News

By admin • February 9th, 2010

yahoo

Hoping to boost revenue, MySpace Music has begun experimenting with audio advertisements that users must hear if they want to listen to music for free online. The 30-second ads began appearing last week when users listen to songs on artist profiles, album pages, playlists and pop-out players. They expand on a trial that began in [...]

californiachronicle

Universal Music Publishing Group’s global chairman and CEO David Renzer is warning 2010 could be the most challenging year yet for music publishers, but is optimistic his company will grow its revenues. Renzer says UMPG, the world’s biggest music publisher, performed strongly in 2009 when it beat its targets and will “push hard” for [...]

nydailynews

It’s MTV, minus the “music television.” The network that launched the video about killing the radio star has redesigned its iconic logo - to take out the music video.
The new look, revealed on-air yesterday, features the original 3-D large “M” with the small, graffiti-style “tv” on the right side. But the new design is expanded, [...]

usatoday

Steve – I saw you on TV discussing how a woman who owned a cookie business reinvented it by tapping the wholesale market. In this economy, I bet there are a lot of people who would like to reinvent their business, but going wholesale is not a viable option. I am a lawyer for instance. [...]

links.assetize

The Minneapolis rapper known as Dessa doesn’t have a typical hip-hop profile, but her talent more than compensates. Maggie Wander, 28, graduated from the University of Minnesota at 20, and then worked as a medical writer. She co-founded an a cappella group called the Boy Sopranos. She’s an outspoken fan of Jeff Buckley and the [...]

starpulse

Ozzy Osbourne’s long-awaited autobiography is an official hit in the U.S. - the book has landed on the New York Times bestseller list. I Am Ozzy, which chronicles the shock rocker’s rise to international fame, has hit the number two spot on the “hardcover nonfiction” list.
The book was originally scheduled to arrive in 2008 but [...]

gigwise

Michael Jackson’s doctor has pleaded not guilty to a charge of involuntary manslaughter over the singer’s death. Dr Conrad Murray entered his plea during a short court hearing in Los Angeles earlier today (February 8). A judge must now decide if the case is to go to trial. If found guilty, Dr Murray faces up [...]

press release

Just Music is a music management and record company dedicated to the development and personal management of new talent from around the world. Just Music has brought together a talented and growing group of young artists ready to expand their careers while following the core objectives of Just Music. The team at [...]

press release

Miami-based music producer Thomas Demerritte, who is also Founder and President of the non-profit ADMIT Program, has just published the first-of-its-kind book for young readers about the music industry. That’s a Rap! - A Music Industry Sourcebook for Generation Next (funded and distributed through Demerritte’s Tavette Entertainment Group) is an easy to read 160-page [...]

tmcnet

SmarTrend identified a Downtrend for Warner Music (NYSE:WMG) on November 24, 2009 at $5.55. In approximately 3 months, Warner Music has returned 13.7% as of today’s recent price of $4.79. Warner Music is currently below its 50-day moving average of $5.39 and below its 200-day moving average of $5.57. Look for these moving averages to [...]

flavorwire

The Unsound Festival New York kicked off Thursday and will continue to dominate a variety of venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn through Valentine’s Day. This stateside version of the renowned Polish event seeks to move beyond the bounds of techno, drum ‘n bass, and house, to expose an electronic music world that’s more than computer-generated [...]

nytimes

The closing of storied music sites, often accompanied by protest, fund-raising and other exercises in futility, has become a recurring spectacle in this growing city, where the official stationery carries the legend “Live Music Capital of the World.”
People tend to blame the latest influx of Californians, reliably traced to the latest technology boom associated [...]

pbs

The exponential growth of Internet bandwidth combined with the ability to significantly compress digital audio has impacted the music industry in numerous ways, for better and worse. Just as file trading created a massive network of pirated music, the ability to stream audio in real-time has allowed for a number of innovative content distribution and [...]

