Clear Channel Goes Classical (Sort Of)

Clear Channel Communications has made groundbreaking royalty deals lately with the record labels Big Machine (home to Taylor Swift) and Glassnote (Mumford & Sons). In a radio first, those labels will get a percentage of Clear Channel's revenue when their songs are played over the air and online. (In the United States, terrestrial radio stations pay royalties online to music publishers, not record labels.)

On Monday, Clear Channel announced another deal, this one with Naxos Records, one of the biggest independent classical labels. Naxos, known for an enormous catalog of budget albums, will program “Classica,” a new classical station on iHeartRadio, Clear Channel's app collecting hundreds of radio streams.

“Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Haydn - these composers wrote the original power chords, and their work is as vital today as when it was first written,” Robert W. Pittman, Clear Channel's chief executive, said in a statement. “Our agreement with Naxos further demonstrates that the market-based business model we unveiled this past summer makes sense for labels, artists, broadcasters, and fans.”

There is one major difference between this deal and the ones with Big Machine and Glassnote, however. The Naxos deal is only for digital play, with no corresponding royalty agreement for terrestrial radio play, a Clear Channel spokeswoman said. The company has 850 stations - but none of them are classical.

Sony Executive to Amazon: Michael Paull, a top digital executive at Sony Music, has joined Amazon, a move that could help Amazon smooth over its occasionally bumpy dealings with the big labels.

Mr. Paull, who was one of Sony's primary licensing negotiators, is now Amazon's vice president of content acquisition and business development, Amazon said, and will be based in New York.

Amazon is an important sales outlet for the labels, but last year the relationship was strained when Amazon introduced an unlicensed storage and streaming service, Cloud Player; the service was perfectly legal, but top executives at Sony made rare public complaints that the move was done without their cooperation.

In July, Amazon updated the service with a licensed version to compete with Apple's iTunes Match.

Layoffs at Universal: Following its acquisition of EMI Music last month, the Universal Music Group has laid off about 45 employees across the country in its distribution service and at its labels in Nashville, from the ranks of both Universal and EMI. Earlier this month, Universal hired Steve Barnett, a key executive at Sony's Columbia label, to run its EMI divisions in the United States.

“Our goal is to maximize the resources available for reinvestment in our labels so they can do what they do best: develop and promote artists, increase the output of new music and expand opportunities for digital innovation,” a Universal spoke sman said. “Change is never easy, but we are excited about the future.”