With the music industry continuing to mutate and adjust to biz in 2014, it’s a slightly uncommon occurrence to see a new label launch that isn’t one directly by an artist. However, today it was officially announced that there’s a new label being started by an existing company that you might be pretty familiar with – Pornhub. The label launched today with a contest to write a porn-themed anthem for the porn site with the word “Pornhub” in the chorus. The winning artists will receive $5,000 to record a music video and will get a minimum of 500,000 views. There’s no word on what genre they’re looking for, but metal bands have written plenty of songs about porn. Billboard caught up with VP Corey Price, who said:
“We’re looking for acts that aren’t necessarily porn-focused,” says Price. “We’re an ad-based network looking for content that appeals to our demographic. Mature lyrics for an adult audience; no boy bands or teen-pop, for instance.”
The article mentions that even the contest winner won’t necessarily be signed to Pornhub, and there won’t be any physical releases at this point in time. Pornhub head of PR and Marketing Matt Blake says they’re currently focused on distributing via their platform and digital sales. Keep in mind that their platform gets 40 million views daily. But also keep in mind that probably none of them are from people actively looking for music.
Speaking of 12 inches (segueways!), clothing and lifestyle retailer Urban Outfitters is selling vinyl. If you’ve been to one of their stores, you probably already know that already, but they’re really selling vinyl. According to the company’s chief administrative officer Calvin Hollinger, they’re the world’s #1 vinyl seller. That’s almost hard to believe until you think about the fact that there aren’t all that many places to physically buy music, and of those places, very few of them carry vinyl. Buzzfeed reports that at a meeting with analysts, Hollinger said that the retailer has a system in place that lets it offer inventory without actually owning the inventory.
The report comes as vinyl continues to sell more every year. There were 6.1 million pieces of vinyl sold last year, a number that’s continued to increase every year since 2005. The highest number since the beginning of SoundScan data in 1991, Buzzfeed attributes the continued increase in sales to the launch of Record Store Day in 2007. There are now two Record Store Days, with the second one coming up on Black Friday, November 28.
