Other than one sing-along ditty about an increasingly rare snack food, baseball’s relationship to the music business has generally been restricted to blasting a few bars of “Crazy Train” over a stadium’s PA whenever the local clean-up hitter is making his way to the plate. Now a partnership with marketing/licensing firm Signatures Network could have the brains behind MLB.com managing Ozzy Osbourne’s website.
Says USA Today, MLB Advanced Media inked the deal in March to co-administer the online affairs of Signatures megastars like U2, Queen Latifah and Fleetwood Mac. It seems like a winner for both teams; according to Signatures CEO Dell Furano, “the official artist website business is a $1 billion-plus market” (MLB expects to pull in 20 million clams from the deal this year), and MLB brings to bear a lot of expertise from building team sites and running a streaming audio and video service that lets fans enjoy any ballgame using a broadband connection.
One aim of the venture is to help artists connect to their fans, by letting “musicians grab the spotlight and do whatever they want,” according to the story. Sounds like it should come naturally for the likes of Madonna and Kanye West. Says MLB Advanced Media CEO Bob Bowman, “We’re the anti-Google.” …You’re going to take all the world’s information and hide it somewhere? “We’re the opposite of an aggregator” (ah).
