Business News Week In Five

The music business week in five – 13 Jul 2012

By | Published on Friday 13 July 2012

Chris Cooke

So there we have it, another busy week in music. There was the sad collapse of the Bloc Festival company after last weekend’s chaos, and the impact that will have on its business partners, ticket-buyers, and the wider live industry.

The EMI sale continued to occupy our headlines, both the deal that has been done, and the one still being investigated by regulators. Moyles announced he was leaving Radio 1 and Kim Dotcom made the Americans an offer they could refuse. Here are the details…

01: Bloc went into administration after crowd control chaos. The independent company behind the popular Bloc Weekend festival announced it had called in the administrators on Wednesday, after overcrowding at its new East London site last weekend caused the event to be shutdown halfway through its first night. While the layout of the event at the London Pleasure Gardens has been criticised, insiders at the festival seem convinced problems occurred because vastly more people gained access to the site than had been sold tickets.

Ticketing firm CrowdSurge insists there was no issue with forged tickets or the scanning machines that were checking e-tickets at the gate, though it has accused festival organisers of randomly deciding to stop scanning tickets at 9.30pm, three hours before shutdown. With many of the festival’s costs already incurred by the time it was shut down, it seems unlikely ticket-buyers will get a refund, and will instead turn to their credit card companies for compensation. This in turn could have a wider impact on the grass roots live sector, as credit card firms may refuse to deal directly with smaller promoters in future. CMU reports

02: Universal continued to lobby for its EMI bid, while Sony began its cull at EMI Publishing. The Financial Times reported that the boss of Universal’s parent company Vivendi, Jean-René Fourtou, was personally leading the charm offensive to convince European regulators to green light his firm’s bid to buy the EMI record company, while Universal big cheese Lucian Grainge told the paper he would definitely offer concessions to allay fears of market dominance in some regions, while proclaiming he had a “manifesto for the new music industry”. Meanwhile at EMI Music Publishing, which was bought by a Sony-led consortium late last month, the post-acquisition redundancies have already begun, while Sony/ATV chief Marty Bandier, who will now control the EMI publishing business too, reshuffled his management team. Vivendi report | Grainge report | Sony/ATV report

03: Chris Moyles announced his departure from the Radio 1 breakfast show. Despite years of speculation that the controversial DJ would be axed from the station’s primetime slot, the announcement came a bit out of the blue. Nick Grimshaw will take over the show in September, in a bid by R1 management to pull in a more youthful audience. Greg James, previously tipped as a possible Moyles replacement, and who recently told a newspaper he’d be interested in the breakfast gig, was gallant in defeat saying he was more than happy with his current drive time slot. Meanwhile Radio 1 boss Ben Cooper told The Guardian that he hoped to find a new role for Moyles on the nation’s favourite. CMU report | Guardian report

04: The European Commission published collecting society proposals, that aim to force royalty organisations across the European Union (though mainly publishing rights societies) to be more transparent to their members, to pay monies over to creators faster, to make more of an effort to identify unknown rights owners, and to increase efforts to offer multi-territory licences. Artist group Younison initially welcomed moves to make collecting societies more creator-friendly, but has hit out at certain elements of the proposals, especially those regards finding and paying unknown rights owners, which, it says, will help “collecting societies to keep the fruits of our creativity”. CMU report | BBC report

05: The MegaUpload extradition hearing was postponed, from August to next March, amidst complications over the warrant used by New Zealand police to raid the home of founder Kim ‘Dotcom’ Schmitz, the sharing of data seized their with US officials, and how much of America’s evidence against the Mega company should be shown to the defence. The US, of course, wants to extradite Dotcom and three other former MegaUpload execs to face charges of copyright infringement, money laundering and racketeering. Though Dotcom said this week he’d voluntarily fly to America if he was guaranteed bail there and given access to frozen Mega funds to pay legal fees. The US is yet to accept the offer, and Dotcom admitted it is very unlikely to do so. Extradition report | Dotcom offer report

And that’s the week just gone. Don’t forget to sign up for the CMU podcast for more retrospective chatter over the weekend: www.theCMUwebsite.com/podcast

Chris Cooke
Business Editor, CMU



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