Sixteen-year-old Amy Fleisher Madden accomplished what many kids only dream of: she started her own independent record label. We take a look back on the importance of Fiddler Records, and the power behind it.
Songwriters, composers, and music publishers are making preparations to one day collect performance fees from Apple and other e-tailers for not just traditional music downloads but for downloads of films and TV shows as well. Those downloads contain music after all. These groups even want compensation for iTunes’ 30-second song samples. In the future, Apple may be required to pay licensing fees to ASCAP and BMI for the downloads of TV shows and films it sells. At a time when many iTunes shoppers are still fuming over Apple’s first-ever increase in song prices, the demands by the American Society of… Read more »
Hollywood and Silicon Valley carried their battle over Internet piracy to Capitol Hill on Thursday, debating the need for technology to prevent the illegal trading of movies and television shows online. The entertainment industry told lawmakers that without copy protection the threat of extensive piracy will force the industry to move its best programming to pay services such as cable and satellite TV. “Over-the-air television as we know it today will be a thing of the past,” said Fritz Attaway, an executive vice president with the Motion Picture Association of America. He testified before the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on… Read more »
Top showbiz execs pledged Sunday to step up their contribution to the war effort after a meeting with White House senior advisor Karl Rove. Details of Hollywood’s multifront initiative will be forged over the next few weeks, but industry moguls made clear their desire to pitch in. The campaign will include helping the Bush Administration spread its message regarding the war on terrorism both at home and abroad, support for U.S. troops and buttressing resolve among the American public. “All of us in the industry have an incredible urge to do something,” said Paramount Pictures chief Sherry Lansing. One concrete… Read more »
Next week Backstreet Boys will release their first greatest-hits package, The Hits: Chapter One, which includes 14 songs from their three studio albums as well as the new single “Drowning,” which features Kevin Richardson on piano. On November 6 they’ll follow with the VHS and DVD release “The Video Hits: Chapter One.” While the obligatory “best-of” release, is often a signal of creative drought, that’s not the case for Backstreet Boys. The group worked on a batch of new songs on its last tour, which ended October 19 in Las Vegas. “We had a writing studio and we got five… Read more »
A group of researchers who foiled four different copyright protection technologies in a contest launched last year by the music industry is now being asked by the record companies to suppress its findings, one of the researchers said Tuesday. The research group – composed of students and professors from Princeton and Rice Universities and an employee of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center – had initially planned to present its findings Thursday at a Pittsburgh conference on information security but was then threatened with legal action by the forum, the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), a forum representing music and technology… Read more »
Clear Channel’s move to shut down the streamed signal of its broadcasts has been followed by several stations and groups. Clear Channel’s move yesterday to shut down the streamed signal of its broadcasts has been followed by several stations and groups. Emmis Communications has announced plans to stop streaming until the issue with AFTRA is resolved. Cox Radio has also said it will have to stop streaming until ad-insertion technology is implemented. Individual stations within all three groups have continued streaming throughout the AFTRA debacle, but in dwindling number. Clear Channel Internet Group Chairman/CEO Kevin Mayer said that before long,… Read more »
Proposals with the U.S. Copyright Office suggest vastly different Internet radio royalty rates. The Recording Industry Association of America and Digital Media Association (DiMA), a trade group comprised of about 80 webcasters, filed proposals with the U.S. Copyright Office suggesting vastly different Internet radio royalty rates. A three-person Copyright Office arbitration panel will begin to examine rates for compulsory licenses in July, but it is expected to take at least six weeks to complete arbitration. At issue is a dispute between the radio and record industries over stipulations in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 mandating that webcasters pay… Read more »
Clear Channel responds to AFTRA’s demand for high streaming fees by shutting down its Internet broadcasts. Responding to AFTRA’s demand for streaming fees three times that of on-air spots, Clear Channel has suspending all Internet streams. Listeners attempting to access any Clear Channel station on the Internet now hear only this message: “Due to continuing uncertainty over rights issues related to the streaming of radio broadcast programming over the Internet, including issues regarding demands for additional fees for the streaming of recorded music and radio commercials, we and our advertisers are forced to temporarily disable our streaming. We apologize for… Read more »
