Industry News: Live Nation Signs Shakira For $70 Million and Continues To Change The Game
Live Nation and Shakira, the latin pop singer, have entered into $70-100 million dollar agreement. The deal would give Live Nation control over the singer's recordings, touring, merchandising licensing rights, sponsorship and strategic alliances, digital rights, fan club/Web sites and other marketing and creative services. The deal would commence when Shakira meets her current contractual obligations with Epic Records, which includes three more albums; one english, one spanish, and a greatest hits album.
Shakira joins Madonna, U2, and Jay Z, who have all signed to Live Nation under similar all-inclusive deals. In October of 2007 Madonna signed a $120 million deal, followed by U2 (for an undisclosed amount), and Jay Z's $150 million deal.
Live Nation is changing the music industry with these all-inclusive, package deals. Traditionally artist have signed recording and distribution deals with record labels and seperate deals with concert promoters, merchandisers, etc. However, in this new age of digital distribution and with CD sales plummeting the record labels are increasingly becoming obsolete. These new deals have shifted the power of the recording industry, away from the record labels, to the artist and concert promoters. This seems to be the future business model of the music industry and may force current record labels to go into partnerships with concert promoters to survive.
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