The official blog of Stathis Kassios for Business, Media, Economics & Arts

Taking a closer look in the features of the innovative site ''Youtube'', we will soon notice that some videos have millions of views & some have very few. In accordance to this, some artists in ''Youtube'' have millions of views & some artists have just a couple of thousand. I believe that this kind of statistics should ring an alarming bell in the mind of music business managers, in order for them to consider & explore the marketing possibilities when choosing a strong brand - band - and placing it in similar sites that promise infinite exposure. This could be easily done by exclusively adding a new video track of the upcoming release of a well known artist that will attract millions of viewers. Another suggestion would be to place a video & enhance ads and links directing to sites where people can purchase the album. Innovative sites like Youtube create strong network externalities , something which means that YouTube is a non - stop

Current lovers & addicts of hip hop, rap, and R & B music, this is a short post about one of the most innovative record labels. Back in the 80's, it gave birth to the aforementioned genres (booming trends?), early adopters of what the music future would look like. So what's the buzz then? It's about Def Jam recordings & its 25th anniversary since the creation of the company, and also the launching of Def Jam 25, a new promising division under the Island Def Jam Music Group. Everybody has listened -more or less- to LL Cool J, The Beastie Boys, Rihanna, Kanye West, Jay - Z, Public Enemy, 3rd Bass, Method Man, DMX, Ludacris, Redman, Rick Ross, and many other names that have shaped the coolest & grooviest soundscapes since the early 80's, right up to the present days: an excess supply of artists & bad quality substitutes are popping up. It is important to mention about the Current CEO & Chairman of Island Def Jam Music Group, Antonio "L.A

Swedish autumn is moving fast & I am in a rather happy position to announce my approved internship for the Swedish major music organization BILDA. I will be joining the company's cultural & music sector "bildamusic.nu" which also has offices here in Jonkoping, where I have been studying. During my entire internship I will be dealing with festival management & planning, budget documentation, consultancy, marketing, ticket - pricing apllications, analysis of cost structures, and lots of other things complying that most of the professional promoters are involved with around the world of music business. Starting with a big event ( http://www.jonkoping.se/english.4.e570c6911fb81aceb880005662.h tml ) taking place in Folkets Park in Huskvarna, where about 90 bands will perform in two days time, this is a festival with a cheap entrance ticket. Bands performing have been asked to pay a small fee in order to participate. The internship adventure will continue wi

The new global discussion for the ownership of creative/intellectual works. The era of going from "Copyright" to "Creative Commons" & from "All rights reserved" to "Some rights reserved". The link below introduces you to the creative commons organization/idea, for licencing your intellectual work of art directly to the public or to third parties, for translation or adaptation purposes (remixing a song of your favourite artist for example). I believe that disruptive global initiatives like Creative Commons, which promise to skip current levels of protectionism & institutional dogmatism in favor of sharing creativity, should be embraced. CC.org: http://creativecommons.org

Just a few days before I fly back to cold Scandinavia for my second year in the Arts & Entertainment Master program, I deliberately decided to purchase Pink Floyd's album "A Momentary Lapse of Reason", released through EMI records back in 1987 (first Pink Floyd album after Roger Water's departure). The album's evocative cover shows an infinite number of beds spread along a sandy beach being lost in a curved line where the human eye meets the horizon, a pretty unrealistic scene which always caught my attention in various records stores I had visited. The glorious days of EMI, the colossal record company that shared the success of Pink Floyd, Sex Pistols (who were later fired), The Beatles, seem as an ideal past, as nowadays, EMI is facing enormous economic problems, holding not more than 9,6% of the global music business market share, counting a failed acquisition that took place in 2007, when the company was acquired by Terra Firma Capital Partners for 4

I believe that many Myspace users & artists have sometimes wondered about the fact that they receive so much attention for free. In other words, the Myspace miracle allows this obvious self - promotion without charging the user, providing free services, etc. That was the delicate story so far until I read that Rupert Murdoch, the boss of News Corporation, expects that in the near future all of his sites including Myspace, will start charging users by setting up subscriptions for example. The social networking site Myspace has showed declining revenues, causing a general alarm to the rest of Murdoch's media branches. Other authors have suggested that according to web history, similar - free of charge - sites didn't last long and were unfortunately closed down. So this leaves myspace with two choices. It will either start charging its users with a minimum monthly fee to keep it running or it will become a fading yet glowing webground.

I always felt that there is something magical & supernatural in the presence of the artistic and cultural phenomenon, known as Michael Jackson. Tremendously bewitched in a level that I currently desire to fool myself & believe that the "King of Pop" will resurrect himself from his pitiful death or hope that he staged it for whatever reason. What is (sadly) interesting to see, is the fact that his digital album sales skyrocketed after the event of his passing, hitting amazon.com in the first 15 positions with his album "Thriller", followed by his albums "Off the Wall" (1979) and "Bad" (1987). Similar story on "itunes", where six of his albums peaked the top 10 positions. It seems like the death of a "star", boosts the demand for its past works, the least that his loyal & new fans all over the globe proved willing to do as an indication of honor upon his persona. May his soul rest in peace...

