Madonna has apparently signed a deal with secondary market ticket sellers StubHub and Viagogo. Why is this news? Well, because it’s the first time in the history of the universe that a major artist has had a formal agreement in place with the secondary ticket market.
John Wilson has an interesting write-up on his blog about the meaning of the deal.
Having sold her touring rights to LiveNation last year, this represents a major endorsement of secondary markets by one of the world’s largest promoters and blows a hole through the “moral” arguments that were advanced by some parts of the live music industry, who condemned such market as scalping or touting. Similarly, it leaves the recently formed industry association that was advocating a revenue tax on secondary markets completely wrong footed.
Madonna has just announced her summer tour, the dubiously titled “Sticky & Sweet” tour. The tour will begin in Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium on 23 August 2008 and will travel across the UK and Europe through to the end of September.
The will be further dates in North America in October and November, finishing up in South America and Mexico toward the end of the year.
BBC Radio 1 announced today (Monday 21 April) that the station will kick off the 2008 festival season with the biggest female artist on the planet headlining Radio 1’s Big Weekend – Madonna.
The event takes place at Mote Park in Maidstone, Kent, on Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 May. Chris Moyles announced the big news and the full main stage line-up on his show this morning. The line-ups for the rest of the stages will be announced throughout the day on Radio 1. Read more & comment »
It bugs the hell out of me when the biggest artists in the world (or their representatives) refuse to embrace the Internet. Go on, try to watch a video of Madonna’s collaboration with Justin Timberlake on the web – you’ll find it hard to locate one.
As fast as helpful music fans put the video on YouTube, Warner and the YouTube admins are pulling them down. Sure, there’s an official version available, but guess what? It’s not available in my country.
Apparently the public still cares about Madonna releasing a new album. Strange. After the lycra gusset-stretching of the last album and its videos, you’d think the world would want to wait a couple of years longer.
But there you go.
So, [sound of fanfare] the new Madonna album will be called Hard Candy. In fairness, the gap-toothed one has collaborated with some big names one this one, including Pharrell Williams, Kanye West, Timbaland and Justin Timberlake. All of whom are awesome hitmakers.
We haven’t spoken much about it on Unreality Music before, but the revolution in the music industry is something we follow quite closely.
The last few months have been pretty interesting. I’m thinking back to Prince’s freebie distribution of his Planet Earth in a Sunday paper. Lately, we’ve had Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails dissing and then divorcing his record label. Radiohead have gone and released their album over the Internet, allowing fans to pay whatever they think the album’s worth.
There’s an interesting article over on the CNN website about all this, citing other major artists making innovative decisions about their careers:
