Search Results for: european

There are actors who sing and singers who act, but throughout pop history few entertainers have successfully balanced those twin careers. Neither could Hilary Duff, though not due to lack of effort. While her career as a pop diva skyrocketed – she released two platinum albums and a best-selling greatest-hits disc in just three years – the former Disney child star found her acting career stalling. Despite her considerable star wattage, Hollywood had difficulty seeing Duff beyond her past sugary sweet roles and good girl persona (no rehab or pantyless partying here). “It always shocks me the lack of openness,… Read more »

A Dublin High Court judge on Wednesday formally requested that Eminem provide testimony under oath explaining why he scrapped a sold-out gig at Slane Castle in 2005. The rap superstar’s answers are considered a potentially critical part of a civil lawsuit brought by the promoter against three insurance companies that declined to cover the costs of the cancellation. Eminem had been slated to headline the Sept. 17, 2005 concert as part of the European leg of his Anger Management Tour, but the rapper, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, backed out just weeks before the show, citing exhaustion stemming… Read more »

Struggling music company EMI Group PLC, beset by profit warnings and an accounting scandal in Brazil, was thrown a potential lifeline Tuesday with a possible new takeover bid by former suitor Warner Music Group. A tie-up would bring a badly needed infusion of top U.S. artists including Madonna and the Red Hot Chili Peppers to London-based EMI – whose Beatles remix album has dropped off Billboard’s top 40 and whose great hope for cross-Atlantic appeal, Robbie Williams, has drawn more publicity for rehab than music. EMI confirmed Tuesday it had been approached by Warner, but that it has received no… 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 »

Warner Music Group Corp., home to recording artists such as Red Hot Chili Peppers, James Blunt and Daniel Powter, said Thursday its first-quarter profit fell 74 percent due to fewer albums released during the period and soft domestic and European sales. Its shares fell nearly 5 percent. The New York-based recording company said net income declined to $18 million, or 12 cents per share, from $69 million, or 46 cents per share, during the same period a year ago. Total revenue fell 11 percent to $928 million from $1.04 billion during the prior-year period. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected… Read more »

In a rare open letter from CEO Steve Jobs on Tuesday, Apple urged record companies to abandon digital rights management technologies. The letter, posted on Apple’s Web site and titled “Thoughts on Music,” is a long examination of Apple’s iTunes and what the future may hold for the online distribution of copy-protected music. In the letter, Jobs says Apple was forced to create a DRM system to get the world’s four largest record companies on board with the iTunes Store. But there are alternatives, Jobs wrote. Apple and the rest of the online music distributors could continue down a DRM… Read more »

Sony Corp and Bertelsmann AG have refiled a request for EU regulators to clear a 2004 deal merging their music units, the European Commission said Thursday. Regulators have to re-examine the deal they cleared in July 2004 because an EU court struck down their original approval last July, citing “manifest errors” in how authorities decided that combining the two music majors would not restrict customer choice. The judgment sent lawyers into a flurry because it undermined the legality of the Sony BMG deal that formed the world’s second-largest record label behind Universal, bringing Sony artists like Aerosmith, George Michael and… Read more »

By now, you might be aware that Fall Out Boy’s new album, Infinity on High, somehow leaked online over the weekend. What you might not know is what FOB’s label, Island Records, plans to do about it. You may have heard that the label was thinking about moving the album’s release date up a week, from February 6 to January 30. And you probably read the reports on various message boards that FOB mouthpiece/bassist Pete Wentz all but confirmed that move onstage at a Friends or Enemies Tour stop in Atlanta. Well, it turns out that none of that information… Read more »