Radio giant Clear Channel will be adding one more label to its roster of partners sharing revenue from both internet streaming and AM-FM airplay. The latest partner will be Innovative Leisure. The idea is for the label to benefit from over-air spins while CCME benefits from a sustainable online royalty platform.
The label has not yet celebrated its third birthday and includes acts such as Hanni el Khatib, Rhye, Classixx, Nosaj Thing and others.
“Jamie, Hanni and I started this label to help cultivate artists that we feel passionately about, without confining ourselves to any specific genre,” said Nate Nelson, co-founder of Innovative Leisure. “Clear Channel’s reach and connection to music listeners will help bring our artists’ music to millions of potential new fans.”
“Innovative Leisure has shown they can think outside the box to move both their company and the industry forward,” said Bob Pittman, CEO of Clear Channel. “We are excited to share the music of Hanni el Khatib, Classixx, Nosaj Thing, Rhye, Allah-Las and the label’s other emerging talent with our listeners regardless of which platforms and devices they want to use to find them.”
Clear Channel’s latest pact adds to a label roster that already includes Big Machine Label Group, Glassnote Entertainment Group, eOne, Dualtone, DashGo, rpm Entertainment, Robbins Entertainment, Naxos, Wind-up Records, Fearless Records, and Zojak World Wide.
RBR-TVBR observation: The House Judiciary Committee heard yet another call for a radio performance royalty on the same day the Clear Channel/Innovative Leisure pact was announced. Tellingly, the witness, Tor Hansen ofYepRoc Records/Redeye Distribution, thanked the radio community for giving indy labels more airplay, and then requested that radio pay for the privilege of helping indy labels out – in other words, it’s a bizarre quid pro quo where radio is being asked to provide free promotion to labels and at the same time is being asked to pay for the privilege of providing free promotion to labels.
Maybe we should call it a quid pro pro from the label perspective and a quid no no from the radio perspective.
The more agreements between private radio and recording companies we get, the more effective the argument that Congress should stay out of this and let the two industries hammer out a long term solution. We commend Clear Channel for its ground-breaking role in making this happen.
