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David Bowie on Music, Copyrights, Distribution
EddydaSquige writes "In this New York Times article David Bowie talks about his new album, distribution deal with Sony, and how he's "fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing." Do you think the Bowie machine has the power to make the music industry see the light?"
In 1997, David Bowie issued bonds to pay interest from his old song royalties. Prudential Insurance Co. of America bought them all. Read about it, and David Pullman, the guy who helped him do it. The offering "allowed Bowie to collect $55 million up front, using some of the money to buy out a former manager and keep control of his music."
Wow. I didn't think anyone actually remembered that. I was one of 5 people in the internet division of USABancShares (formerly vBank, USABanc.com, People's Trust, and Norristown Savings i believe).
If you're curious, this was the deal with BowieBanc:
Ken Tepper, CEO of USABancShares.com, would go to some large organizations that were not connected to financial institutions. He would then pitch the idea of a "private label" bank where all of the money would actually be handled by vBank, the parent of USABancShares.com, but that the private label bank could issue credit cards, bank cards, checks, etc. with the name of the private label bank and all of the decorations. Other possible private label banks were YankeeBanc (new york yankees) and TrumpBanc (donald).
With BowieNet and the corporation Bowie owns, BowieBanc seemed like a good fit. His ISP clients, who were all huge fans, could easily open an online bank account, get a david bowie credit card (some of the designs were amazing), and a bunch of other perks.
The whole idea crashed down when USABancShares.com took on a host of bad loans (as banks often will do) and I believe they're still trying to track down the culprit. But the loans degraded their credit rating which is imperative for a bank to maintain.
It's a shame tho. We built the second online back with 5 ppl working 8 days straight (we slept in the bank). And the flash bank is still pretty neat all these years later.