SharkJumping

I spend Summer weekends up in the Lake Tahoe region and we often spend Sunday nights in Tahoe City at the Commons Beach for their weekly free concert series - it's a relaxing and beautiful place where we can picnic, play ball with the boys, and listen to some music.  It normally features a pleasant but somewhat forgettable band, but I was struck last week by the lyrics and overall storytelling strength of artist Brett Dennen (his MySpace page ), as well as a great musical beat  - it just felt good to sit there and hum along. 

As the Rhapsody editorial team will tell anyone who will listen, I have incredibly pedestrian music taste, but I tend to like storytellers with guitars, and Brett Dennen certainly fit the bill.  For the first time in 5 years, I actually spent $15 for a CD (his new one So Much More which hits retail next month), and immediately went home to listen to his earlier self-titled CD on Rhapsody (here).  I continued to listen to it all week, and I can truly recommend that everyone give it a try.  His new release is on Dualtone, one of my favorite Nashville labels, and I think he'll do very well with the greater exposure they can give him, as well his current tour opening for John Mayer.

Garth Brooks and Walmart announced this week that his music will be available exclusively at and its various affiliates such as Sams Club, as soon as existing physical inventory at other retailers becomes exhausted.

Why is this interesting?  Garth Brooks is the top selling music artist in American history.  It's the first time that a top 5 artist has decided to sell his music exclusively through one outlet, no matter how big it is.  This is potentially going to be a bad precedent for Walmart's competitors, but one has to remember that Best Buy started this exclusivity trend, and that Walmart probably sells more than 50% of Garth's content since it has a larger market share in rural communities, so why not do it in order to differentiate their stores?  It's similar to the recently announced NFL/Sprint deal where a sub set of NFL content is available only to Sprint subscribers - it may not work for everyone, but the NFL is assuming that their brand is high enough to drive subs to Sprint if the NFL content is good enough - we'll see how the Walmart/Garth numbers work in the next year.

However, what is amazing as far as we can see is that there are still no digital rights available for Garth Brooks content on Walmart.com's music service.  So Garth gets his music rights fully from EMI, and decides to continue to sit on the digital rights?  That is where the major value will be within 5 years, and you would assume there would be a plan for that as well, but for now it looks like the Garth digital hold out will continue.

To the surprise of approximately one person who has been living in a cave since World War 2, one of the major music labels (Sony/BMG) today announced the $10 million settlement of a case with NY Attorney General Spitzer regarding its radio promotion practices.   The payments by some labels to radio stations to promote certain music was outlawed in the 1950's in the infamous "payola" scandals, but it's been a thinly kept industry secret for years that variants of this practice continued through the use of independent promoters.  Expect more settlements from additional labels, and it's unlikely that the large radio networks (which actually accepted the cash & gifts) are going to escape unscathed.  Score yet another one for Spitzer...It's sometimes hard to understand what law enforcement has actually been doing for years in these segments where every one knew about these types of practices, whether it's insurance or radio promotion.

Update:  Spitzers office has posted a PDF with a variety of the incriminating documents    Amazing how brazen and routine this activity was, given that it's entirely illegal.