Thought some of you might find this interesting because it ties in with
our recent discussion of commercialism and IDM in the US. From today's
LA Times:
POP EYE
England's Prodigy Gets a Prodigious U.S. Deal
By Steve Hochman
In pop music, the action these days is on the
dance floor,
where a new wave of electronic beats has opened what
many
see as a new era. But it's getting hard to move to
the groove
with all the money being strewn out there.
Maverick Records is finalizing a deal with
Prodigy, the
colorful English group whose "Firestarter" video has
been a big
MTV attention-getter of late. The label reportedly
could pay
the band more than $5 million in guaranteed advances
over the
course of three albums. Guy Oseary, the A&R executive
who
signed Alanis Morissette to Maverick, won the intense
Prodigy
competition, in which Interscope had been considered
the
other top bidder.
And now there's nearly as hot a battle underway
for
Underworld, the English act whose much-touted "Second
Toughest in the Infants" album was released last year
by
independent TVT Records, and which gained wider
attention
with "Born Slippy" from the hit "Trainspotting"
soundtrack.
Major U.S. companies are also opening their coffers
to try to
work distribution deals with such established
independent,
techno-oriented labels as L.A.-based Moonshine and
Cleopatra and England's Wall of Sound.
The Prodigy deal is a lot of money for an act
that, while
earning a lot of MTV and radio action for
"Firestarter," is
otherwise unproven here. It's had a string of big
hits in the
U.K., but its previous two albums made little impact
Stateside--it was even dropped by Elektra two years
ago.
Still, just about any other company would have
been happy
to spend that cash. Prodigy is viewed as nearly
certain to be
one of pop's major breakthrough artists this year.
What concerns many, though, is that the signing
signals a
major-label frenzy that could rival the
alternative-rock signing
madness of the early '90s. For every Pearl Jam,
skeptics point
out, there are dozens of grungers who scored healthy
contracts
and were never heard from again.
After Prodigy, Underworld and the Chemical
Brothers
(who are signed to EMI-owned Caroline Records via the
Astralwerks label), few emerging techno acts get
"sure thing"
votes from the record community.
"There will be too many acts signed, and too
many who
aren't necessarily as good as Prodigy or the Chemical
Brothers," says Meredith Chinn, a veteran Los Angeles
club
deejay now working in A&R at Warner Bros. Records,
where
she has signed the hot English duo Moloko and the
dub-oriented Rockers Hi-Fi. "I'd like to say that
this time
around people will want to do things differently than
before,
but I'm not so sure."
Hans Haedelt, an A&R representative for MCA
Records
who recently made a deal for techno-world music act
Trans
Global Underground, says, "Maybe it's better to pass
on these
bidding wars. Once you've signed someone or are even
trying
to sign someone, you raise their expectations so much
and
that's unfair."
Leyla Turkkan, vice president of A&R for the
Enclave, the
EMI-distributed label started last year by former
Geffen
executive Tom Zutaut, concurs. "It makes acts for
which you
would normally have spent $80,000 per record get
bumped up
to $125,000 and more," she says. "It's
counter-productive for
a band to have to recoup that investment. To spend
that much
on a lot of these bands is pointless."
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Orange County, California, USA
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