Disco, death, greed and scandal

A very well alive Canadian disco label and its founder president -name witheld- has been ordered by a Canadian provincial Superior Court recently to annul all contracts signed on a 70s artist -name witheld- hospital death bed last year and reimburse his widow 75gs in damage.

The widow who's the manager of the 70s artist did sign the contracts on his behalf. Who's the shark? The widow, the record label, or both?

UPDATE March 1st 2008: Record label proposed to annul all contracts signed on deathbed in exchange of the check they made, widow-manager refused. I suspect the record label will win the case, while we're at it, it's Unidisc.

Even if this was published by a reputable press agency and reproduced in various newspapers, I wasn't able to track and view the court document, for this reason, I omitted the names.

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Net radio backlashes at major record labels

UpstageRadio.com participated in the "Day of Silence" on Tuesday, June 26th 2007, the next step is the deletion of thousands of songs from major record labels.

"There will be no U2, no Beatles, no Rolling Stones," said Gary Wien, program director for the net radio station Upstage Radio. "I'm taking many of my favorite artists out of the rotation. Once I learned about the new royalty proposals I made the decision that I would no longer buy records from major labels. Why give them more of my money when they're trying to put stations like mine out of business? I'd estimate that Upstage Radio has spent between $10-15,000 on major label records through the years to build up the station's catalog, but they won't get a dime more from us. It's sad that many artists thought online radio stations were trying to protest paying royalties when we've been paying all along; What we're protesting is the way the RIAA is trying to kill online radio in favor of big, corporate radio stations. And since the record industry is showing their support of the big guys, we're going to show our support for the little guys... "

UpstageRadio.com will still play artists from independent record labels because they generally support online radio and recognize the importance of internet radio stations. Wien estimates that about half of the 22,000 songs in the station database are major label artists who will no longer be part of the rotation, but he's looking forward to the challenge of creating a great station with indie artists.

UpstageRadio.com

Source: PRWeb

Editor's note: In 2007, there's so many new acts, new musicians around while the majors are trying to feed us pre-packaged dolls and puppets who know nothing about music, the timing is absolutely perfect, the majors can't stop fans from discovering indie artists on MySpace, absolutely nothing, unless they sign them all up.

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Blaze's Kevin Hedges leaves West End Records, Cheren retires

We do not know yet why Mel Cheren retired and what will happen next at West End Records. Here are excerpts from Kevin Hedges' farewell ...

"It is with sadness that we announce the retirement of a music industry legend, Mr. Mel Cheren, b.k.a. Uncle Mel."

"Mel's retirement saddens me because I will miss our daily conversations and his gentle management style. However, I am taking all that he has taught me and applying it to our new company, Blaze Imprints. With this new label, my team, Josh Milan and I will strive to continue to find, produce and distribute the very best Soul Music we can create and discover." ...

Blaze has remixed Dreamgirls "Family" recently with the fabulous voice of Jennifer Hudson

Blaze Imprints

UPDATE: Mel passed away December 7th 2007

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Hip hop is dead, numbers are in

It's official! Expect to see less and less of bum rappers flashin' their rented cars and borrowed villas, faux pimps and ho's, pole strippin' and all on TV and radio.

Hip-hop will have to go back to its roots to survive and its pioneers are all for it.

The rumors have been swirling since last year, the numbers are now there to prove it.

Even kids are tired of the genre, hip-hop is not cool anymore but don't tell that to the music moguls... , they'll suck hip-hop dry as long as they can, hip hop on the mainstream lived so long only cause it was oh so profitable.

USA Today has published an in-depth article complete with record sales numbers.

Read "Can rap regain its crown" on USA Today
"Who killed hip-hop" also on USA Today

Classic hip-hop (re:1979-1996) will evidently gain a new following, generation "Y" are discovering that there's more to the genre than what they've been accustomed to in the last 5-10 years.

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The wall ain't standing tall

Everybody has heard Eric Pryd's Proper Education, the dance floor friendly remix of Pink Floyd's The Wall. There's also a website mimicking the wall on the web that has yet to gather serious attention. So what's the point of the music wall? If you're into music and have at least 200 dollars to spare for a virtual brick, make the website owner richer like it did for the instigator of the Million Dollar homepage and cross your fingers someone will click on your banner. See for yourself...

www.greatmusicwall.com

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Thank you Robbie, Fergie, Justin, Gwen, Gnarls... You made 2006 the most exciting year in dance pop in this decade

Alright I'm an underground soul and vinyl collector and never cared for pop music except in the 80s when I thought Madonna, The Fixx, Boy George, Robert Palmer, David Lee Roth and Phil Collins were real cool, never had much pop music in my collection.

Lately purchased the latest Gnarls Barkley, Nelly Furtado's Maneater on 12 inch, Fergie's the Dutchess vinyl EP and Gwen Stefani are on my want list now. What's wrong with me? Let me see what I had in my want list 12 months ago? Fred Everything, Wonderland Avenue, Copyright, Fudge... I'm not supposed to like pop stars even less buy their records?

How come I have Robbie Williams' latest in my 12 inch collection? Why would I care about Fergie going solo? They must be doing something right! Of course, they are bringing back the fun in dance pop. Thank you Robbie, Fergie, Justin, Gwen, Gnarls... You made 2006 the most exciting year in dance pop in the new millennium.

This brings me back in the 80s while still a teen living at my parents house, shopping for music involved a trip to the record store for the pop stuff and another one to the dj shop for underground imports. History repeats itself.

Now Fergie listen to me, now that you're solo, get rid of the stupid bum rappers, you don't need 'em, I hate it when they start their sh*t after you, they don't respect you anyway. J-Lo ain't down with Jah-Rule any more, Christina Aguilera don't strip no more, The "Pussy-Dolls" will follow in a few years.

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Don't believe the charts

One man I know in the music industry confirmed me something I long suspected. Charts are and can be manipulated by the record labels.

It goes like this, a new record comes out, the record label (or the artists crew) goes out and buy thousands of copies then sell them.

I often wondered how come a brand new cd (and a good one) would land on Amazon's Marketplace as used in such short amount of time like 3 days after it was released.

So next time you see a headline that says such and such artists has sold 50 000 copies in the first week, take some and leave some.

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