Legacy Recordings

The second week of the internship is now finished. I started the week discovering a new artist by the name of Jeff Buckley. First, let me say that I grew up listening to mostly Hip-Hop, R&B/Soul, and Gospel music. I was also classically trained on the piano for better or for worse depending on how you look at it. I found a new respect for rock tinged music when I got to college. My rock collection consists mostly of John Mayer, Lenny Kravitz, Paula Cole, Nikka Costa, Jimi Hendrix, Sarah McLachlan, Ben Harper and a few others. I realize now though that Sony has rights to most of the greatest artist of our time. Sade, Earth Wind and Fire, Bruce Springsteen, Run DMC, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Miles Davis, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, and the list goes on and on. Why I never heard of Jeff Buckley before I don’t know, but it’s a shame I didn’t. He is really, really good. I was pleasantly surprised by his lyric delivery, vocal range, phrasing, soul, and song writing. I hear his influence in others so much now. Its way too bad he is gone. I came across a recording Jeff did of “Alligator Wine,” which I first heard on a Screamin Jay Hawkins record and I thought he pulled it off cleverly. I also discovered the song “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over”….WOW!

Outside of finding Jeff Buckley, I’ve been hearing a lot during meetings about artists in the catalog who have not allowed Legacy to sell their music digitally. Given the history of the music business and the traditional lopsidedness of the contracts, I can only imagine why an artist would want to keep the rights. There is also the concern of piracy taking away the only source of income for a band that has to split the income 5 ways. On the other hand though, musicians need to be musicians; businessmen need to be businessmen; and both need to strike a balance to keep the other employed and reasonably compensated I think. That brings me to Michael Jackson. I get to do something really cool by heading the development of a digital marketing plan for the 25th anniversary release of “Thriller”. It has about 25 never-before-released remixes that even I haven’t heard yet. If everything goes as plan your text message can alert with Michael’s background vocals saying “P.Y.T” when a pretty young thang sends a text message to your phone. I will definitely be one of the first to use the alert for my wife’s messages if it happens. Until next time..Peace.