In the week that Radiohead reinvented the marketing of music, the ‘High Priestess of Reinvention’ herself: Madonna is about to add her own twist on how music is packaged.   She is reported to be close to leaving her record label Warner Brothers, hooking up in an unprecedented £60 million, ten-year deal with Live Nation Inc, a global concert promotion company, which also manages Wembley Arena and owns the Brixton Academy. The contract will see Mads taking a bigger share of the new route to music millions: concerts and merchandise.As with Radiohead, 49 year old Madonna has realised that it is time to bail out of relying on just CD sales alone. The new paradigm is all about marketing the entire brand experience – rather than simply selling discs. (Madonna’s Confessions tour grossed and estimated $260.1milion).  So boutique – so chiqGlobal artistes can pick from a boutique of experts to independently distribute, market and stage their music career.  For example, rather than just rely on traditional record shops or online stores like iTunes, Sir Paul McCartney also turned to Starbucks as a marketing channel to distribute his music. For smaller artists obtaining adequate distribution can be a problem, but for established brands it’s easy.  If the brand is already huge, the money’s good and there’s a good marketing channel (e.g. McCartney and Starbucks), or if the brand is big but they’re fed up with tiny royalties (e.g. Simply Red releasing their own record) then they may sign with another type of company, or indeed go it alone. In Jan 06 the US Metallers, ‘Korn’ signed a three-way partnership with EMI and Live Nation whereby all parties shared a portion of all revenues – recording, publishing, touring, merchandise, sponsorship. Earlier this week Radiohead opted to sell their music directly online, leaving it to their fans, rather than record moguls, to decide how much to pay for their new album, In Rainbows’.

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