Sony Music merges its distribution units into The Orchard worldwide
Following the news last week that Sony Music in the UK was merging its two distribution and label services businesses - Red Essential and The Orchard - yesterday the major announced a similar move across much of the rest of the world. Sony Music's regional distribution units will be folded into The Orchard, and will now report into its CEO Brad Navin.

As previously reported, The Orchard became a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Music in 2015, the major having originally acquired another digital distribution firm - IODA - which subsequently merged with its rival.

Despite being wholly owned by Sony Music, The Orchard has generally operated autonomously from its parent company, which has also continued to offer distribution and other services to independent artists and labels in various markets. Many of those latter Sony units originally provided physical distribution to indie labels, but subsequently expanded the services they offered and some started working with artists directly as well.

In the US, where Sony's other services company also used the Red brand, a separate division called Red Music will live on. Red US's distribution business will become part of The Orchard, however Red Music will still exist separately and offer marketing, promotion and other services to artist and label clients.

The big restructure of Sony's distribution businesses worldwide will - says The Orchard - give it "the capabilities to provide labels and artists from anywhere in the world the full range of label and artist marketing, sales and distribution services, across all formats, platforms and territories".

Commenting on the move, Navin said: "Our newly merged company is unique in structure, scale and reach. Coming together as one company that is both truly global and locally-focused will allow us to take the service we provide to our artist and label partners to the next level. The Orchard is the only global comprehensive digital and physical distribution platform with its own delivery, sales, distribution and reporting systems built specifically for independent clients. With a single deal clients have the ability to deliver their music to every leading global and local digital and physical retailer and reach music fans around the world".

The all-new marketing-focused Red Music in the US will be led by Bob Morelli, who says of that: "For our label and artist partners in the US, we are significantly multiplying the levels of quality service we provide with these exciting new changes. Not only will distribution clients now enjoy unmatched global reach as part of The Orchard under Brad Navin, but also our marketing and label services clients in the US will now receive dedicated attention from the new Red Music to make sure their releases are receiving highly customised solutions for the best possible profile in the marketplace".

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Warner launches Arts Music to bring together classical, jazz and theatrical music
Warner Music has announced the launch of a brand new division to be called Arts Music which will bring together labels focused on classical, jazz, musical theatre, film scores and songs for kids. Which is quite a wide remit.

The new division will be led by Kevin Gore, who returns to the major having previously run its Rhino label and catalogue division. He will report into Eliah Seton, who is President of Warner's label services business ADA. Don't know why.

Says Seton: "By bringing together these diverse genres and labels under unified leadership, Arts Music will provide a dynamic, focused infrastructure devoted to nurturing outstanding artists and projects, encouraging creative cross-pollination, and strengthening our capacity for growth. I am THRILLED to welcome Kevin back to the WMG family. With his deep background at all three major music groups he comes to Arts Music with unmatched hands-on experience and wide-ranging accomplishments".

Gore himself added: "The diverse genres encompassed under Arts Music all share passionate and devoted fanbases that have been largely underserved in the current marketplace. What's particularly exciting is that since these fans have favoured physical and download formats, there is an enormous promise for growth as they migrate to streaming services and curated experiences. The timeless appeal of so much of this music, combined with rapidly evolving opportunities in the live music and partnership marketing arenas, opens up a wealth of possibilities for both established and emerging artists across a vast creative spectrum".

Despite not existing until you started reading this article, Arts Music has already announced a new deal, a joint venture with the theatre-focused US indie label Sh-K-Boom Records. By extraordinary coincidence, the co-founder and President of that label - Kurt Deutsch - recently took on the additional job of SVP Theatrical & Catalogue Development at Warner's music publishing business, Warner/Chappell. Happy days.

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Leaked emails show many red flags raised ahead of disastrous Fyre Festival event
Following claims from some ex-staffers at the failed Fyre Festival that management of the disastrous event had plenty of warning of the calamity ahead, Mic has got its hands on thousands of emails sent between people working on the festival confirming that many red flags were raised in the weeks and days before kick off.

Co-founder Billy McFarland and Fyre Media President Conall Arora are included in many of the conversations and seemingly ignored the warnings.

Email exchanges already published by Mic include concerns being raised about accommodation on the island in the Bahamas where Fyre was due to take place, and a conversation about the costs associated with providing enough toilets for festival-goers. In the latter conversation, Arora asks one team member to reduce the costs of toilet provision, linking to websites which he said offered cheaper solutions.

