Rumors are flying, pink slips are being handed out, and it looks like MCA Records is history.

We've heard tell of MCA employees receiving pink slips, (aprox. 1000 of them). The rumor mill is saying that MCA will be folded and rolled into Geffin Reocrds, which is owned by Vivendi/Universal. Word is this will happen by the middle of the month. No news yet on the artists signed to the label or the catalog.

Some of the MCA Artists are Mary J Bilge, BB King, Eagle Eye Cherry, Shaggy, blink 182, The O'Jays, Lyle Lovett, Snoop Dog, Gladys Knight. Some of their catlog artists are Jimmy Buffet, Lynard Skynard, The Who, Tom Petty, The Cranberries, Patti Labelle, Jimi Hendrix to name but a few...

A full list of MCA Artists can be found at http://www.mcarecords.com/ArtistList.asp

The consolidation has already begun. They're selling Tom Petty and Jimi Hendrix to the French. Fucking pirates.

Was MCA already part of the RIAA?

-- Funky.

I guess they were.

Well, what is it now, the Big 4?

Pretty soon it's going to be the Big One. Typical.

It's so odd... Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall - Hillary Rosen and the RIAA - I thought we settled this stuff back when Teddy Roosevelt was president.

Guess we have to go back again, huh?

i don't think MCA was one of the big 5. I thought it was Sony, Universal, EMI, BMG and Warner. I don't really know, but that's what I thought

Hmm, maybe they're owned by one of the big 5.

Maybe if there are less of them, it will be easier to kill em off?

MCA was a seperate label under Universal. But then again thinkof all space the RIAA will save on their website, not having to list all those smaller labels... 2007 RIAA MEMBERSHIP: BECAUSE WE SAY SO RECORDS with 2500 sublabels....

Funksaw: "It's so odd... Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall - Hillary Rosen and the RIAA - I thought we settled this stuff back when Teddy Roosevelt was president."

Just studied about this in school (8th grade). I wish spme bold president like him would order the Attourney General to break up some monopolies.

independentmusician: "Maybe if there are less of them, it will be easier to kill em off?"

No, it makes it harder. With bigger companies come bigger bribes and better lawyers.

ctenet, I was being sarcastic

if you cut one head off of a hydra, you get two more. I'm betting this will result in more "streamlined" activities for MCA, and then.. another hit from Vivendi. Who knows? I know I'll be watching things closely to track this and see how it affects me.
ttmmm

Consolidation again, as usual. Even less variety, higher prices and of course a carefully set up release schedual to make sure MCAs releases dont reduce sales by any of its related companies.

Here's a question - if MCA gets sold, can any of the artists be released from their contracts?

-- Funky.

Funksaw: Here's a question - if MCA gets sold, can any of the artists be released from their contracts?

I would assume the parent company (Universal) will still have control.

I doubt MCA will go under. They have too many big names.

According to my sources, it's a pretty solid bet they will go under with the annoucement coming on the 16th of the month.

Actually, MCA Records as a stand-alone label only existed for a shade over 30 years, with its first LP's, in late 1972, being "Hot August Night" by Neil Diamond (the last record he owed the company before moving to Columbia) and Elton John's "Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player." MCA's initial artist roster was a consolidation of rosters of other labels in MCA's stable at the time - chiefly UNI, Kapp, and Decca. The Decca artists, ranging from country legends as Brenda Lee, Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn to rockers The Who, were among the last to be absorbed into MCA (the second MCA single, after Mr. John's "Crocodile Rock," was by Decca alumnus Rick Nelson). The establishment of MCA Records completed a consolidation process that had begun in 1971 when all the MCA labels' offices were moved from different outposts (i.e. Decca and Kapp in New York, UNI in Hollywood) to one single facility in Universal City. Indeed, it has been said MCA was a label that got where it is by all sorts of mergers and acquisitions. Think ABC / Dunhill, Chess, Geffen . . . and all that was BEFORE Universal's 1998-99 acquisition of PolyGram.

Another thing that has been said about the pending demise of MCA Records is that with such, the MCA name itself will fade into history after 79 years (the Music Corporation of America had been founded in Chicago in 1924 by ophthalmologist Jules Stein and within a decade became the biggest talent agency in Hollywood prior to giving it all up upon its acquisition of Universal-International Pictures and that studio's then-parent, Decca Records, around 1962).

A little bit of history to think about . . .

Don't act like you give a fuck, its because of people like you who download music for free that record companies like MCA are going out of business..
...am I right??

You really have no clue at all, do you?

If you price a product out of the reach of your intended customer base, and then harrass and offend that customer base till they want your head on a plate - YOU GO BROKE, it's that simple.

What if McDonalds started charging $8.50 for a cheeseburger, and demanded only they were allowed to make them, and then tried to have folks arrested for cooking their own ?

Would YOU eat there any more ?

No, I *don't* give a fuck, the recording industry is committing mass suicide via outright stupidity and I have utterly no sympathy for them, and even less for clueless RIAA shills like you, punk.

I don't buy their product and frankly, it's not WORTH stealing when there's hundreds of decent bands who aren't part of the combine, you couldn't PAY me to listen to a big-name labels garbage these days... and I am not the only one who feels that way, believe it.

-User

And interrelated to all this, as noted before, is so-called "free trade" - one specific recent article about which can be found in http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/6/11/133841.shtml - which has translated into millions of manufacturing and hundreds of thousands of service jobs being sucked out of this country and exported to various overseas venues, and those who still have their jobs here seeing their pay go down significantly. And there is no end in sight.

And again . . . one thing about certain countries (i.e. China, Malaysia, Singapore) fingered by the RIAA as purveyors of piracy is this: These are countries that pretty much exist and subsist on what amounts to slave labor, with cases of workers only earning anywhere from 10 cents an hour to 10 cents a DAY! (To say nothing of many of these countries being closed societies and, in many cases, engaging in the most brutal repression of their populaces - but that's another kettle of fish.) Do you think anyone earning that type of measly salary -- if it could be called that -- could afford any of the goods and services offered? And the "free trade" racketeers are all working to reduce OUR wages (and, therefore, our standard of living) to the level of workers in these other countries -- all in the name of "competing in the global marketplace."

So I ask all these useful idiots of the multinational entertainment-media complex who claim "It's all piracy, stupid," this question: Given all this (plus the factor of refusing to patronize an industry that persist in treating their customers like subhuman garbage), what does the RIAA expect?