If Jay-Z really is getting married to Beyonce soon, there'd better be an open bar at the reception – it's not like he can't afford it.
Following similar deals with Madonna and The Rollings Stones, Live Nation has signed up Jay-Z. And if you were wondering what price you'd get a past-his-best, commercially-stagnating rapper for these days, the answer is clear $150 million.
$150 million might sound like a lot for Live Nation to pay for Jay-Z, but don't forget that these Live Nation contracts don't just involve recordings – it'll have a slice of everything from Jay-Z's concert tickets to merchandise sales to 'entrepreneurial concepts' as well. Plus on Christmas Eve and the Queen's birthday one lucky Live Nation executive gets to briefly look at Beyonce's knickers. Money well spent, we're sure.
With the music industry falling to pieces, crumbling under a tidal wave of illegal downloads and videogames and people not wanting to pay £20 for a CD just because it's got a folded-up poster inside it, it seems like everyone's flailing around looking for new business models. Acts are hawking their music at coffee shops or doing confusing internet price-reduction systems or, worse, being Nine Inch Nails – and nobody really has a clue about the future.
Nobody, that is, except for Live Nation. Live Nation knows that the only way to make any money from the music business any more is to forget about CDs and just charge everyone £25 million for a concert ticket instead. It's a system that Live Nation seems confident with, because it's already signed Madonna up for a decade and inflicted U2 on us for another 12 years – and now it's doing the same with Jay-Z.
Jay-Z has signed over more or less everything he'll ever do in the future to Live Nation in return for $150 million or, as he prefers to call it, one pair of quite nice shoes. Time reports:
In a $150 million deal certain to rock what remains of the record industry, Jay-Z has announced plans to depart Def Jam records and give the totality of his creative output — from songs to touring revenue to un-hatched entrepreneurial ideas — to concert promotion behemoth Live Nation… Live Nation is expected to furnish Jay-Z, born Shawn Carter, with $5 million in seed money annually for his own label, publishing arm and management company, with significantly more funds available for future acquisitions and expansion. He will also receive a $25 million upfront payment and $10 million per album for a minimum of three albums over the next decade.
Looking at those figures, it's no surprise that Jay-Z accepted Live Nation's offer. But as amazing as this deal looks, there are also some downsides. For instance, in the event of Jay-Z fathering a child, his contract states that the baby must be called I Love Live Nation and be fitted with a microchip that plays up-to-the-minute audio commercials for Live Nation concerts at three billion decibels every second that it's awake. Plus, you know, it means Jay-Z shares a label with U2. Yeurgh.
Of course, the importance of the deal is far greater than Madonna's or U2's because, up until recently, Jay-Z was in charge of a traditional record label. For him to jump ship to Live Nation so readily must mean that he fully believes in the Live Nation business model.
And, who knows, once word gets out that Live Nation is the way forward, maybe it'll even be able to sign an act that isn't at least a decade past its best work.
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IronEddie says
I hope he gets run over by an 18-wheeler.