His colleague then responds: "Please keep in mind those are calculations for events lasting eight to ten hours with portapotties in grassy fields. This is a 'luxury' campsite where people will be using this as [their] only source of relief for five consecutive days. Ultimately it's your call, but please consider the backlash of nasty bathrooms and showers. We have to move quick on this or we are in a shitty place, lol. Sorry".

Arora then responds by asking his colleague to continue to find cheaper solutions, also noting that, surely fewer toilets would just mean longer queues.

Another set of emails, sent just a week before the first weekend of the luxury festival was due to take place, discusses accommodation issues, at one point apparently stating that up to 593 of the people due to attend the event could not be housed. A consultant working on the festival proposed renting a cruise ship to house 225 people and suggested management hire more locally-based staff to reduce the number of employees that needed to be put up.

He also suggested that some ticketholders for the first weekend of the event be asked to attend the second weekend instead and that the social media influencers who had played such a key role in promoting the festival be warned to expect accommodation much more basic than they had been promised.

Mic is now working its way through the mountain of emails that have been leaked to it, which have apparently been verified as genuine by multiple ex-Fyre employees. No doubt the contents of the emails will be of much interest to the plethora of ticket-buyers and suppliers already suing the Fyre companies, and founders McFarland and Ja Rule.

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Apple has 27 million Music subscribers, unveils HomePod
Apple Music now has 27 million paying subscribers, up from 20 million the last time the tech giant did some subscriber maths in public last December. Actually, in February Apple's Eddy Cue said it was now "well past 20 million", but that is more semantics than maths, so it officially doesn't count. And this is all about counting.

The latest stats brag about Apple Music came during the tech giant's WWDC conference yesterday, where it also unveiled the HomePod, its competitor to Amazon's much-hyped Echo and Google's Home device, with a bit of Sonos competing thrown in for good measure - mainly to justify the higher price point.

Like Amazon Echo and Google Home, you can talk to the HomePod - which has Siri installed - and ask it to do shit for you at home. That includes musical stuff, which is very much at the heart of Apple's ask-it-to-do-shit-at-home device, and which - the tech firm says - will play you any sounds you select in a quality fashion. Siri will also do her best to select tunes for you and answer music-based pub quiz questions.

Apple's HomePod will arrive in the US, UK and Australia in December - the US price point being a reassuringly expensive $349.

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Scott Mills cleared of breaching broadcasting rules over 'Essex girl' jokes
Scott Mills has been cleared of breaching OfCom rules, after a member of the cast of 'The Only Way Is Essex' told several 'Essex girl' jokes during a 24 hour Radio 1 show he hosted for Comic Relief.

Bobby Norris appeared on the show in March, telling listeners he was there to tell them "a couple of sets of Essex girl jokes". Which he duly did. Noting the potential for offence, Mills said: "I'd like to point out, before anyone complains, this is a person from Essex, living in Essex, on a show about Essex".

Norris is not a woman from Essex though, it's probably worth pointing out. Still, Mills added: "I'm enjoying this so much".

Following two complaints to media regulator OfCom, a BBC spokesperson said in a statement: "No offence was intended by the jokes".

Following an investigation, launched in April, an OfCom spokesperson said yesterday: "We investigated a series of jokes made in this programme broadcast as part of Comic Relief. While we acknowledge that some of the jokes had the potential to offend, we found they were unlikely to have exceeded most listeners' expectations".

The broadcast was found not to be in breach of 'generally accepted standards'.

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New content director for music stations at Wireless Group
The Wireless Group - the radio firm that is now part of Rupert Murdoch's News UK - has appointed a new Group Content Director for its music stations. Francis Currie, previously a radio consultant and before that Programme Director at Heart, will oversee programming strategy at Virgin Radio and support Wireless's local music stations in his new job.

He reports into Wireless Group CEO Scott Taunton, who says: "Francis is a powerhouse in the radio industry and I have no doubt that he will be a huge asset to Wireless. He will join my executive team and work to ensure our business continues to produce exceptional content, that our teams and stations work more closely together, with a focus on developing and delivering new and innovative ideas that drive audience growth".

Currie added: "This new role is simply too good an opportunity to turn down. I am looking forward to getting stuck in at Wireless and working with the top class talent across a group of such diverse brands - from Virgin Radio in the UK, to local stations such as Signal 1 in England, The Wave in South Wales, U105 in Northern Ireland, and FM 104, Q102 & 96FM in the Republic of Ireland".

Hey look, he mentioned Signal 1. I was going to use that as an excuse to link to greatest radio jingle ever made - the Signal Radio Song from 1987 - but it's no longer online. I still have a copy. You'll all have to come round my house to listen to it. It's epic.

