A Letter from Richard Gotteher & Seymour Stein…

Sometimes you just feel it!

If anything has been lost in our business today, it’s this; the greatest loss… instinct… intuition… and that indefinable something that comes from just feeling it.

When we started Sire Records many years ago, that’s what drove us. It guided us thru decades of success, discovering great artists, selling millions of records, producing and writing hit songs and still drives us today.

That’s the way it was at Sire in the early days, when we signed an obscure Dutch band, Focus, whose “Moving Waves” was our first platinum album featuring the top 10 “Hocus Pocus” with all its yodeling and flute solos. Our partner in the original Blue Horizon, Mike Vernon, took three blues musicians (Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie) who had been dropped from John Mayall’s band and helped start the legendary Fleetwood Mac.

When we went our separate ways, I knew, just knew, when I found Blondie and The Go Go’s that these bands no one wanted were super special and went on to produce both bands’ first two LPs.

I also knew in 1997 that the Internet was going to change the way people would access music. So together with Scott Cohen, I founded The Orchard and began signing digital distribution rights a full 6 years before iTunes appeared and changed the music business forever. The Orchard is now the leading distributor of digital music with offices throughout the world and one of the companies leading the way to the future of the new music business. Again it was instinct and intuition that guided me.

Seymour also experienced some resistance when he first found and signed CBGB bands The Ramones and Talking Heads. The same was true with Madonna, who fought long and hard to find someone who believed in her. Seymour also found a gold mind of unbelievable talent in the UK, that no one stateside was willing to bet on, bands like The Pretenders, The Smiths, The Cure, Echo & The Bunnymen, the Cult, Depeche Mode, and many others; also a wide variety of American acts like the Replacements, and Ice-T, and from Canada, kd Lang.

Instinct, followed by actions and dedication to the artists and to artistic freedom, is what it’s all about.
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The Orchard, a global leader in music and video distribution and comprehensive digital strategy, today announced that it is the recipient of the Champion for Global Education Award, an annual honor bestowed upon an institution that has made a significant contribution to global education and to the growth and continued success of the national programs of World Savvy, a global education non-profit. The award was given to The Orchard in recognition of its work with the 3^rd annual Global Youth Media & Arts Festival Celebration, at which students were given the unique opportunity to write and submit songs for Sounds of Identity: Voices of World Savvy Youth, an album of original music, hip hop and spoken word, produced by The Orchard and World Savvy. The album is now available on iTunes and digital retailers worldwide.

“We’re honored to be named a Champion for Global Education by World Savvy,” said Brad Navin, CEO of the Orchard. “They’ve been an inspirational partner and it’s our privilege to help produce such great work from these extraordinarily talented kids. The amount of time and effort that these young musicians put into Sounds of Identity is really admirable.”

“The Champion for Global Education Award is presented annually to an institution that supports and models responsible and conscientious global citizenship,” said Dana Curran, World Savvy Executive Director. “This year, the honoree is none other than The Orchard—a company that has shared an abundance of resources and support in their field of expertise and has made a significant impact on World Savvy’s work.”

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New York– June 15, 2010 – Today, The Orchard (NASDAQ: ORCD), a global leader in music and video distribution and comprehensive digital strategy, announced it has entered into a partnership with 19 Entertainment and Simon Fuller, creator of “American Idol”,” and co-creator of “So You Think You Can Dance”. The Orchard will handle the worldwide digital distribution of the first two seasons of 19 Entertainment’s new reality series, IF I CAN DREAM (www.ificandream.com), making the groundbreaking series available for sale at the top digital entertainment outlets, including iTunes and Amazon.

“We are very pleased to be working with The Orchard on distributing our ground breaking show IF I CAN DREAM” said David Ellner, President of Digital and Business Development at 19 Entertainment. (more…)

Mobile Licensing Agreements Bring Music From Around the World to Consumers in Asia

Today, The Orchard (NASDAQ: ORCD), a global leader in music and video distribution and comprehensive digital strategy, announced that the company is now reaching more than 1.2 billion mobile customers across Asia through distribution partnerships with top mobile operators and licensors in China, Japan, Korea, India, and the Middle East.

In Japan, The Orchard has direct agreements with Music.JP and Music Airport, as well as a partnership with the largest record label Avex, which brings Orchard content to Label Mobile, a mobile-content provider owned by leading Japan record labels.  In The Middle East, The Orchard has an agreement with Viva, which provides The Orchard access to top mobile operators like Orange, Vodafone, and Mobinil.  In Korea, a deal with NeoWizBugs supplies content to SK Telecom and third-party mobile music sites including Bugs, Melon and Dosirak.  A deal with ZTEMT China brings The Orchard’s content to China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom subscribers. Finally, through its partner label Saregama, the Orchard also reaches the largest mobile service providers in India, such as Vodafone, Air Tel, Reliance, and BSNL.  In total, The Orchard taps over 1.2 billion mobile users in the Asian mobile market.

