SFX is partnering with Clear Channel on a marketing and content initiative that will place EDM-related programming on Clear Channel’s terrestrial and digital radio stations and in its live venues. The partnership will leverage the brand power of Beatport — a dance-dedicated online music store and one of SFX’s many acquisitions in the EDM space — to create three new products. Beatport-branded programming will include a national DJ talent contest airing live on select Clear Channel stations nationwide, including Evolution, iHeartRadio’s dance music hub (curated by BBC legend Pete Tong). An original live event series is also in the works, specifically a national program slated for Halloween 2014. Perhaps most significant, however, is a weekly Beatport “Top 20 Countdown,” which will air on at least 10 major-market Clear Channel stations, including top 40 outlets WHTZ New York and KIIS-FM Los Angeles.
In a trend that could continue through 2014, traditional media powerhouses are snapping up digital services. On Dec. 20, publishing giant News Corp., which spun off in June with $2.6 billion in cash from Rupert Murdoch’s more profitable entertainment assets, revealed its first acquisition: Storyful, a nearly 4-year-old company that verifies and licenses viral news content. The $25 million deal, spearheaded by News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson, allows the company to scale Storyful’s service globally and integrate its verified content with newsroom-produced video.
Mötley Crüe and drummer Tommy Lee have prevailed in a lawsuit that proposed a drum stunt used on the band’s 2011 tour was taken from an onstage “roller coaster” proposal 20 years earlier. The plaintiff in the suit, Howard Scott King, claimed he had developed an idea for a “Tommy Lee Loop Coaster.” King further alleged that in 1991 he had worked with an engineering company and agents for the band. He said he had delivered a proposal but heard no response. He sued after seeing a “drum ring” on the group’s 2011 tour. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa Cole dismissed the lawsuit, determining that the drum ring was “independently developed” and that King didn’t in fact submit the proposal to Mötley Crüe, which was represented by attorneys at Miller Barondess.