The matrix created by the Boston Consulting Group, visualizes the product/ service cycle of a company in a vertical & horizontal axis divided in four quadrants. I came up with the morning impulse about relating this to the current state of the major music corporations around the world. It is already known that these firms have been running into harsh financial problems due to the fact that technological advancements & the digital age are turning everything " upside down ", forcing them to restructure their whole industrial organization. The latter established them profitable, viable & sustainable over the past years. K(n)ow what? Now I am wondering if these firms experience hard times because they are running short in (short term) cash flows or because of (long term) failed capitalized assets (artists) or assets that don't work anymore due to massive changes in the industry. This signifies an overly poor negative cash flow portfolio, threatening the

Let the title of this post trick you not, since it does not refer to a personal past experience but rather to " Losing my virgin ity ", the book by the British multimillionaire entrepreneur Richard Bransson . Owner of Virgin, a brand that runs many different sub-businesses. like a tree with different branches, all under the same name, at the age of 16 he started his first business selling advertise space for a student magazine. He then moved on to start selling records via post office until the time he decided to open his first record store beneath a shoe store. The agreement was to run his record store rent free, only if he could attract more shoe customers something that turned out to be a success. The rest is history of course... Virgin established itself as a well known brand for record stores ( Virgin Megastores ), air company ( Virgin Atlantic ), trains, cell phones, financial services and maybe space services in the future... The company's overall philosophy

Just a quick Sunday note to lay down some thoughts I had about the labor market for artists, after watching a late night show on the Swedish MTV channel, about a bunch of hip - hoppers (no problem with that, actually I am anxiously waiting for the latest Cypress Hill album to be unleashed), who were after a prize of 100.000$! Is there a labor market for artists or not? According to a quote from Robert Storr, curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art ''artists are not a labor force...an artist's success is unquantifiable''. On the contrary, some economists like Gregory Wassal and Neil Alper have argued that ''Artists are utility maximizers too who seek the highest combination of monetary and non-monetary reward for their efforts''. The latter in plain words, supports the idea that even the existing market for artists, obeys to the demand & supply laws that determine the wages (price) for artists & the quantity -the number- of art

When somebody asks me to pick my favourite album from their discography through the 80's and 90's (still kicking in the 00's), I would rather answer a simple mathematical question instead. Yes, I admit that I am a die hard fan, even though my "Holidays in Eden" vinyl scratches sensitive strings inside me whenever the "needle" runs in circles. So what happened to this band after its commercial success in USA & their hit single "Kayleigh"? Sales went down indeed, even though they retained their popularity in South America and Europe too, but they didn't top their previous releases. Their contract with EMI (which used to handle all their marketing & promotional campaigns up to that point) expired. Something had to be done to keep the train moving. The new singer, Steve Hogarth, replaced the Scotish theatrical poet-singer Fish, splitting fans in two. Sales continued declining down to the point where their album titled marillion.com

Bill Hicks was a political comedian, philosopher, musician, entertainer, an undisputed talent! 15 years after his death, his popularity has been growing since then, with numerous comedians globally trying unsuccessfully to immitate him. Relating criticism with black humor, he made his message clear that popular culture is " keeping people apathetic and stupid ". Psychedelics (recreational drug use based on his liberal beliefs) affected his later performances, driving storming amounts of energy out of his mouth & his body, leading him at ecstatic revelations about the modern face of the American society & Western civilization in general. The band TOOL , has also been inspired by his philosophical theories. They dedicated their album "AEnima" (released in 1996) to him. The question that comes to my mind is if an entertainer should make people laugh only? Certainly not in the case of Bill Hicks, this tragic hero. Trying to entertain people & offer

This is a short story about one of my favorite ''underground'' films ever, directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky , originally coming from Chile. This post is about his cult film " El Topo ", which was released back in the 1970's, and how it made it's way up to massive worldwide distribution. Strangely enough, it was the musician John Lennon who found out about this movie. He purchased the rights to promote & distribute it, after watching the film himself & becoming very fond of it. The title El Topo (the mule) is a very descriptive metaphor for the underground cinematography of that period in America. The mule is an animal trying to reach the surface by digging holes in the ground, signifying how these cult films managed to become more popular over time, abandoning the underground states of a limited circle of viewers. The film became a superhit in midnight showings. It has also been said that "El Topo" inspired another famous musici

Through my experience and the practical knowledge that I have gained over the years, I can hardly recall of a single artist or band, even close affiliated musicians, that has received roaylties directly from their company, in a predetermined, scheduled time. I will not refer to intellectual copyright collectors, like the American ASCAP & BMI or GEMA in Germany & JASRAC in Japan. I will try to focus on royalties derived from both physical & digital sales of recordings.  To make it short, the notorious royalty is usually calculated as a fixed percentage of an album's wholesale price, when a quantity of albums is ordered by various distributors/diffusion channels that are responsible to forward the album in the markets. I should mention that music revenues have been decreasing because of increasing piracy phenomena, but this is another story to be discussed in a future post. I personally assume that not all labels deliberately strive to screw their artists, since the