Pop star Cee Lo Green will make about $20 million this year. His hit single “Forget You” (actually it’s not “Forget”, but another shorter word beginning with the same letter) became the 12th most downloaded track of all time. But his music sales represent only a small proportion of his earnings. The New York Times calculates “F*** You” earned him about $700,000. The other $19 million or so come from a variety of projects and deals. Cee Lo‘s management company, Primary Wave Music, has come up with some very creative ways to make money for Cee Lo without relying on music sales. Not so long ago sales of recorded music were the mainstay of any musician‘s earnings as a hit single would lead to big album sales and plenty of cash, but now with the demise of the album artists like Cee Lo have had to look elsewhere. Primary Wave’s CEO Larry Mestel says album sales represent the smallest slice of the revenue pie. A stream of TV appearances, endorsement deals, TV commercials have traded on and built Cee Lo‘s brand. He’s been a judge on TV talent show “The Voice”, has his own shown on cable network Fuse, appeared on Saturday Night Live and been in TV commercials for 7-Up, Absolut Vodka and M&M’s. Next year he will have his own show, “Loberace“, in Las Vegas and will star in a Mark Burnett produced TV show in the UK called “Cee Lo Takes the UK.” What Primary Wave is doing for Cee Lo is the model for the future of the music industry, and is a good lesson in creativity and innovation for many other industries that are seeing their worlds changing through technology. Necessity breeds invention, and without invention we might find ourselves being forgotten.
