Legacy Recordings

This is officially my first blog post ever. Hey mom!

My name is Adam, and I am one of the Product Managers here at Legacy. The PMs are thought of as the hub of the wheel. We work with every other department - A&R, creative, sales, publicity, radio, advertising, online, etc. - to create and market products.

Recently, I have been responsible for the Bob Dylan and Frank Sinatra box sets. I also worked on a reissue of the first Remains album and Best Ofs for Moby Grape and Widespread Panic. New albums that I have proudly marketed include “Songlines” by The Derek Trucks Band, and the self-titled solo debut of Page McConnell (keyboardist from Phish).

My personal taste in music is quite broad (as is the way for most of my colleagues at Legacy). The Grateful Dead takes first prize, but Beck, DJ Shadow, Radiohead, and many others are on constant rotation. I can’t get enough jazz or reggae, but to start naming artists there would simply be too daunting.

I hope you enjoy our website, finding it useful and entertaining. I will post when I feel I have something compelling to say, otherwise, I’ll let the music do the talking…

Song: Don’t Stop Believin’
Album: Guilt By Association
Artist: Petra Haden
Selected by: Jeremy Meyers
Very clever acapella updating of one of Journey’s most beloved tunes, and the best “Singing along in the car” song ever.

Don’t Stop Believin’ by Petra Haden
Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey

I’m working at a feverish pace to clean up our catalog for all of you, the music fans of our artists. All day long I look at iTunes and find out what’s missing and make sure it gets out there so that you guys can listen to more content than ever before! So far, we’ve scheduled 158 missing albums and we’re going to continue delivering more music than you can handle! I will update the blogsphere weekly with great new albums that we’ve just scheduled.

On 10/2 look for more releases from

• Alabama
• A rare Incubus EP
• Perry Como
• The 5th Dimension

On 10/9 more exciting catalog releases are set for

• Barry Manilow
• Barbra Streisand
• Billy Joel
• Neil Diamond
• Kenny Chesney
• J-Lo
• Johhny Cash

Thanks, and check back weekly.

Jamie

I’ve started this post three or four times this week. Originally I wanted to write about Rhino’s “What It Is! Funky Soul And Rare Grooves (1967-1977)” box set. I had this whole thing my head about box sets and how they don’t translate well online. I won’t go into it too much in case I decide to write about it later. I will say that I am a big fan of some of the music on this box. There are a lot of deep cuts and several songs that are probably better known when performed by other artists. It is a darn good listen.

Then I wanted to write about Gloria Estefan. Her new album, 90 Millas, came out earlier this week. Last night I had the chance to catch an intimate performance during the taping of a XM Confidential. I got to meet Gloria, Emilio and members of her band and team earlier this year when she recorded an iTunes Originals at the Hit Factory in Miami. I guess Perez Hilton is not Gloria’s only fan. I had to give up my VIP seat when Tommy Mottola and Thalia came in. (I know, poor me. I lost my VIP seat. Wah!)

Tonight I went to see Jimmy Buffett at The Garden. While I don’t really consider myself a parrothead, I do think he puts on a fine show. No matter what, he looks like he is having the time of his life. Frankly, I think that’s part of the appeal. I mean, who wouldn’t want make living by travelling the country and playing the guitar in bare feet? He played a song called “It’s My Job” which may be my new favorite song for the next few days. (BTW, I saw an ad for the Experience Hendrix Tour. I am ashamed to say that I didn’t know anything about it. Anyone heard heard anything good or bad? It looks totally awesome!)

So what’s my point? What am I really listening to? A little bit of everything. That’s why I thought I would share this Rhapsody widget. It updates with whatever I am listening to (in real time.). Last.fm does the same thing for iTunes, but it takes things a few steps further by matching your musical tastes with others.

(I can’t get widgets to work here just yet. Sorry. Jeremy’s promised he’ll fix it asap.)

I grew up in East Bend, NC, a small rural town about 25 minutes west of Winston-Salem. In 1995, I moved to New York City to attend New York University and to feed my addiction to music. You see, when I grew up, there was no Internet. (I mean, maybe there was, but for all practical purposes….) The only way I had to find out about music was by listening to the radio. That classic “High Fidelity” indie retailer didn’t exist near where I grew up (and if it did, my mom probably wouldn’t have taken me there anyway.)

I remember vividly the time that my mom told me to stop wasting my money on cassette tapes. We were on our way home from Roses (a local discount store) and as soon as she saw me pull a couple of new tapes out of the shopping bag, she went off on me. You see, I grew up in a single-parent home and I guess, at the time, money was a little tighter than I realized. It didn’t really matter to me. I would have spent my every last dime on music. I remember her ranting something about “saving” and “college” and blah, blah, blah - I couldn’t believe that she thought buying music was “wasting” money.