Sohh

Rap mogul Jay-Z has reportedly given his official co-sign on music newcomer Susan Boyle and suggested the former reality television star make a run in the clothing business.According to Young Hov, Boyle represents a vast majority of women.
“What Susan’s achieved is unbelievable. Everybody wants a piece of her and the market for her is [...]

undercover.com.au

Massive Attack have commissioned a series of short films to promote their new album. For the launch of their new album ‘Heligoand’ Massive Attack have got together some of the most talented independent film directors around to choose a song from the album and produce a short film on their chosen subject to accompany it.
www.heligoland-films.massiveattack.com
There [...]

press release

Valence Records makes its debut with 96kHz audiophile downloads in electronica, jazz and contemporary music. Elite musicians, superior recording quality and new technology for international distribution lead the way to the future of the music business. “This is a time of great opportunity for creative arts and the music business! It’s all about collaboration. [...]

abclocal.go

Bruce Springsteen wants his name off a lawsuit demanding licensing fees from a N.Y. bar where a band played his songs. A statement on Springsteen’s Web site said he didn’t know about the lawsuit that was filed Wednesday in federal court and wouldn’t have agreed to be a plaintiff if he had been asked.
It says [...]

youtube

Recorded on my iPhone in Frankfort, Illinois, United States. Carl Terrell Mitchell, better known by his stage name Twista (formally Tung Twista), is an American rapper who once held the title of fastest emcee in the world, according to the Guinness World Records in 1992, being able to pronounce 11.2 syllables per second.[1] His 2004 [...]

radioandmusic

Composer and music producer Biddu, who is considered one of the pioneers of the indie-pop music was conferred the 5th Jack Daniels Lifetime Achievement Award on Friday evening in Mumbai. The 60 plus musician shuttles between London and Spain and is currently in India to promote his autobiographical work ‘Made in India’.
After scoring [...]

jam.canoe.ca

Rockers 30 Seconds To Mars called off a screening of their documentary in Los Angeles on Thursday night following a bomb scare.
The band, fronted by Jared Leto, was due to show the film to fans at The Hive venue in West Hollywood, but the event was scrapped and the building evacuated after a man rushed [...]

mio.co.za

A South African Afrikaans rap group has taken the Internet by storm with explicit in-your-face lyrics, provocative performances and using cyberspace to promote their music. A website set up by the group, Die Antwoord (The Answer), received millions of visits in the past four days, crashing the server it was hosted on after the group [...]

Bob Lefsetz

There was a space in my bookcase where I kept my cash, waiting for four bucks to accumulate…then I went and bought an album, which I played again and again until I knew every cut, until I accumulated enough money to buy another, when I repeated the process. You see, music was scarce.
Now [...]

digitalmusicnews

Facebook may have entertained the possibility of a dedicated music play in the past, a la MySpace Music. But the company has since shifted its sensibilities, at least according to recent statements. “We have no plans to launch a music service on Facebook,” a representative told TechCrunch, responding to an inquiry related to [...]

news.bbc.co.uk

Record company EMI has reported an annual pre-tax loss of £1.75bn in the year to 31 March 2009 and said it needed more money to stay afloat. The results for EMI, which has deals with Robbie Williams and Coldplay, include more than £1bn in write-offs.
The firm has been hit by illegal downloading and the move [...]

spinme

Over the past few months, I’ve seen a huge surge of interest in my third book, Music Management for the Rest of Us. It could be that a bunch of folks are thinking about pursuing music industry careers, in the wake of crazy layoffs all over the United States. But it’s also likely that more [...]

latimesblogs.latimes

One of my favorite economic policy bloggers, Matt Yglesias, started a kerfuffle the other day with a frighteningly commonplace point about the vain fight of creative producers against free content online, especially vis-a-vis music file-trading. In short, he proposed that in a perfect marketplace for music,
“The price of a song [...]

baltimoresun

Clarence Copeland Greenwood isn’t fond of labels. Critics have struggled to categorize his music. He’s heard it described as everything from alternative rock to urban funk. “You’ve got to listen to it,” said Greenwood, 41, who performs as Citizen Cope. “It’s got certain sensibilities of American pop. It includes music forms of R&B to country [...]

press release

.music (DOT MUSIC) has surpassed 2 million global subscribers, friends, followers, fans and petitioners across social media platforms, including Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. It is a clear, powerful showing of support to the much-anticipated .music Top-Level Domain (TLD).
“The .music domain extension is about giving the global music community a unique identity and a highly [...]

press release

The Music Tee, the newest and most innovative way to enjoy music, is excited to announce that they have signed blanket deasl with several record labels, including Warner Brothers, Interscope, Downtown Records, Shangra-La, Knitting Factory, Dim Mak and several other indie labels. Described by the Los Angeles Times as “a novel approach to music [...]

