Filed under: Deals, Products and services, Management, Marketing and advertising

According to a Billboard report Tuesday morning, Live Nation Inc. (NYSE: LYV) “has entered into a long-term global partnership” with Canadian rock band Nickelback, following other high profile acts U2, Madonna, and Jay-Z. The reported $50-$70 million deal is set to commence after the band finishes its current deal with Road Runner Records, a record label in the Warner Music Group Corp. (NYSE: WMG), and will include three tours and albums with the possibility of a fourth left open. Virtually each aspect of the band’s career will be managed and distributed via Live Nation, and the band will start touring in Live Nation venues as soon as next year.

Reuters further reports that the band has two albums and a greatest hits album left with Road Runner Records, with the band’s last album selling 10 million copies. The news source speculates that the deal could be costly if the band’s new albums in the future fail to deliver the success that the band has enjoyed to date. The deal also throws into question the value of Road Runner Records after Warner Music Group purchased the label in December 2006 for $73.5 million. Despite other high profile artists, Nickelback is the label’s most successful act.

Live Nation has raised the stakes for music companies since beginning to sign major artists last year. By offering services for nearly each aspect of those acts’ careers, Live Nation means managing careers are simplified in theory. In addition, the growth of the digital music market has made it easier for the company and the acts it signs to distance the services from the tendencies associated with music companies and traditional recordings deals. Unfortunately, since the deals have yet to commence for any artist, the success of deals such as this have yet to be seen.

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Filed under: General Electric (GE), Marketing and advertising

NBC Studios, a division of General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE), will be using the upcoming Beijing Olympics as a massive testbed to determine how consumers’ appetites for consuming such coverage are changing. In other words, where are all the viewers? Will they be on the web watching on the web? How about live coverage? How about viewing on your mobile phone? How about tape-delay coverage due to the time difference between the U.S. and China? Will DVRs play a massive part in how viewers will see the Summer Olympics this year?

NBC is considering the Beijing Olympics to be a “billion-dollar research lab” that’ll give it insight into how people are going to consumer Olympic coverage. In a sense, this will prove to the advertising community the value of different forms of advertising across different types of media. It’s good to see a major studio get on board with this. As many of us know, on the internet advertising is taking revenue away from radio advertising (and to a degree, TV advertising). Knowing exactly how consumers are consuming media is, you know, kind of important these days. Right?

NBC will provide about 3,600 hours of Olympic coverage through its various television networks — and 2,200 hours of streaming video via NBCOlympics.com as well, in addition to video streaming for mobile phones with high-speed data ability. NBC will also be asking 500 consumers everyday throughout the entire 17-day Olympics coverage period detailed questions about how they’re consuming Olympics content. By the end of August, NBC’s largest media consumption experiment should show some neat results. I look forward to hearing what it came up with.

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Filed under: Rumors, Management, Industry, Consumer experience, Marketing and advertising

British based EMI Group reported to the Associated Press on Monday that the company has recruited Rome-native Elio Leoni-Sceti, a former vice president of household products company Reckitt Benckiser, to lead up its recorded music division. Guy Hands, the CEO of Terra Firma (the private equity firm that bought EMI last September) also reported that he’ll back away from leadership “to become non-executive chairman of EMI.” According to the AP, Leoni-Sceti was formerly a “brand manager at Procter & Gamble before moving to Reckitt Benckiser in 1992″ and eventually moving up to lead the European division of the company by 2005.

Last month, leaders for EMI’s North American branches, including Capitol Records president Lee Trink, left the company due to Terra Firma’s preference for no presidents over the label branches in EMI. In the meantime, representatives and leaders for the music company’s Artists and Repertoire divisions were given greater leverage and more power over the running of the labels, although the plan left artists without the traditional representation that label presidents had provided. This news came on the edge of Coldplay releasing Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, with many rumors pointing to that album as a savior of sorts for EMI in 2008.

Since then, Coldplay’s album has scored huge around the globe but EMI has fallen to only holding 9% of the music market in the first half of 2008. Guy Hands told the AP that Leoni-Sceti “joins [EMI] at the right time to shape, drive and lead EMI to become the world’s most artist-focused and consumer-friendly music company.” The new executive might fulfill Hands hopes with his background in brand managing and household products, marketing music in new ways and attracting a larger consumer base.

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Filed under: Products and services, Launches, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, Marketing and advertising, Penney (J.C.) (JCP)

Like most retailers, J.C. Penney (NYSE: JCP) is struggling. Its stock is more than 50% off its 52-week high and the company recently announced it intends to slow its expansion plans.

On Monday, the company announced the launch of Dorm Life, a “comprehensive modern lifestyle brand for today’s design-savvy young adults.” As the incredibly uncreative name would advocate, the collection is aimed at college students looking to furnish dorm rooms. Sample prices include “$3.99 for a bath towel, $24.99 for window panels and $29.99 for a table lamp to $39.99 for a comforter, $59.99 for an ottoman and $149.99 for over-the-bed storage.”

J.C. Penney is not going to succeed or fail based on a line of student-oriented furniture — it’s far too huge of a company — but it’s hard to see how this brand will work. The prices are substantially higher than similar offerings from Target (NYSE: TGT), and I think that Target probably has stronger brand equity among college students than J.C. Penney. The name seems wrong too — the average J.C. Penney shopper is neither young nor hip (from what I’ve seen in the stores), but that’s who it needs to attract with this line, and this whole idea seems to lack spunk — even the website is putting me to sleep.

