The Second Serve: Gong Gone Wrong
Club Popbitch #195
Every Monday we serve up an extra helping of insider gossip for you lovely people. Thanks once again for supporting PB and making sure we can keep sending out the newsletter as we celebrate 25 years of scurrilous scandal.
“I’m self-made. Like, I’ve done this all on my own. Nobody’s ever given me anything my entire life” - Paris Hilton, of the Hilton Hotel empire
* Rory Kinnear in the gutter
* More Beeb boobs
* PLUS: Sky does it for the girlies
>> Universal Credit (Again) <<
You can always go Downtown
Gossip in the music industry, for once, isn’t about personal bad behaviour, but the ramifications of major label Universal’s bid for independent label distributor Downtown.
Essentially a tech company servicing indies, Downtown has two functions. It both sends music to streaming services like Spotify, and also collects the financial data from those streams.
So, it’s not necessarily a great play for indies if Universal owns it. (Imagine being an independent dairy farmer, and a massive agri-business corporation you competed with bought the distributor that delivered your milk to retail).
The indies, through trade associations, have tried to block the sale.
Cue massive PR operation. Music Business Worldwide, for example, has run nearly 20 articles, largely pro-deal. Some of the attacks have been quite personal - most are by men representing the UMG position, directed at the heads of the two indie trade bodies, Impala and AIM, both led by women.
Not a great look. Then again, when has that ever bothered the music industry?
At the Oasis reunion gigs at Wembley this summer, four pints of Budweiser were priced at £28.50. But things had calmed down slightly by the time the Gallaghers got to Melbourne late last month. There, you could pick up a pair of tickets for £27 each. Less than a round.