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CMU@TGE 2017: New music media business models - Vice
Look out for more reports throughout June on key sessions that took place at the CMU Insights conferences at The Great Escape last month. Today, another of our interviews from the Media Conference looking at new business models in music media, this one with Vice's Head Of Music Alex Hoffman.

As part of the CMU Insights Media Conference at The Great Escape this year, we looked at how a number of music media are surviving, and even thriving, in a difficult marketplace. As discussed in this CMU Trends article, making money from music media is challenging because print sales are - in the main - declining, while big audiences online don't necessarily equate to decent revenues, because people expect online content for free and banner ad income is generally pretty modest unless you have tens of millions of readers.

Over the last decade or so, Vice has emerged as a major new media company. Initially a magazine, it has since grown massively online, and more recently moved into TV. The company also stages events and owns a number of venues. Music cuts across all of that, as Hoffman explained.

"It can be a bit confusing", he admitted, running through Vice's music activity. "Maybe the first thing to say is that Vice started [in 1994] in Canada, and it was more or less a punk zine when it started. It wasn't just a music magazine, it was about culture, but it has always had a big music heritage".

"Now, the main thing is Noisey - our music platform", he continued. "Noisey started around six years ago. We also have Thump, which is for dance music, and we also cover music on the Vice site itself, usually in a more cultural way. And we have ID, which has been part of Vice for three or four years following an acquisition".

Today, "video is front and centre" at Vice, Hoffman said. "It doesn't seem such a crazy innovative thing now, but I guess it was", he added of when Vice first moved into video, sometime before he joined the company. "When online video first started to take off, they really poured a lot of money into that. A lot of people thought 'no one's going to sit at a laptop and watch longer pieces, documentaries - that'll never happen'".

"I guess it was just a complete gamble", he went on. "They were just like 'what else is nobody doing? Let's throw loads of money at making documentaries'. At that time, people weren't watching [more long-form] stuff [online]. You might watch a couple of clips on YouTube but you weren't sitting down and watching documentaries on the computer. So it was probably a mixture [of gamble and foresight]. They probably thought that this would be a good business model - but I'm sure they never expected it would be as big as it has been".

A key part of Vice's video strategy - and the firm's wider business model - involves branded content, working with brands to create bespoke content for the Vice audience. For media, brand partnerships of this kind are generally more lucrative that old fashioned advertising and sponsorship. Again, Vice was something of a leader on this, though it's a business model being adopted by numerous other media now.

The brand partnerships side of the business is run out of a marketing agency that sits within in the Vice empire. "We have Vice and then we have Virtue", Hoffman said, introducing the agency side of the business. "They are pretty separate. Most of my focus is on the original editorial content, written and video. But at Virtue they're talking to all the biggest brands in the world and having all sorts of conversations, finding different ways of doing things".

How does it work when a brand decides it wants to collaborate with Vice on a music project? "We ask 'does this idea sound decent'", Hoffman explained. "'Does the talent sound good, or have we got ideas that we could pitch to them?' It varies - sometimes a brand comes with a really fully formed idea of what they want, or others time they're coming to us simply because they want to reach what they see as 'cool young people'. Normally they like the video stuff that we do and therefore think we can help them reach their target audience".

"How it works is different every time", he continued. "I wouldn't be involved day to day, the agency people talk to the brand people and start setting something up, hear what they've got to say and concoct something. Then they'd come down to me and we'd start to work on it".

A common criticism of branded content is that it allows brands to become directly involved in the creation of editorial, rather than simply placing a logo or advertising next to existing content. "We're fortunate in that we're not doing cheesy product placement things or endorsements", Hoffman said of Vice's various brand partnerships. "It's mainly more documentary stuff".

"Brands sometimes come with quite specific objectives", he added. "For example, with Nandos, one of their things was they really wanted to bring South Africa into it, because they didn't think enough people knew about their South African heritage". That theme provided a solid steer for the content the two companies then collaborated on.

"Normally when I get involved, it's because they want to talk talent", he added. "So we'll give them some talent suggestions. Then I might reach out to some people. [But generally] the editorial and the creative teams are pretty separate. A lot of the team I manage, they wouldn't really get involved, and wouldn't really know about it, apart from I might swing by their desk and be like 'what do you guys think of this person as a host?' or 'who should we feature in this kind of documentary?'".

Also, Hoffman insisted, branded content has to meet Vice's quality standards. "It has to be a very high standard for us to put it out across our platforms", he said. "And it needs to look like something that would have our name on it". Though occasionally brands use Vice's talents to create content for their own platforms. "We sometimes also do white label stuff", he said. "People just like the way that we make things".

