the biggest problem of the music industry is that it is horribly inflexible

the announcement from madonna the other day to cancel the services from her long time record label and instead join live nation must have been quite a shocker for the music industry. this just a couple of days after RIAA won a suite against one of its customers - isn’t it strange how quickly a sunny day can turn all muggy and rainy?

business week outlines the new deal madonna signed with live nation (mostly a concert promoter): Madonna, Live Nation link up on deal

it has been know for quite a while that musicians (at least the big ones) make their money from concerts and not from records sold. so the move from madonna is quite understandable — why should she finance a company that doesn’t really do anything for her but promote her cd (which is not really necessary if you are madonna). her main bread giver are concerts and live nation is in a much better position to increase her revenues than warner is. live nation will be able to make her next tour a talked about event, get her into the biggest arenas … .

what i find amazing is that none of this is news. the only ones who seem to be surprised are the music industry. which could have easily filled the space of live nation years ago. when the stones, metallica, or guns and roses were able to make hundreds of millions on their concert tours record labels stood idly by and handed the concert promotion space to companies like live nation on a silver platter. now the record industry finds itself between a rock and a hard-place — they can’t offer their musicians concert promotion expertise nor can’t they offer them any music promotion expertise anymore, with sites like amie street, emusic, and itunes filling this spot.


the really sad part is that all the music industry can think of is to blame their customers and ask for stronger digital rights. if they wouldn’t treat me (as a music consumer) like shit, i would feel kind of sorry for them.

businessweek.com seems to have completed its facelift and is first traditional media company in 2.0 land

businessweek has always been one of my favorite business magazines due to its intelligent coverage of both technology and design. 
  
a couple of months ago they started to with a refresh of their front page, but some of the story pages were still using their old  design. today now the whole site seems to have transitioned and the print edition has also adopted a similar design. a design that has very clear lines and extremely clear text layouts.
reading a story online at businessweek.com is much easier than the small print the economist offers on its site (or the wsj or ft). if there is something like web 2.0 media design i would say that the new businessweek.com is it. it is comparable to some of the better blog designs i think (powazek and techcrunch). i hope that this will push the other media companies to make their content easier to read online.