081,840.There's a support group for those who've lost out on Facebook; Birmingham University's Guild of Students are advising their members to avoid working with the "new" Gatecrasher.
The report, by administrators Duff and Phelps, said: “Based upon the current information available, there will be insufficient realisations to enable a distribution to the non-preferential unsecured creditors of the companies.”
The cash blow for creditors comes six months after Broad Street-based Gatecrasher went bust when its owners piled up multi-million pound debts.
[...]
A statement last year from Gatecrasher managing director Simon Raine said: “Substantial external equity funding is in place to allow the immediate progression of Gatecrasher’s expansion plans.
“Critically we have a new direction and will return to producing the global events and festivals that originally made the brand a worldwide clubbing phenomenon.”
But an unnamed creditor owed several thousands of pounds told the Post: “Some of the DJs, for example, are owed thousands. They kept saying ‘the cheque is in the post’ but it never arrived.
“Loads of people have been affected by this. I definitely would not work for these people again – the thing that is really annoying is that they can just walk away from their obligations, leaving all those people out of pocket.
“And the sad thing is that the law is on their side. Millions have been written off and it makes you sick.”
How goes the Blue comeback? Given their role on ITV2's Big Reunion, and their swaggering refusal to play more than handful of the related gigs on account of being too famous, things must be sweet for them, right?
Apparently not:
BOYBAND Blue have gone bust — in the middle of a massive comeback tour.It's hard to believe an act who were 11th in Eurovision just two years ago could be struggling in this way, but Gordon has something close to an on-the-record admittance:
Band members Antony Costa, Duncan James, Lee Ryan and Simon Webbe have called in administrators for their company Blueworld Ltd.
A band spokeswoman said: “Blue have been open about their recent financial struggles and are restructuring their business model."Restructuring their business model" I think means "hoping that they might find loose change on the floor at the end of the gigs".
“A new tour starts in October and we have already had to add new dates.”
Remember mp3tunes? It was an early online music locker of the sort that are becoming increasingly common these days. But it never took off, mainly because EMI spent a long time calling for them to be closed down, even after they'd been given an OK from the courts.
EMI will be happy now, though, as they've won their war of attrition. Mp3tunes have filed for protective bankruptcy.
Mp3tunes aren't happy:
"EMI spent an estimated $10 million dollars with multiple law firms to arm their attack against MP3tunes in an attempt to thwart unlicensed personal lockers," according to Robertson. "They know it's difficult if not impossible for startups to fight long costly legal battles... This happened with the music search engine Seeqpod, Muxtape, Favtape and many others that have quietly faded away."EMI, naturally, are indicating they'd like to kick the corpse around a bit longer, and will pursue the lawsuit to prove something or other. Probably that EMI have no idea when to stop.
The miserable recent past of UB40 projects into the miserable present, with the band being declared bankrupt following the collapse of DEP and the wrangles with Ali Campbell.
The four members of the band - Brian Travers, Jimmy Brown, Terence 'Astro' Oswald and Norman Hassan - have been given personal insolvency orders; Ali Campbell, meanwhile, is being smug from the safety of not being in the band any more:
His spokesman said the bankruptcy court case showed Ali was right to quit the band.She then went on to flip a shiny sixpence at Campbell's former bandmates and said "buy yourselves a cup of tea, why don't you?"
"It is ironic that the very week they celebrate their first gig they have been declared bankrupt, after administration began in 2006, vindicating both Ali and Mickey Virtue's decision to leave UB40," she said.
Andrew Crossley, the man from ACS:Law who sent cash-demanding letters claiming illegal filesharing activities with often scant evidence, has been declared bankrupt.
It's not all bad news, mind: given his impecunious circumstances, he's had his £200k fine for being rubbish at protecting personal data reduced to £1000.
Britain's Borders went months and months ago; earlier this week the Australian flavour closed down altogether, and in the US the company sought protective bankruptcy and announced the closure of a number of stores.
To be fair, when we read through the list of closures in Colorado, we were going "What? they had a store there? Why?" so there is an element of genuine consolidation possible here. Borders seem to have had a policy of opening branches in new malls but leaving branches operating in nearby, declining malls, which does leave a bit of room to take out some stores without the network collapsing. (The American mall market is different to the UK one, where HMV is hoping that people will travel five or six miles extra to the next High Steet store.) The 200 closures and Chapter 11 could bring $2billion back into play that otherwise would be spent on rent.
But what does the protective bankruptcy mean for the music industry? Billboard have some interesting figures which shows the size of the bath the majors might take:
The site also lists Borders' 30 largest creditors, beginning with Penguin Putnam, which is owed $41 million. The first music vendor to appear on the list is Sony Music at no. 14, which is owed $4.3 million. It is followed by Universal Music Group at no. 17 ($3.75 million), WEA at no 18 ($3.4 million) and EMI Music at no. 26 ($1.7 million).Unpleasant sums, but not the sort of hit that would even take out EMI right now.
The company, which only carries music in 500 of its stores, was once a significant force in music, but its SKU count has steadily declined as U.S. music sales dropped during the past decade. In 2000, when music sales was at its U.S. peak, the typical Borders store was carrying 50,000 titles, but that dropped to 29,000 by 2003, 14,000 in 2006, and 9,500 by 2009The real worry for the music industry seems to be not so much what they'd lose directly if Borders close, but what the knock-on effect might be:
If Borders pulls out of music or the chain goes away, the question of whether Barnes & Noble will continue to stay in music looms large as a future worry, according to executives.This seems to be a tacit admission that both chains are only using CDs as a loss leader, doesn't it?
James P emails with a sad story about Mike Read:
Without wishing to appear as his official stalker or anything, there's a sad story in today's Mirror about Mike Read. Apparently following bankrupcy earlier this year, he's being forced to sell his record collection.
It's considered 'too valuable' to break up into single lots, and so is being sold as one item, currently valued at £750,000. It would've been £750,003.99, but the copy of 'Relax' appears to be snapped in half.
Seeqpod was - and is - a brilliant idea. A playable searchengine, which lets you find music online, and listen to it in situ. Connecting fans and the curious with artists and product. Wonderful, right?
Ah, but what happens when someone has a brilliant musical idea on the internet? The increasingly Kurtz-like music industry attempts to have it destroyed. And so it is, with the Warners lawsuit forcing Seeqpod into protective bankruptcy and, it looks likely, rapid closure.
Well done, everybody: you've done nothing to make your industry any more secure, but done a little bit more to frustrate your audiences.
To be fair, I can't take much delight in the news that Circuit City is closing its remaining stores. That's despite having a really bad customer service experience in one of their stores just after Christmas. Like, really bad. British standards of service bad. It was kind of curious, though, that a company which needed all the love and support it could get basically treated people trying to buy things as if they were irritants.
The company management has signaled that there's no way back for them:
"We are extremely disappointed by this outcome. The company had been in continuous negotiations regarding a going concern transaction. Regrettably for the more than 30,000 employees of Circuit City and our loyal customers, we were unable to reach an agreement with our creditors and lenders to structure a going-concern transaction in the limited timeframe available, and so this is the only possible path for our company," said James A. Marcum, vice chairman and acting president and chief executive officer for Circuit City Stores, Inc.
If it wasn't such a tragedy, it would be amusing. Kerry Katona was declared bankrupt today after the HMRC failed to receive her last payment of back taxes. The amusing part?
Having cleared his last bankruptcy by winning Celebrity Big Brother, Bez is now back to square one: he's bankrupt again.
Apparently the Insolvency Register lists him as "journalist and musician", which seems to be wrong. Twice.
Warner music has offered to take the Death Row catalogue off the hands of the receivers, valuing the library at USD25 million.
It's still going to leave a bit of a hole in the Death Row accounts - the label was USD137million in debt when it went under. Still, it's not a bad take for the catalogue - Warners must have faith that SpiralFrog will be serving a shed load of ads alongside the tracks for the years to come.
Catching the mood of America as the economy slowly erodes, Fox News worries that even celebrities are going broke:
Obviously it's not the end for them as a creative force - that dwindled before Touch My Bum even made it into the shops. But as a company, The Cheeky Girls might be facing wipe-out, as Revenue and Customs seek unpaid VAT receipts. The problem, of course, is that their label, Telstar, went bust and - unless there's a large pile of cash sitting around unexpectedly, it looks like Cheeky Girls - the business will go the same way.
US Eminem and 50 Cent baiting hip-hop magazine The Source has filed for protective bankruptcy. For the second time.
This time round, the current owners are blaming "dishonest business practices" on the part of the previous owners as having damaged relationships between title and advertisers. Which is why Sarah Beeney advises you to have a full survey done before buying any property.
Suge Knight's ongoing legal battles with Rap-A-Lot records over some dreadful 2Pac posthumous release have now seen him thrown out of his own home.
For all the world like something out one of those turn-of-the-century novels set in Liverpool that they sell in the Post Office, Knights stuff was dumped out the front door his apartment while the locks were changed.
It can't be confirmed that he's planning to spend the night in a Linton Travel Tavern.
