Prince “Creep” performance at Coachella

Not hip-hop related, but this adds an interesting twist to the digital copyrights debate.

The story goes that Prince covered Radiohead’s hit song “Creep” at Coachella to the amusement of many. This being the Internet age, a video of Prince’s performance soon flooded YouTube. But when Radiohead members rushed to YouTube for a peek they were met with that annoying “video no longer available” message, seeing as Prince’s label NPG had blocked it.

According to the Associated Press, Thom Yorke was surprised that Prince had blocked a video of their song: “Really? He’s blocked it? Surely we should block it. Hang on a moment. Well, tell him to unblock it. It’s our … song.” NPG’s argument that the video of Prince performing a Radiohead song, which was shot by a fan, had violated copyright laws makes you wonder who was doing the violating. Was Prince trying to take credit for adding his own touch to the song? Or was he trying to avoid any legal dust-off with Radiohead by deleting the videos?

When Yorke was finally able to see Prince’s “Creep” cover he found it “hilarious.” I didn’t. Prince’s version does nothing for me. He didn’t enhance the song in anyway. But that’s OK, he’s still a legend in my eyes.

Not really. But the gossip experts at Page Six are dishing that Hov has been making some ridiculous demands lately.

JAY-Z wants his own label, but can’t find a home for it. Jay-Z, who left his position as president of Def Jam to be an entrepreneur last year, is apparently asking “way too much,” an insider said. “He wants a label to give him $100 million for the Carter Music Group and provide for overhead, development and digital investment. It’s crazy. He wants the labels to basically be his venture capital fund — but unlike a venture cap, they won’t get 50 percent. This is not the ’90s anymore.” A rep for Jay-Z, who is branching out into hotels and bars, called this account “rumors.”

He’s not a businessman, he’s a business, man.

Not surprisingly, blogs help boost album sales in a way that not even MySpace can. A study by New York University researchers found that being mentioned in a legitimate blog, like The Rap Up, improves album sales up to six times the average.

From the Hollywood Reporter:

NYU Stern professor Vasant Dhar and former student Elaine Chang sampled 108 albums released between January and March of 2007 to determine the impact of blog chatter on record sales. Using Amazon.com sales rankings, albums were tracked four weeks before and four weeks after release. Researchers found that when an album got mention in more than 40 legitimate blog posts, sales were three times the average. If those albums were associated with major labels, sales jumped five times the average. Albums that got more than 250 blog mentions saw sales increases of six times the average.

Just what I needed to jumpstart my week in a good mood.

As part of Doug Morris’ effort to focus on his anti-iTunes music subscription service, Universal Music Group has suddenly decided that full-length MySpace audios are evil. Ironically, the news came from none other than MySpace-bred, Universal-signed Colbie Caillat:

Due to circumstances beyond my control I have to swap the songs out on my page for 90 second versions instead of full length versions. In fact some of the songs have already been swapped as I write this.

Every artist signed to a Universal label has to comply immediately.

Smh. My guess is that Newscorp will throw some money at Universal or strike a deal of some sort with them, and this whole thing will be history.

[ Full Story: Mashable.com ]