Carne Asada, Arizona & #VMAs Good Time #Chilledlyfe (Taken With Instagram)

Carne Asada, Arizona & #VMA’s good time #Chilledlyfe (Taken with Instagram)

                          Chris Lighty, the savvy entrepreneur who founded Violator Management and one of the key executives in hip-hop history, has died. The news was confirmed to Billboard today by a source at Primary Violator Management. He was 44.  A spokeman for the New York Police Department told the Associated Press that Lighty was found at his apartment in the Bronx with a gunshot wound to the head, and was pronounced dead at the scene. Authorities said the shooting appeared to be self-inflicted.     Violator was a pioneering management/marketing/record label/multi-media entertainment conglomerate. The powerhouse merger between that company and Larry Mestel's Primary Wave Talent Managament firm took place last September; at the time of his death, Lighty was chief operating officer of Primary Violator.

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Everybody ain’t fit (Taken with Instagram)

Labels and performing artists are seeing good growth from digital performance royalties these days. But could they do better?  SoundExchange, the performance rights organization for non-interactive digital music services like Pandora and SiriusXM, paid out $95.8 million in digital performance royalties to recording artist and record labels in the second quarter of 2012.

Payouts of $204.4 million for the first half of 2012 put SoundExchange on track to easily top 2011's disbursements of $249 million. But the second-quarter payout was a noticeable drop from the $108.6 million the organization paid out in the first quarter. That record total, the only that has topped $100 million in a single quarter, was attributed to "data cleanup and technology overhaul efforts."

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   Chairman; Chairman/CEO  Live Nation Entertainment; Front Line Management Group  Twitter: @irvingazoff The Game Changer...  To hear the words "I have Irving Azoff on the line" and not experience at least a twinge of anxiety means a pulse check is in order. Azoff helms the world's largest promoter, ticketing company and artist management group from behind one desk. (OK, he probably has several desks, but you get the idea.) He has moved mountains in the worlds of film, TV and music; transformed mere artistry into superstardom; sustained and resurrected careers; and is a force of nature in the world of philanthropy. Music industry careers come and go, but Azoff's sphere of influence is enormous and ever-expanding.  The cultural touch points--and the business trends that followed--that can be traced directly back to Azoff range from 1980's "Urban Cowboy" film to famously shattering the $100-ticket glass ceiling (and, in the process, revealing true market value) for mainstream rock/pop acts with the Eagles' 1994-96 Hell Freezes Over tour. That tour sold every ticket, with Azoff famously saying at the time that the only people who complained were journo types who got their tickets for free. Regardless, the business never looked back. Azoff has found success as a movie producer, agent, promoter, label CEO, label owner and publisher. He remains many of those things and more.  But even though, from atop the silo, he commands companies with diversified areas of focus, most see Azoff as a manager at heart, and the manager's chair is where he seems most in his element. In consolidating management companies to create the unparalleled leverage of Front Line Management Group (before Ticketmaster and Live Nation were ever in the equation), Azoff was at the forefront of the shift in the balance of power from labels to managers and has shown that, in his world, labels can be valuable partners but aren't always necessary-because artists create the content, content is king and live is the thing.  Consisting of 13 management companies, Front Line bills itself as "the world's largest music management firm," but the number of artists affiliated with it seems a bit of a moving target. "Approximately 200" is a figure that's often used, and a large portion of those acts are arena-level headliners: Artists affiliated with Front Line companies include such established superstars as the Eagles, Christina Aguilera, Neil Diamond, Van Halen, Journey, Kenny Chesney, Fleetwood Mac and scores of other big names, developing acts and everything in between.  Azoff insists the affiliated managers maintain autonomy. Management is and will always be a personal business, the manager/client relationship is sacred, and it makes no long-term sense for Azoff and his team to be anything more than a resource to use if needed. But for this number of artists to be aligned in any way is a powerful statement.  Even if artist management is what he's best-known for, Azoff still has Ticketmaster and Live Nation under his watch, and both are reinventing the business as they fight to maintain supremacy and, in the case of Live Nation, consistent profitability. Live Nation is aggressively trying to improve the margins of live concerts by increasing revenue opportunities before, during and after the show, in ways that include venues, long-term multi-rights deals with artists, branding and merchandising, as well as marketing from global to local. And, of course, ticketing.

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