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Some of the most important challenges facing the music business are centered on understanding the “correct” amount of music to release each year, the best format for those releases and the optimal way to generate money from them.

Through trial and error, I’ve learned that there isn’t one, uniform strategy that works across an entire fan base. Instead, the audience needs to be segmented into three fan groups: core, casual and new fans.

All three groups want something different. New fans just want a track or two. Casual fans want a track or the album. And the core fans want as much as we could release. It’s significant to note that no one group is more important than the other—we should be able to succeed with each type of fan and strive to feed their comfort zone of music consumption.

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The Orchard, a global leader in music and video distribution and comprehensive digital strategy, has announced it has opened a new office on Nashville’s Music Row.

“Nashville has always had it right; it’s about the songs,” commented Brad Navin, CEO of The Orchard. ”We hope to apply our expertise around the digital music business to deliver marketing, strategic planning and promotions to Nashville’s top independent labels, artists and publishers for success at digital retail – where it too, is about the songs!” (more…)

The Orchard recently named Brad Navin its new CEO, a role he had been filling on an interim basis after the departure of former CEO Greg Scholl in October. Navin previously served as executive VP/GM of the indie-focused digital distribution firm. In an interview, Navin outlined his immediate plans for the company, the Orchard’s strategic approach to new digital models and why access to content will be the winning model in the end.

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Legendary blues record label Blue Horizon, which launched Fleetwood Mac’s career, is to be resurrected.

It is being revived by music industry veterans Seymour Stein and Richard Gottehrer, who founded the Sire label and signed Madonna and The Ramones.

They will now look for new artists to sign to Blue Horizon, which will start as a digital-only venture.

Asked if record labels were outdated, Mr Gottehrer said it would be “quite different” from a traditional label.

“We’re introducing the label into the world as it is, not as it was.

“And we’re thinking ahead, about the world as it will be.”

Mr Gottehrer produced the debut albums by Blondie and The Go Gos and now runs digital music distributor The Orchard.

The original Blue Horizon existed for just five years from 1966 and released songs such as Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8480225.stm

Industry vets Seymour Stein and Richard Gottehrer were reunited at the MIDEM conference in Cannes, where they announced the revival of the Blue Horizon label.

The pair behind Blue Horizon’s U.S. label partner, Sire Records, has decided to revive the U.K. label, which released blues artists such as Otis Spann and bands including Fleetwood Mac and Chicken Shack in the ’60s.

The revived Blue Horizon will be based in the New York City office of the Orchard, of which Gottehrer is founder and chief creative officer.

Blue Horizon, which was distributed by CBS under exclusive contract, was in operation until the ’70s. The label’s repertoire is released by Sony Music Entertainment and the new label will not have access to the old catalog.

Stein, VP of Warner Bros. Records, joined Gottehrer in Cannes for the Jan. 25 announcement. Gottehrer told Billboard.biz the label will look for new talent to distribute through the Orchard, while Warner Music Group will have the opportunity to participate in releases.

“In Europe and the U.K. it has a great deal more significance than it would in the United States,” Gottehrer tells Billboard.biz of the Blue Horizon label.

“The continent [Europe] and England is where we started the success of Sire,” he adds.

Physical product will be released “where necessary” but the label will initially focus on digital releases, on a global basis. It has not announced any band signings yet.

“The real reason for doing this is both Seymour and I want to get back to functioning in a creative way [together] and discovering and working with artists,” says Gottehrer, although he added that “we both work at great companies” (Warner Music Group and the Orchard).

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Legendary 1960s record label Blue Horizon is being relaunched at MIDEM by Seymour Stein (photo) and Richard Gottehrer, the original founders of Sire Records, Blue Horizon’s US partner.

Blue Horizon was set up in London in 1966 to release music by original US blues masters, such as Otis Spann, and pioneering British blues groups such as Fleetwood Mac and Chicken Shack.

Seymour Stein still works for Sire, now part of Warner Records, but has always kept the option to revive Blue Horizon. In 1997 Gottehrer set up The Orchard, which has become a leading independent distributor of digital music, supplying product to retailers in nearly 70 countries. Both will continue with their respective companies.

Blue Horizon will be searching out talent from all over the world. Artists will be developed and distributed through The Orchard, with the opportunity for Warner to add the experience and muscle of a major label on some projects.

Richard Gottehrer said: “I believe this will stand as a shining example of how two progressive companies with shared visions coming from different backgrounds can work together to build a better and more prosperous music industry. We’re excited to get started.”

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