We've had the Hard Rock Café - is it now time for the Soft Rock Hotel? ... A room in the Malmaison chain
Hotel chain Malmaison has announced that it is to launch its own record label. Not content with merely providing upmarket R&R, the British hotelier is now going into A&R. It will be soliciting new work from individual artists, and creating compilation albums. Established acts, including St Germain, Röyksopp, Cassandra Wilson, and Roxy Music, are all lined up to make music for the chain, whose CDs will also be available from mainstream retailers such as HMV.
"There is a close fit between Avalon-era Roxy [1982] and the chain's cool image," Steven Howard, Roxy Music's manager, told the Times. "It's great if guests can download the album directly from their rooms. It connects Roxy with an audience looking for something beyond the latest hit singles."
The band will be creating special remixes of their classic tracks for the hotel chain - so the long awaited new album, slated for a 2007 release, will not be a Malmaison exclusive. This is similar to Bob Dylan's deal with Starbucks last year, which allowed the coffee chain first dibs on reworkings of his 1962 material. That experiment worked - people bought it in caffeinated droves.
Has the arrival of Paris Hilton's debut album sent hoteliers running for their own share of the pop market? In the absence of a peroxide heiress called Birmingham Malmaison, perhaps the only way they feel they can compete is by offering some pop stars a lifetime's access to little sachets of shampoo. Hotels used to pride themselves on their live lounge singers - now it all seems to be about the music in the lift.
The Hiltons are not the only hoteliers muscling in on music. Holiday Inn cornered the free-advertising market with Elton John's contribution ("You ain't seen nothing 'til you've been / In a motel baby like the Holiday Inn") and the Sugar Hill Gang's legendary Rapper's Delight ("Everybody go hotel, motel, Holiday Inn"). Perhaps all hotel chains will soon be releasing their own compilations. Novotel Nights and Best (Country And) Western are surely imminent.
But are these organisations capable of innovative work, or will it just be interior design for your ears?
