Cielo!

Or rather, Madonna! - another one:

Pop star Madonna is close to leaving her long-time Warner Bros. Records label for a wide-ranging $US120 million (A$134 million) deal with concert promotion firm Live Nation, a source familiar with the talks said on Wednesday.

The story was first reported on the Wall Street Journal's website, which said Madonna would receive a mix of cash and stock in exchange for allowing Live Nation to distribute three studio albums, promote concert tours, sell merchandise and license her name.

Such a deal is virtually unprecedented, but may become more common as struggling record labels and other players in the music industry seek to shore up revenues by going into business with musical acts, rather than just taking fees for selling their albums or concert tickets.

OK, so no mention of music being given away, but the other key elements are there: concert tours, merchandise and licensing. Bye-bye music industry. (Via TechCrunch.)

Music to My Ears

There's a fascinating story over on BBC News, nominally about Madonna, but really about a new commons. It reports on how concerts are becoming ever-more important to rock stars, as sales of their recordings diminish.

The latter fact may be due to the Internet; but whether it is or not, the future seems to be one where the digital stuff - the song - is essentially free, and the stars make their dosh from the analogue side - concerts. So here we have pop songs as a new commons, where the creators of that commons make a more than decent living.

Two quotations in particular are worth noting. One is from Alan Krueger, an economist, who provides the figures to back up this idea:

Only four of the top 35 income-earners made more money from recordings than live concerts. For the top 35 artists as a whole, income from touring exceeded income from record sales by a ratio of 7.5 to one in 2002.

The other is from the ever-perceptive David Bowie:

music itself is going to become like running water or electricity

Now that's music to my ears.