- Five Films to Watch About Stonewall … Besides Stonewall - 29 September, 2015
- Symphony: An interview with Raymond Yiu - 25 August, 2015
- Raymond Yiu’s Symphony to debut at BBC Proms - 12 August, 2015
Here are three music news stories you will want to keep up with for the week of September 30 in this Music News Roundup.
Tina Turner’s Old Schoolhouse Becomes a Museum
An old schoolhouse Tina Turner attended as a child has now been turned into a museum honoring her. The exhibit, which opened this past Friday (September 19) at the Flagg Grove School, features gold and platinum record plaques as well as outfits wore by the legendary singer throughout the years.
Over 100 people attended the celebration for the exhibit’s opening with celebrity appearances from television personality Robin Roberts, rock singer Melissa Etheridge, and Mike Love of the Beach Boys, among others. Fans, both national and international, also traveled to celebrate the reopening of Flagg Grove School as a museum. Turner herself did not attend, but she sent in a video message thanking everyone who was involved in the project.
Flagg Grove School was a school Turner attended as a child in Nutbush, Tennessee, about 50 miles away from Memphis, the famous blues capital of the U.S. The name came from its founder, Benjamin Flagg, who opened the school after seeing the need for a school for the community’s black children in 1889. The school closed in the 1960s and was used as a barn before being moved to Brownville in 2012, where it sits now on the grounds of the West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center. The building, which had been falling apart, was revived thanks to $300,000 in donations which included a large donation from Turner herself.
Those who are involved in the project see it as a way to not only honor a music legend, but also as a way to bring tourism dollars to Brownsville. Many are hoping that visitors who visit Memphis for music tourism will also be willing to visit the museum in Brownsville.
Michelle Phan: From Makeup to Music?
Michelle Phan, who is known for her makeup tutorials on YouTube, has joined forces with Cutting Edge Group to create Shift Music Group, according to Billboard.com. The article states the music group is ‘a joint venture to finance music projects and support them across social media platforms.’
As a part of their deal, Cutting Edge Group CEO Phil Moross and his team will handle the music supervision of Phan’s YouTube videos. It was reported in July that the YouTube personality found herself in a lawsuit with Ultra Records. The suit alleges Phan used their music illegally, and the label is seeking damages in the hundreds of thousands for copyright infringement. In a statement made to Mashable, Phan’s representatives have stated that Phan had permission to use the music, had only aimed to help expose artists to new audiences, and that they plan to bring their own lawsuit against Ultra. One of Ultra Records’ artist, Kaskade, has spoken out in support of the YouTube sensation.
Moross is hoping hoping to sign similar deals with other YouTube personalities.
Business Lessons from Beyonce
This fall, Rutgers University will no longer be the only university using Beyonce for their academic studies.
Beyonce Knowles-Carter will be heading to Harvard in a new case study to be published by the university’s business school this week. Readers of the case study will gain information about the music marketing landscape, obstacles to the singer’s goal to drop her latest release by surprise, and decisions Beyonce and her team have made. Students who read the case study will also get to read insights from Columbia Records executives, Facebook and Apple representatives, and Parkwood Entertainment executives.
What Harvard MBA will have to do is tell their professor, Anita Elberse, what decisions they would have made if they were a part of the singer’s business team. The professor, who studies entertainment marketing, is presenting the case as a part of her ‘Strategic Marketing in Creative Industries’ course in October.
Through teaching this case study, Elberse hopes to engage her students about the business questions raised by Beyonce’s surprise album release including long term effects, potential effects on tour sales, and what this will mean for how much power she will have to do something like this again.
That’s it for this week’s Music News Roundup. What music stories caught your attention? Feel free to let us know.
