Universal

thesun.co.uk

COLDPLAY have never been in better shape - financially or physically. Except for frontman CHRIS MARTIN’s ankle injury, that is, after I showed him on his holibags in the US yesterday wearing a protective boot. The band have just signed a huge publishing deal for future songwriting, which is one of the biggest in music [...]

blogs.forbes

China is a growing yet difficult market for the music industry. Mandarin Chinese singers from Greater China and Asia resonate best with local crowds, though global stars backed by large music companies such as Sony or Universal can also make money.
Abigail Washburn has a harder row to hoe. The Nashville-based, 30-year-old folk singer and banjo [...]

misstilaomg

By now, most of you’ve heard Drake’s hit, “Best I Ever Had.” Pretty kickass song, right? Well, according to the document filed at U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles, just before closing time, Playboy Enterprises claims that Drake and company need to pay them for the use of their song. Yes, we’re talking about [...]

billboard.biz

Pendulum scored their first U.K. No. 1 album and Dizzee Rascal his fourth No. 1 single as the Official Charts Company published its latest sales data on Sunday (May 30). Pendulum’s “Immersion” (Warner Bros./Warner Music) debuted at the top to succeed the Rolling Stones’ “Exile On Main St.” (Polydor/Universal). The Australian drum & bass/rock outfit’s [...]

ballerstatus

Since being released from federal prison last year, former Los Angeles drug kingpin Freeway Ricky D. Ross has been preparing a battle plan to “go to war” for the rights to his name, specifically calling out rapper Rick Ross and parties involved in his career. In a press release issued to us on Monday (May [...]

news.cnet

Music service Playlist.com, formerly known as Project Playlist, has reached a settlement with Universal Music Group, the largest of the four top recording companies. Universal agreed to drop the copyright lawsuit originally filed in 2008 against Project Playlist after the sides negotiated a business deal. Terms of the deal were not released.
“While it was unfortunate [...]

nymag

With his independently released mixtape So Far Gone, Drake went from digital dynamo (2,000 downloads in ten minutes) to Grammy nominee all before he signed on any dotted lines. Or maybe not: While a major-label bidding war supposedly raged, rumor had it that he was already signed to Young Money/Universal. Either way, the excitement around [...]

reuters

Terra Firma has restarted talks to license the North American rights for its struggling EMI Music unit to Universal Music Group for a fee estimated around $300 million over five years, according to a person familiar with the talks. Universal Music, which is owned by French media giant Vivendi, held talks with the private equity [...]

newsblog.thecmuwebsite

According to Music Week, the independent labels are yet to be convinced by the offer being made by Virgin Media to launch some sort of all-you-can-eat download service, most likely as part of an ISP package.
As previously reported, Universal last year gave its support to a truly all-you-can-eat MP3 download service, but the other majors [...]

fastcompany

1. Spotify
The dominant source for free, legal, anytime, anywhere music. Scared yet, iTunes? Top 50 No. 15
2. Apple Corps
The Beatles’ label cracked open its Abbey Road vault to collaborate on The Beatles: Rock Band and a remastered catalog for a new generation of Fab Four fans. The group may have broken up 40 years ago, [...]

press release

The Watch List is hailed as the 2010 forecast for R&B’s most promising new artists including Jive, Universal, and Young Money newly signed artists as well as extraordinary independent new talent. On Tuesday, March 30, 2010 Digiwaxx Media and Singersroom will bring their 2010 Watch List alive for the music industry to experience [...]

itisinteresting.me

The music industry is in a major state of crisis and some up and coming acts are reluctant to dirty their hands with social networking.
Some new artists signing at both major and indie labels are telling execs there that they’ll make music, but don’t expect them to do Facebook or Twitter. The labels are saying [...]

allhiphop

If one ever wanted to see the business model those of us in the ‘music industry’ are leaving behind – whether we like it or not – check out the recent ‘Starr et al v. Sony BMG Music Entertainment et al, U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 08-5637.’ Its the decision of a federal [...]

marketingmagazine.co.uk

Cheryl Cole’s debut album goes on sale tomorrow. In a bid to get fans to splash out on the CD or download, Fascination Records which is part of Universal, has launched a marketing campaign featuring signed copies and personalised calendar give-aways.
Fascination Records has sent 200 signed albums to Amazon, while Play.com is offering fans a [...]

spinner

Despite a major rethink through the 2000s, when the recording industry was forced to accept the digital world of downloading music, the major labels – now consolidated into The Big Four — maintain a large share of the market. After years of music business hegemony, these music companies boast a strong infrastructure that oversees everything [...]

