More on Paul's move to Concord

From Crawdaddy:

[Via Daily Swarm] The Wall Street Journal reported today that Paul McCartney has officially yanked his entire post-Beatles catalog out from under EMI, and bestowed global distribution rights unto independent record label Concord Music Group. Of course, CMG isn’t exactly Asthmatic Kitty, or even Merge for that matter. It’s a conglomerate of Concord Records, Fantasy Records, jazz label Telarc International and newly relaunched soul label Stax. It was CMG that partnered with Starbucks for their Hear Music label, which has already put out en EP, and LP and a double live album by McCartney. The CMG corporate umbrella ultimately covers over 20 other imprints besides.

So, really, where McCartney has gone isn’t all that interesting in and of itself. CMG handles a mighty swath of artists current and bygone, big and no-longer-big, from the Bar-Keys to Vanessa Williams, Dave Van Ronk to Elvis Costello. It’s not an inappropriate home for McCartney and his roughly 50 albums from the past 40 years. It does, however, reinforce two points that are obvious enough now that they’re barely worth repeating: EMI is going down the tubes, and the terms “indie” and “independent” are often totally meaningless in the cultural sense.