While I was in college, I interned at several music companies. It was right at the beginning of the Internet Bubble and I knew HTML. That was my ticket in. Of course, they let me work for free. All they had to do was give me a handful of CDs and send me on my merry way. They had to pay everyone else $50+/hr for what I did. I didn’t care. I just loved hearing new music.

After college, I went to work at Elektra Records. I built websites and sent out artist newsletters. Eventually, we launched our own download store and began working with iTunes.

I missed the original Napster craze by about a year. I moved out of the dorm in August of 98 and Napster launched in June of 99. (Remember, back then everyone did not have broadband at home.) I loved getting free CDs at work. I never took advantage of the situation. I wasn’t one of those guys who spent the entire day trading CDs, but I was able to listen to a ton of music.

About 2.5 years ago, I started working at Legacy. I was already a pretty heavy user of iTunes, but part of my job became dealing with Sony BMG’s digital catalog. Over the next year and a half, I realized that I stopped buying CDs. I was listening to more music than ever, but I just bought whatever song that I wanted on the Internet. Sure, I kept all the CDs that I already had. I just never took them off the shelf.

Eventually, I started using a music subscription service. For those who are not familiar with music subscription, think of it sort of like cable TV. For a monthly fee, you can listen to as much music as you want (i.e. one song a thousand times, or a thousand songs one time) but, at the end of the month, if you don’t pay, then you can no longer listen to any of that music.

Thus begun my mid (err, 1/3) life crisis. I had spent my entire career feeding my addiction and building a respectable music collection. Now, for about the price of one CD per month, I can access virtually all the music I want???

Don’t get me wrong, I still love my job, but that certainly put things in perspective.

Song: Cool
Album: A Place For Us - A Tribute to 50 Years of West Side Story
Artist: Eldar
Selected by: Jeremy Meyers
Okay, so this first pick is from a Sony BMG title, but I can’t help it. Eldar’s version of “Cool” is so intense and extraordinary it would be a shame for people not to hear it. Plus it was my idea to have him record it. Enjoy!
Cool by Eldar

As you may have heard, we are all huge music geeks here at CMG. Part of the job of a music geek (it’s true, you can look it up) is to spread the gospel of great music whenever we can.

To this end, the Soundboard blog will occasionally contain a feature called What We’re Listening To, where we will rave about whatever music happens to be crossing our desk/iPod/Radio Raheem-style boombox. It will not be limited to music we are working on, or even music released via SONY BMG (take that, corporate culture!).

So sit back, relax and enjoy.

Warning: You may have to be a Facebook user to fully appreciate this.

About a month ago, the fine folks at iLike added “Song Dedications” to their iLike application within Facebook. According to their website, “Whether it’s a love-song for your girlfriend or boyfriend, any old favorite for your BFF, or some eighties song that somebody is still listening to, send a dedication, and it will show up automatically on your friend’s Facebook profile!”

I am now certifiably obsessed. I’ve dedicated songs to everyone I know. I dedicated “Round And Round” by Ratt to a friend in the office who loves 80’s metal, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” by Michael Jackson to my old roommate who used to play the song on Saturday nights, right be he went out on the town, “Old Deuteronomy” by Andrew Lloyd Webber to my friend’s cat, and “Welcome Back” (the theme to “Welcome Back, Kotter”) by John Sebastian to a friend who has been out of the office for a few weeks.

I know this makes me sound like a total weirdo, but if you are a Facebook user, send a dedication and see if you don’t become obsessed, also.

Titles newly available at digital partners of note this week include:

MFSB - MFSB
The Blow Monkeys - Atomic Lullabies: The Very Best Of
Samantha Fox - Best Of
Billie Holiday - The Billie Holiday Collection Volume 4
Artie Shaw - Begin the Beguine (with Mel Torme)
Enjoy!

Hey everyone,

My name is Jeremy Meyers and I’m the guy in charge of Editorial here at SONY BMG Commercial Music Group. Basically what this means is, in addition to creating and running all the fine blogs on this site, I’m also responsible for our various podcasts, album reviews, etc. I’m also the head of all online for SONY BMG Masterworks, our home for Classical music, film scores and the deepest collection of Broadway and showtunes ever compiled.

I’m so happy that we finally have a forum to converse directly with everyone interested in what we are doing here in our little corner of the music world. We are all so passionate about bringing out both expanded versions of everyone’s favorite albums as well as some of the rarities that haven’t been heard in years and years. It is an exciting place to be, and we definitely need everyone reading to be a larger part of the conversation!

We have been working on getting our entire catalog of in-print titles available on all of the digital providers for some time now, and I will be checking in here from time to time to let everyone know about some key records that maybe you couldn’t find previously that are now available for streaming and purchase.

As always, if you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to reply to this or any of the posts on our blog.

Thanks for listening!

-Jeremy