Dave Kusek
futureofmusicbook

Here is an interesting article/interview by Mark Small and Gerd Leonhard on the future of music marketing from the latest issue of Berklee Today.
“There is no recipe. We can’t go to Universal, Warner Music, EMI, and Sony and say, ‘Here is the solution so you can stay in business.’ says Gerd Leonhard. There [...]

Jemima Kiss
guardian.co.uk

People’s Music Store wants to bring back that indie record store experience to online music, and announced a deal with Universal Music today that doubles the catalogue of the site to include 300,000 tracks from artists including Morrissey, U2, Girls Aloud and Amy Winehouse.
The deal means fans can include Universal catalogue in their own [...]

dave parks
musicouch

Detailed look of the music industry. How greed came to replace passion.
Music is timeless. It has the unexplainable power to create, explore, and define many types of emotions. It also has the unexplainable power to create astronomical amounts of money. During the rock and roll revolution, quality music was the main concern for record [...]

Mike McCready
huffingtonpost

“It’s not show friends. It’s show business. ” - Bob Sugar (Jay Moore): Jerry McGuire (1996)
What will happen to the major labels?
The labels were only ever going to survive as long as they remained the powerful gatekeepers between the artists and a mass audience. To the artists, they are like bouncers at an exclusive [...]

RICHARD BROPHY
irishtimes

N THE 1980s, record labels used to claim that “home taping is killing music” and that anyone who had the temerity to make a cassette copy of a band’s album was contributing to the industry’s demise.
Of course, the labels were wrong: while music sales continue to fall – for a more complex set of [...]

Michael Janofsky
thewrap

Eminem is causing trouble again. But this brouhaha may affect a lot more than a few freestylin’ rappers.
TheWrap has learned that a two-year-old lawsuit by the rapper is set to go to trial Tuesday and could impact a vast number of musical artists and the most popular form of music consumption — the digital download over [...]

One of Ireland’s largest ISPs, Eircom, has capitulated to the major music labels and agreed to implement a full “graduated response” program—complete with disconnections. Users get two warnings regarding file-sharing, and a third violation brings down the banhammer. The music industry has already said that it intends to pursue the same agreement with Ireland’s other [...]

Attention, executives of Sony, EMI, Universal, and Warner: please get a clue. When a fan incorporates music that you own into an online video, it means that they like it enough to add their own creative flair to it and spread it among their social networks.
Why do you discourage that? Because you don’t get a [...]

The ringtone is ebbing, though label groups are looking for ways to spruce the format. On Tuesday, Universal Music Group announced a pact with ID Interactive Inc., one that will enable customized ringtone solutions for its member labels and artists. So, instead of buying pre-cut clips, music fans can craft their own truncations, [...]

Education improves the chances of surviving a consolidating. It also tends to boost incomes too. This makes the business degrees offered by many colleges more attractive for current and future label and publishing workforce.
The music industry consolidated from six major labels to four over the last eight years. In 1998, Universal acquired Polygram, [...]

Universal Motown Republic Group, C3 Management, Aware Records and others have been beta testing a now public free service from ArtistData which empowers companies to work with their entire roster from a single account streamlining the time-consuming process of updating artist social network profiles….
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Nothing is sacred in Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s tireless quest for profits.
And no one is safe from them or their KKK, Korporate Kopyright Kops, scattered around the world disguised as legitimate trade associations and bodies supposedly representing the artists they bilk as part of the overall business plan.

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Online retailer Play.com has upped the ante in its battle against Apple’s iTunes Music Store, with the news that it now offers music downloads from all four major record labels after signing a deal with Sony BMG, Warner Music and Universal.
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