jwattup wrote:
I know that Justin Timberlake(artist) and Justin Timberlake(CEO-Tennman records) are totally separate. I don't think I ever inferred that they weren't. I just thought it was weird that he was going outside of Sony/BMG to start up his label. To me that sounds like there may be some trouble brewing. He may be ready to jump ship when his contract expires or use this new deal to get more money out of Jive. It has to have ruffled a lot of feathers that he didn't stay in house.

I don't think it means there's trouble brewing at all. I think it's acutally a pretty smart move because now his own recording contract deal isn't tied in with his own record label. Jive's been nothing but great to him, I doubt he'd be looking to leave them at all. I know that there are other artists have in their contracts that once they hit a certain marker in success they get an imprint at the Major they are signed to, ie Fall Out Boy's imprint. He's making sure that these are completely seperate entities. Very smart. Though I have just heard rumblings that Universal and BMG are thinking about merging...so if they do, they will all fall under the same umbrella again anyways. The majors like to confuse us...merging and merging and keeping the little label names but there being only a few big ones that the little ones all fall under. Oh and Jive is a very heavy Urban label, FYI. It wasn't until Nsync, Backstreet and Britney that they reigned heavy in Pop.

And also, as CEO, I'm sure Justin's going to be very, very active in the label but for sure the day to day stuff is going to go to the President. Justin will likely be present for board meetings and such but they probably aren't going to bother him with much. He'll be able to bring the talent that he wants to the label but I don't think that he's automatically going to be able to get everything he wants, even as the CEO. There's going to be a ton of people that are going to weigh the pluses and minuses to any artist...he's going to have A&R in place and people who know a whole lot about the industry to push things, too. Should be intersting to see what happens.

Oh and Tennman Tunes is publishing company and to my knowledge, not his production company. I don't think he actually has a production company. He produces under his own name.