If this is how J.C. Penney plans to catch on with younger shoppers, I’m not impressed.

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Filed under: Utilities, Productivity, Web services, web 2.0

Some of us aren’t good with numbers. The whole addition, subtraction, division, it’s just not our forte.

Sure Windows and Macs have built in calculators but we’re web people so we need something on the web to make us not feel like we’re absolutely mathstupid.

Ecalc to the rescue. It’s not just any calculator though.

It’s pretty and webified.

They also have a scientific calculator for those who are past just trying to add up this months shopping list with the rent, which is as far as some of us go.

All kidding aside, scientific calculators are expensive…so it’s pretty cool to have this tool available on the internet.

They also have a rundown of all types of calculators if you’re really into that.

So go be a mathematical genius…we’re counting on you.

Get it? Oy.

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Filed under: Windows, E-mail, Productivity, Freeware

If you ever used the “E-mail this file” or “Send To Mail Recipient” link in Windows you know what a great convenience this is. Select the file and an email is automatically created with the attachment. All that’s left to do is fill out the To field and send the file, the only downside is that you must use a desktop mail client like Outlook Express. This leaves people who only use web based email services out in the cold… unless you’re a Gmail user.

Developed by Chris Wood, gAttach! changes the functions of these built in links so that instead of Outlook Express gAttach! will launch Internet Explorer, create a new email and attach the file and have it ready and waiting for you. In addition gAttach! also works from within applications like Microsoft Office, Firefox and Adobe Reader to further streamline your emailing needs by selecting the File > Sent To option on your tool bar.

So if you’re a Gmail user wanting more integration with your desktop gAttach! just might make your life easier.

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Filed under: Windows, E-mail, Productivity, Freeware

If you ever used the “E-mail this file” or “Send To Mail Recipient” link in Windows you know what a great convenience this is. Choose the file and an email is automatically created with the attachment. All that’s left to do is fill out the To field and send the file, the only downside is that you must use a desktop mail client like Outlook Express. This leaves people who only use web based email services out in the cold… unless you’re a Gmail user.

Developed by Chris Wood, gAttach! changes the functions of these built in links so that instead of Outlook Express gAttach! will launch Internet Explorer, create a new email and attach the file and have it ready and waiting for you. In addition gAttach! also works from within applications like Microsoft Office, Firefox and Adobe Reader to further streamline your emailing needs by selecting the File > Sent To option on your tool bar.

So if you’re a Gmail user wanting more integration with your desktop gAttach! just might make your life easier.

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Filed under: Macintosh, Productivity

Having a personal assistant is great. If you need a cup of tea, your dry cleaning done or someone to walk the dog simply send your personal assistant out to do those things. If you lack the finances to retain the services of a personal assistant you can get one for free from macscheduler.

Unfortunately, Scheduler for Mac won’t get get you a cup of tea or any of the other stuff that a real live personal assistant would do because after all Scheduler for Mac is a program on a personal. But what it can do is automate.

Unlike other basic schedulers that just present you with a dialog box letting you know that you should begin on those sales charts now, Scheduler for Mac will actually open up your spreadsheet application as well as the document ready for your review. Scheduler for Mac has incorporated a very simple to use automation process along side the standard scheduling options. When setting up a new task, select the file or application you want open and when the time comes Scheduler for Mac will handle the rest.

Aside from the usual office documents you can also schedule websites to open (think eBay), assign custom audio files to act as audio alerts and customize the visual aspect of the alerts as well.

So while Scheduler for Mac will never take the place of a real live personal assistant, at least your reports will be completed on time.

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Filed under: Products and services, Consumer experience, Marketing and advertising, Sony Corp ADR (SNE)

Radiohead’s 2007 album In Rainbows has enjoyed critical and commercial success since it was released last October through a one-of-a-kind “pay-what-you-want” scheme directly from the band and its management team. Likewise, many fellow artists have come out in favor of the scheme or against the method used by the English band. Fellow English band Oasis, however, has absolutely dismissed any notion that the band will ever duplicate that method, citing expenses incurred during the recording of new album Dig Out Your Soul over the course of the past year.

A new report by Gigwise reveals the band’s position and reasons for it, with Oasis calling the Radiohead method nothing more than a marketing tool. Noel Gallagher, Oasis’ lead songwriter and guitarist, did call Radiohead “rebels and outsiders” when commending Radiohead’s method as a one-of-a-kind marketing tool.

Oasis signed a new deal with Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a joint venture between Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE) and Germany’s Bertelsmann Music Group, last month that will see the band’s own label, Big Brother Recordings, release the new album while Sony BMG oversees the band’s back catalog and previous releases. The deal is a more traditional arrangement in today’s market and environment that makes the new comments against Radiohead unsurprising.

But statements from Noel Gallager like “I didn’t spend a year in the most high-priced studio in England, with the most high-priced producer in America, and the most expensive graphic designer in London to then give it away…” indicate that the band has a bloated view of their place and presence compared to Radiohead. In Rainbows received critical praise and commercial success, but no Oasis album has encountered similar critical praise in years. The band’s singles and albums have enjoyed great commercial success, which might indicate why Gallagher and company feel the way they do.

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