Search Results for: plan b entertainment

The week the music industry brought suit against 261 users of Internet file-sharing services, Donald L. McCabe was in St. Louis to talk about a different form of digital copying. Mr. McCabe, a Rutgers University professor, has made a career of studying the cheating of American high school and college students. His most recent study found that cheating was spreading almost like file-sharing. Of more than 18,000 students surveyed, 38 percent said they had lifted material from the Internet for use in papers in the last year. More striking to Mr. McCabe, 44 percent said they considered this sampling no… Read more »

Summer touring partners Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera each saw their latest solo albums reach the triple-platinum plateau in August. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified Timberlake’s “Justified” (Jive) and Aguilera’s “Stripped” (RCA) for U.S. shipments of 3 million copies. Both albums debuted and peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. The artists recently wrapped their co-headlining Justified & Stripped U.S. summer tour and now have set their sights on Europe. Aguilera will begin her own two-month tour there Sept. 12 in Greece with Japanese and Australian dates to follow. Timberlake will tour the region beginning Nov.… Read more »

Universal Music Group’s strategy of lowering its CD prices is good news for music fans, but some traditional music retailers on Thursday worried the move may damage their business. A day after Universal announced a cut on the wholesale price of most of its CDs and an end to advertising discounts, retailers large and small began assessing how the new pricing plan would affect them. Large retailers such as Borders, BestBuy, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Amazon.com generally reserved judgment Thursday on the change, although several noted it could be an effective consumer lure. Several of them declined to discuss how… Read more »

Vivendi Universal’s (V) Universal Music Group plans to sharply lower the consumer cost for compact discs, in an effort to bring customers back into retail stores and boost music sales. The move comes as the music industry grapples with a continuing decline in retail sales in the face of rampant piracy and other problems. In a press release Wednesday, Universal Music said it will reduce wholesale prices and implement a $12.98 manufacturer suggested retail price on virtually all of its top-line CDs in the U.S. The plan will eliminate MSRPs of as much as $18.98, and the company believes retailers… Read more »

U.S. television network NBC won Vivendi Universal’s marathon show-business auction on Tuesday with a proposed merger to create a new entertainment industry giant worth more than $40 billion. NBC, a unit of General Electric Co., clinched exclusive negotiating rights to finalize a deal that would give it a major film studio, more cable channels and theme parks to vault the No. 1 U.S. broadcast network closer to the ranks of such global titans as Walt Disney Co. and Viacom Inc. If the deal is completed, the new company, to be called NBC-Universal, would include Vivendi’s Universal Pictures, the Hollywood studio… Read more »

Hollywood will win the war against illegal downloading but the battlefield will be littered with casualties, including the DVD and CD formats as physical means of distributing video and audio, according to a Forrester Research study released Tuesday. The study predicts that in five years, CDs and DVDs will start to go the way of the vinyl LP as 33% of music sales and 19% of home video revenue shifts to streaming and downloading. Part of that stems from the continued proliferation of illegal file trading, which has caused an estimated $700 million of lost CD sales since 1999. But… Read more »

The Jagermeister Fall Music Tour is coming, and heavy metal icons, Slayer, will lead the assault! Produced and promoted by Clear Channel Entertainment, the tour will let loose on October 8th in Minneapolis, MN and finish up in Los Angeles on November 29th. Slayer’s recent release of their live DVD, War at the Warfield (American Recordings/UME), debuted at #3 on the Billboard charts in its first week. Their highly anticipated box set, Soundtrack to the Apocalypse (American Recordings/UME), due out on November 18, 2003, commemorates Slayer’s 20th anniversary as the undisputed thrash/punk/metal kings and will include classic Slayer tracks taken… Read more »

456 Entertainment, the record label started by MTV personality Carson Daly and former Loud Records executive VP Jonathan Rifkind, has signed an exclusive U.S. distribution deal with EMI’s Caroline Records Distribution and is planning its first releases for the fall. The label’s first signees include hip-hop/drum-and-bass artist Photek, whose first single, “We Got Heat,” is due Oct. 6 on 456. A full album, “Do or Die” will be released in early 2004. Other artists on board include Seymour Glass – a New York-based four-piece band that is recording its label debut for an early 2004 release – and the hip-hop… Read more »

Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. have nothing to worry about, but a university known more for churning out engineers than hit music is starting its own record label. Drexel University’s MAD Dragon Records expects to put out its first CD – a compilation of eight or nine bands – next year. The student-run label will be an integral part of Drexel’s fledgling music industry program, which in only three years has grown from eight students to more than 150. Students will be in charge of artist development, production, recording, marketing, contracts and distribution, while MAD Dragon musicians – also students… Read more »

Napster may be long dead, but the name and the “kitty” logo of the pioneer online music-swapping program could return to cyberspace before the year is out. Santa Clara-based Roxio Inc., which owns the rights to the Napster name, plans to shelve its current online music service, pressplay, and roll out Napster 2.0 by Christmas, Chris Gorog, Roxio’s chairman and chief executive, told The Associated Press. Gorog was scheduled to announce details of the venture Monday at the Jupiter Plug.IN Conference & Expo in New York. Software maker Roxio acquired pressplay, a joint venture of Universal Music Group and Sony… Read more »