Rumor Mill: Jay-Z to Launch a Label with Apple

January 3, 2008

The Apple Boys in the building tonight? Boy Genius Reports that Jay-Z, who left his post as President of Def Jam last month, may be in negotiations with Apple to launch his own record label. The source, a higher-up close to Jay, says that Jay-Z is “really into the business model, and really wants this to happen”. The terms of the deal are unclear, but it is interesting to see what impact, if any this will have on the music industry. What do you think?

Category: Launches, News

Lynne d Johnson

Markus

You beat me to this one. I was just about to post it after reading about this over at Ars Technica, gizmodo and the boygenius source that you have here.

I find it interesting considering the Apple iTunes store and Jay-Z didn't agree over how to sell his American Gangster album. During my research for that post, I couldn't find anyone who could purchase the set off of iTunes unless they had preordered it. If Jay-Z is in the complete record-selling business, and Apple is in the singles business, not sure how this will fly.

As a business model overall, I think it would be a great idea. The music industry needs a real disruptor, the independent efforts of artists such as Radiohead hasn't been enough. Most companies popping up to shake up the music industry still rely on the old model, they're just adding another leg to the distribution behemoth. This would be an entirely new business model, that others have tried but the brand or technology wasn't revolutionary enough to make a significant splash.

Not sure how Apple could do this though without pissing off the entire industry and losing serious ground on its partnerships with the majors (though I predict that we'll see more M&A activity within the majors soon), especially with Amazon already getting access to a lot of DRM-free music.

blackweb20

This was the first I had heard of this rumor but had a feeling something like this may have been happening when he stepped down in December.

In an interview earlier this month with Billboard, Jay-Z said any decision about his future with Def Jam would not be "about money." It's really about trying to invest in the future, trying to invest in maybe coming up with a new model. Because going in hard making records with artists and throwing those records into a system that's flawed is not exciting for me."

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_dis...

rawdawgbuffalo

sounds smart to me

Ken Gibbs Jr

This was a nobrainer. I'd spoken with a lot of industry folks about how to do a new online model the right way and I always said it won't make a difference unless you have an a-list artist like Jay do it. The relationships mean nothing, they all know that things must change soon, they're just afraid of taking the risk. Jay's got nothing to lose and everything to gain. One more nail in the bootlegger's coffin.