In case we needed yet another sign that it’s the end of the record industry as we know it, The Wall Street Journal reports that forty-nine-year-old Madonna is close to ditching her longtime label, Warner Bros., and signing that unprecedented $120 million contract with concert-promotion titan Live Nation we were talking about in August. The cash and stock deal would reportedly last ten years and encompass three studio albums, tour promotion, merchandising and name-licensing, with the Material Mom pocketing $17 million up front and taking in around $50 million for the albums and $50 million for rights to promote her hugely successful tours (her last three Live Nation-produced treks have grossed $400 million). Since Live Nation hasn’t undertaken album promotion and distribution before, there’s speculation the company will bring in outside help from a label; in addition, the report notes that in order to turn a profit on the albums, Madonna would have to sell around 15 million copies of each LP (she has sold approximately 175 million copies of her twenty studio albums, compilations, soundtracks and live records since her 1983 debut). Warner will retain the rights to Madonna’s extensive back catalog, and as her rep Liz Rosenberg told Rock Daily in August, Madonna has a greatest-hits album plus a new studio album on the way in the coming months on the label.


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