Another benefit of getting brands involved in content projects is it provides bigger budgets, which means people featured in videos can get paid. "I see it as a positive that, sometimes when these brands deals come through, [it means] we have an opportunity to put some artists that we like into a video on our platforms that we wouldn't have the opportunity to do otherwise. We wanna pay them. Artists should be getting paid - and the music publishers obviously expect more money when a brand's involved - as they should".

As well as its online platforms, Vice also now operates its own TV channels in various countries around the world, including the UK, offering a further outlet for its different types of content. "In the UK now, we have music shows on there that are not things that have been online already, that are specifically made for TV", said Hoffman. "Not really the sort of traditional performance interview type things, it's more documentary-based".

Check out all the reports and resources CMU has published around this year's CMU Insights @ The Great Escape conferences here.

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Au Revoire Simone's Annie Hart announces solo album
Au Revoire Simone's Annie Hart has announced that she will release her debut solo album, 'Impossible Accomplice', on 14 Jul. The first single from the record, 'Hard To Be Still', is out now.

"I have never been able to write a normal love song in all my days with Au Revoir Simone or before, despite having been with the same person since I was 21", she says of the single. "They always had some element of tragedy, betrayal, or melancholy lumped in no matter what I did to fight it. Then when we were on tour in Portland, I stayed at a friend's place who had this awesome Roland drum pad and a beautiful Rickenbacker bass. I hooked those up to my computer to record and suddenly everything started materialising: the bouncing lo-fi drum beat and rudimentary bass line seemed so fun and perfect together".

She continues: "By some strange miracle of being away from my husband and small child, I was finally able to properly say thank you to him for being supportive and doing his share as a parent, which a lot of women don't get. I was also noticing some other men around at the time, who were hitting on me but were blatantly just after the obvious and weren't really seeing me for me. And there was my husband, who knew all my neurotic tendencies and workaholic nature and never stopped loving me more surely or evenly for over ten years. I'm glad I finally have that one nice love song about him".

Listen to 'Hard To Be Still' here.

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Andy Heath, Korn, Bastille, more

Other notable announcements and developments today...

• Beggars Music boss and UK Music chair Andy Heath has been announced as the Chairman of OCL, a new London-based company that says it "specialises in making copyright compatible with technology". And why not, I say. Serge Acker, formerly Global Chief Digital Officer at L'Oréal, has been appointed CEO and PJ Dulay, previously with Universal Music, is SVP Music and Media Relations.

• Korn have moved to Velvet Hammer Management, leaving Jay-Z's Roc Nation, which they joined less than a year ago.

• Bastille have released the video for new single 'Glory', taken from their album 'Wild World'.

• Azealia Banks has released a new track, 'Chi Chi'. You can listen to it via her Cheapy XO website.

• Beth Ditto has released a new single, 'We Could Run'. You could run and listen to it now.

• Gogol Bordello will release a new album, 'Seekers And Finders', on 30 Aug. From it, this is first single 'Saboteur Blues'.

• Baby In Vain have announced their debut album, 'More Nothing'. Here's opening track, 'To Heaven And Back'.

• Japandroids have announced that they will play a London show on 30 Aug at a secret location in Dalston, following performances at the Reading and Leeds festivals.

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Bob Dylan finally delivers Nobel Prize lecture
They said it wouldn't happen. They said it couldn't happen. Some even said it shouldn't happen. But it has happened, people. Bob Dylan has submitted his Nobel Prize lecture. Turns out, not even the grumpiest of curmudgeons can face harrumphing their way out of the best part of a million dollars.

As previously reported, Dylan was named the winner of the Nobel Prize In Literature last year. After he eventually acknowledged the award, he then refused to come to Sweden to collect it, eventually doing so in semi secret in April. But there was still the matter of the lecture required in order to receive his prize money. He had until 10 Jun to get on with that, and was clearly in no rush to do so.

But now he's done it. He's only gone and bloody done it. Written down and in audio form! Nice try getting double prize money, but I don't think that's how it works. In the speech, Dylan ponders how his songs are even related to literature, answering the question of many a detractor when his award was originally announced.

"If I was to go back to the dawning of it all, I guess I'd have to start with Buddy Holly", he begins, before going on to discuss his relationship with three books he read at school, 'Moby Dick', 'All Quiet On The Western Front' and 'The Odyssey'.

Eventually he concludes: "Our songs are alive in the land of the living. But songs are unlike literature. They're meant to be sung, not read. The words in Shakespeare's plays were meant to be acted on the stage. Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page. And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days".

I think he might have technically talked himself out of the literature prize in the end there. But rules are rules, and he still gets his money. Read Bob's full speech here, or listen to him read it out here.

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