Musicon / Jazz news / Blue Note: We are focused on providing jazz artists with a full suite of services
-Blue Note: We are focused on providing jazz artists with a full suite of services
Blue Note was for many years a shoestring operation run with conviction by Mr. Lion and a childhood friend, Francis Wolff. During its postwar heyday, the label released a flood of albums that defined the hard-bop era and helped document an emerging avant-garde.
“Nowhere else in the pantheon of jazz labels is there one with that much majesty or regality in the lineage,” said the alto saxophonist Greg Osby, whose Blue Note tenure lasted 16 years.
Blue Note’s identity shifted with Ms. Jones’s folk-inflected debut, which sold five million copies within a year of release. (That figure has since doubled.) Suddenly the label was receiving proposals from nonjazz artists like Anita Baker, whom Mr. Lundvall deemed too good to pass up. Later the label signed folk-rockers like Amos Lee and the Wood Brothers, and the retro-pop duo the Bird and the Bee.
“So we’ve extended our reach beyond jazz, but we’ve stayed very true to jazz,” Mr. Lundvall said, citing Mr. Loueke and a couple of new signings planned for this year. “And it’s going to be that way as long as I’m here, that’s for sure.”
Late last year the label made a round of catalog deletions; any title that sold fewer than 350 copies over a 12-month period was vulnerable. Jazz fans noted with alarm that a handful of significant titles were on the list. Mr. Lundvall said he understood the outcry: “I’m monitoring this like a hawk now. Because some things escaped me the last time.”
The deleted albums are still being offered in digital form, he added. There are catalog promotions through services like iTunes and Rhapsody. In addition, as a 70th-anniversary tie-in, Amazon recently introduced an exclusive on-demand CD series, Back From the Vault, with more than 200 out-of-print titles.
The digital focus reflects the impact of a recent reorganization. Over the last year Blue Note’s operations have been more fully absorbed into the structure of EMI, which was bought in 2007 by Terra Firma, a private equity firm. Though jarring in some ways — “At first I thought I was going to fight it,” Mr. Lundvall said — the change has opened up new resources for the label.
“We’re focused on providing jazz artists with a full suite of services, and that’s one of the advantages of the way that we’re organized right now,” said Howard Handler, the executive vice president for marketing at EMI. “There are more resources to do tour marketing. We have new technology that gives us insight to get catalog to newer generations of fans.”
Source: New York Times; excerpts, edited by Musicon; read complete