press release

The 2010 Pitchfork Music Festival celebrates its fifth anniversary this year at Chicago’s Union Park, on Friday, July 16 - Sunday, July 18. This three-day event will once again showcase a variety of cutting-edge, global performers on three stages in one of the most comfortable and positive festival environments in the country, all brought [...]

rbr

Saying it would disrupt the equilibrium of the decades-old partnership between the radio and music industries and disproportionately affect minority-owned stations, the Media Institute released a paper explaining its opposition to the Performance Rights Act.
“A proposed compulsory-license scheme that would force radio broadcasters to pay royalties to musical artists and record labels would impose an [...]

business.theatlantic

Total revenue from US music sales and licensing fell almost 60 percent in the last decade, from $14.6 billion to $6.3 billion. Why? The Internet replaced music stores as the most convenient place to find and grab music for your library. But the music industry has a strange interpretation of the picture above:
Apple’s [...]

creativedeconstruction

Music’s self-proclaimed “biggest night” celebrated it’s 52nd year this past Sunday with one of the most colorful, over-the-top spectacles in the broadcast’s history. Pink pulled a Cirq Du Sole while dripping wet and suspended from the rafters. Lady Gaga played a duet with a rock and roll icon who more recently has come to resemble [...]

dailyfinance

Last weekend, just 24 hours before the Grammys’ pop and circumstance, the industry got busy with a night of pre-party schmoozing and posturing. But the hardest-working band in hip-hop was preparing to do something unusual: playing a live gig.
Then again, not much about the Roots is ordinary — the way it plays music, or the [...]

popeater

As part of the Grammy Week events, the Grammy Foundation held a Grammy Career Day at USC’s Thornton School of Music. Hundreds of local L.A. high school students were able to come and hear professionals from all areas of the music industry talk about what it takes to build a career in music, including Justin [...]

press release

Thumbplay (www.thumbplay.com), the leading mobile entertainment company in the U.S., has forged agreements with 20 new content partners for its new Thumbplay Music application. The number of tracks currently under license for the service now exceeds 8 million. Included in the latest round of content deals for the app are: Beggars Group, Merge Records, [...]

smh

Men at Work’s No.1 hit Down Under reproduced a “substantial part” of the children’s folk tune Kookaburra Sits In the Old Gum Tree , infringing copyright in the song, a Federal Court judge found today.
Larrikin Music, which owns the copyright to the song Kookaburra , is now entitled to recover damages - potentially a huge [...]

techdirt

It’s still amazing that anyone thinks that organizations like the RIAA or any of the record labels actually represent the best interests of musicians or even the music industry, when they have such a long history of doing things that go against the musicians best interests — and this goes back decades. A bunch of [...]

todayonline

Noise Associates started only a year ago, but it has already been making lots of “noise” in the music and entertainment circuit with its innovative solutions to bring content closer to the audience. As consumers migrate to more sophisticated media platforms, new ways of delivering entertainment content need to be explored.
Chief executive officer Christopher Steward [...]

amnesty.org.uk

Music journalists Behrang Tonekaboni and Kayvan Farzin of Farhang va Ahang, a monthly music journal, were arrested at the journal’s offices on 5 January.
Behrang called his family following his detention, but was not allowed to say where he was being held. He has asthma and a heart condition, and requires regular medication. Behrang’s mother Lily [...]

news.yahoo

R&B star Jill Scott was sued Wednesday by her longtime record label, which is accusing the multi-platinum songstress of skipping out halfway through a six-album contract and potentially owing millions of dollars in damages. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by L.A.-based Hidden Beach Records, claims that the label and its founder, [...]

musically

March 4th will see London host the one-day ‘Music 4.5′ conference, which will focus on music startups and emerging digital music business models.
It’s just announced the programme, which will include a keynote interview with UK Music’s Feargal Sharkey and Brian Message (with his Music Managers Forum hat on), as well as panels with the likes [...]

apnews.myway

The head of Taylor Swift’s record label is fired up and ready to defend his superstar from people who are criticizing her Grammy-night performance. “She is the voice of this generation. She speaks directly to (her fans), and they speak directly back to her,” said Big Machine Records CEO Scott Borchetta in a phone interview. [...]