Search Results for: i prevail

Small Webcaster Community Initiative (SWCI), a coalition of streaming-media companies, today announced their intent to form a U.S. trade association. The new organization aims to promote and protect independent online music radio through grassroots civic campaigns, including political action and educational outreach. In addition they should not try to silence an entire industry. People need choices, and currently terrestrial radio does not offer that choice. Internet radio does. This announcement comes in the immediate wake of a determination by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board for significantly higher royalty rates for all Internet radio stations operating under the Section 114 and… Read more »

Ten years ago, as the Internet began to mushroom in popularity and emerging technologies enabled consumers to make nearly perfect copies of digital content, the recording industry embarked on a two-pronged strategy in response to the changing business environment. First, it emphasized copy-control technologies, often referred to as digital rights management (DRM), that many in the industry believed would allow it re-assert control over music copying. Second, it lobbied the Canadian government for a private copying levy to compensate for the music copying that it could not control. While the industry’s approach proved successful on the legal front — the… Read more »

The Apple iTunes store has been selling a million tracks a day, it was announced recently. And no, that is not a misprint: a million a day. This will come as no surprise to readers of this column. Quite why the music industry didn’t spot the opportunity will be the subject of innumerable MBA dissertations in the years to come. But for now the significant thing to note is that it was a computer manufacturer and not a record company that cracked the problem of providing legal music downloads. On a global scale, you might say that the inadequacies of… Read more »

Los Angeles – Los Angeles-based Collectors’ Choice Music is carving a very successful niche with the rerelease of some old albums that probably aren’t in your record collection. Among 24 titles pouring forth this month from CCM – which issues its sets through its mail-order operation before taking them to stores – are the late producer Terry Melcher’s 1974 solo album, singer-songwriter Jamie Brockett’s 1969 cult favorite “Remember the Wind and the Rain,” four collections by ’70s L.A. pop tunesmith Andrew Gold, Sonny Bono’s 1967 solo record “Inner Views” and three entries by the ’80s cowpunk act Rank & File.… Read more »

Merchants are describing this year’s holiday-season sales as a roller-coaster ride. That could hardly be said about the full-year sales experience. At least a roller coaster offers the contrast of intermittent highs and lows. Album sales started with one long rise toward a hopeful tally for the first eight months of 2004, followed by a steep decline that stole back most of the year’s advances in just a few weeks, as if a thrill ride had been designed by a party pooper who did not fully grasp the concept. But maybe a better analogy – as Ludacris replaces Jay-Z and… Read more »

Washington – Viacom will pay a record $3.5 million to settle dozens of federal investigations into alleged indecency on TV and the radio, and introduce delays in more live programming to help catch troublesome material before it gets on the air. The settlement, announced Tuesday, closes investigations dating back to 2001. One involved shock jock Howard Stern, and two focused on Opie and Anthony, who lost their Viacom-owned New York radio show after it featured a couple purporting to have sex inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Greg “Opie” Hughes and Anthony Cumia went silent after the 2002 show until October, when… Read more »

As the early buzz over new music services such as Apple Computer’s iTunes fades, record labels and technology companies are struggling to turn the services into profitable businesses. Speaking at the iHollywood Forum’s Music 2.0 conference in Los Angeles Monday, executives on both sides focused on the 99-cent price tag that has become the market’s standard for downloadable music. Critics say that that price needs to come down if mainstream consumers are to start buying in large numbers, making the Internet a serious factor in the record industry’s bottom line. Record labels say they can’t afford to go lower. “There’s… Read more »

A federal court Wednesday blocked controversial new Federal Communications Commission media ownership rules pending a full judicial review in a major blow to large media companies. In a loss for the Republican-led FCC, the three-judge panel of the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia granted a stay order that prevented the new rules from taking effect as scheduled on Thursday. Critics argued that the FCC rules would concentrate too much power in the hands of media moguls. The new rules were backed by media giants including Viacom Inc.’s CBS, General Electric Co.’s NBC and News Corp. Ltd’s Fox… Read more »

Eminem, who is also known as Slim Shady, is presently facing a lawsuit from a Nevada-based sports apparel company over the usage of the name Shady Ltd. for the rapper’s new clothing line, according to the Detroit Free Press. Shady Inc., a Nevada company that sells t-shirts and hats in Nevada stores and via the Internet, maintains that they’ve been using the name since 1999 and that they had it trademarked in 2001. The company filed a lawsuit in January in Nevada federal court after learning of Eminem’s intentions to launch a clothing line using the Shady name. Eminem has… Read more »

Headbanging riffs prevail on Marilyn Manson’s “The Golden Age of Grotesque.” “Use Your Fist and Not Your Mouth,” and “mOBSCENE,” with its taunting cheerleader chants, carry a heavyweight sound of bludgeoning rhythms and chainsaw guitars. Perhaps most engaging is the title track, a trawling hummer of a bummer; it’s melodramatic vaudevillian style recalls Pink Floyd’s personal crises of “The Wall” and fades with a chorus similar to Iggy Pop’s “Passenger” as it celebrates an age where the profane is profitable.