Showbiz Sandbox 430 – Taylor Swift Helps Fellow Artists With Her New Record Deal

When her current recording contract expired at Big Machine, Taylor Swift went looking for a new label. After a heated bidding war, Swift wound up at Universal Music landing a deal that allows her to retain control of her masters. Swift also demanded that if the label ever sold its share in Spotify that she get a cut. More importantly, she insisted on this for every single act in Universal’s roster.

This is especially notable because Swift is not a big player in music streaming, because she holds back her albums with a window to urge fans to purchase them instead. Unfortunately, the sales of physical albums, like vinyl LPs and CDs, is collapsing, causing many artists to get out of the habit of actually creating them. Instead, some big acts release a constant stream of singles, videos and live cuts since that’s how their fans listen to music these days.

Meanwhile the North American box office continues to chug along at 10% over last year’s tally, with a record breaking $12 billion in sight. That growth rate is keeping pace with the Chinese box office, which is up 11% this year, earning $8.1 billion thus far. Maybe the date for when China’s theatrical box office will surpass that of North America’s needs to be pushed back a year or two.

Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including why pop stars may be headed to Broadway, how YouTube has begun showing blockbuster movies (with ads) and the winners of this year’s International Emmy Awards.

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Showbiz Sandbox 182: Last Year’s Movies Provide A Wealth of Riches

For the past four years blogger Aaron Rich has been reviewing the movies he sees on his blog All The Movies I Watch, with a strong emphasis on independent and international titles. Last year he saw more than 500 films and says it was a good year for movies, as long as you ignored what Hollywood had to offer. Rich joins us to discuss some of his best (and worst) movies of 2012, many of which may be unfamiliar to you.

As we roll towards another Oscars ceremony, it looks as if Ben Affleck’s “Argo” is poised to take home the year’s biggest prize; Best Picture. This past weekend it topped the Writers Guild Awards, along with “Zero Dark Thirty”. We have a few last minute predictions for who might be picking up this year’s Academy Awards.

At some point all of this year’s movies will wind up on video services such as Netflix. Yet we’ll never know how popular they are on Netflix because the company won’t divulge viewership numbers. This is making it very difficult to determine whether its own original programming, such as “House of Cards”, is a success.

Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including how movie ticket prices went up in 2012, how Universal Music Publishing Group hopes to capitalize cover versions of its songs on YouTube, and why rock legend Chubby Checker is suing a software developer for stealing his name.

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Showbiz Sandbox 177: The Bloomin’ Onion Effect: Why Audiences Are Happy Movies Have Gotten Longer

In an age where audiences have grown used to the brevity of YouTube clips and 140 character updates, Hollywood is instead serving up super sized movies. Six of the top ten movies from 2012 were over two hours, including comic book movies like “The Avengers”. Even comedies such as “This Is 40” crossed the 120 minute mark and don’t even get us started on “The Hobbit”.

Rebecca Keegan of the Los Angeles Times explains the increase in movie running times has a lot to do with the creative control marquee directors have over their films as well as digital tools that allow them to shoot more footage. Surprisingly, Keegan found that most moviegoers appreciate longer running times since it makes them feel they are getting a more value for the price of admission.

Also from the Los Angeles Times is Glenn Whipp, who joins us to discuss some of the surprise Academy Award nominations announced last week and whether the Golden Globes might affect who wins Oscars this year.

Of course, we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including a resolution in Superman’s court case, the return of daytime soap operas and whether the film adaption of “Fifty Shades of Grey” will be rated NC-17.

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Showbiz Sandbox 176: Hollywood Unchained – 2012 Sets Another Box Office Record

Once again Hollywood raked in record earnings at the North American box office in 2012, though this time it wasn’t because of increased ticket prices.  In fact, both revenue and attendance were up nearly 6% during the year as 1.36 billion tickets were sold to set a new annual box office record of $10.8 billion.

Internationally box office receipts were off slightly.  After a string of years with record grosses, Hollywood movies raked in $13.5 billion outside North America.  The new year is looking up as well since nine films pegged as Oscar contenders are all still raking in big grosses.

The music business didn’t have such good news.  Album sales during 2012 declined 4.4% in the United States where Adele spent a second year at the top of the heap.  What’s noteworthy is that digital downloads outpaced physical album sales for the first time according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Of course, we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including the sale of Al Gore’s cable network, the rising ratings for Big Bang Theory and why YouTube is deleting views for music videos.

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Showbiz Sandbox 165: Neil Young Sings The Praises Of His New Digital Music Format

Singer-songwriter Neil Young has never been a fan of digital music.  The rock legend despises the inferior audio quality of MP3s and CDs so much that he released an anthology of his of his music on Blu-Ray; the only medium that could hold digital files large enough to offer the quality Young demanded.  Taking his quest for high fidelity one step further, next year Young will launch Pono, a portable music player and audio platform that uses technology to provide studio quality sound.

Time will tell whether high quality digital audio and Young’s notoriety will be enough to attract consumers to Pono, though the Beatles aren’t waiting around to find out.  EMI is releasing the bands entire catalog of albums on vinyl LPs.  Remember those?  Now all we need is a phonograph to play them on.

Meanwhile the movie awards season has begun to heat up leaving pundits speculating whether Disney might have not one, but three, entries in this year’s Best Animated Feature category at the Oscars; “Brave”, “Frankenweenie” and “Wreck It Ralph”.  How ironic that Seth MacFarlane, creator of the hit animated television series “The Family Guy”, has been tapped to host this year’s Academy Awards ceremony.

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