Search Results for: GERMANY

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Tuesday that Sony BMG agreed to settle charges that it secretly embedded potentially damaging anti-piracy software in some of its CDs. The settlement requires Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Germany’s Bertelsmann AG, to make further disclosures, to allow consumers to exchange the CDs at issue and reimburse consumers for up to $150 to repair any damage to their computers, the FTC said. “Consumers’ computers belong to them, and companies must adequately disclose unexpected limitations on the customary use of their products so consumers can make informed decisions regarding whether… Read more »

NUREMBERG, Germany–Coding Technologies today announced an upgraded release of its MPEG-4 aacPlus Audio Encoder engine. The company’s aacPlus audio codec is the audio compression format of choice across a variety of industry standards, systems and applications, including, MPEG, DVB, DMB, 3GPP. Coding Technologies’ aacPlus implementations are used by the world’s most demanding professional equipment manufacturers, broadcasters, and content aggregators to deliver high quality music via terrestrial, satellite, the Internet, and mobile networks.Coding Technologies’ enhanced encoder achieves significant improvements in audio fidelity and listening experience without any associated increase in bandwidth consumption. This allows content service providers to “dial-down” transmission bandwidth… Read more »

Independent record labels behind artists like The White Stripes, Deep Purple and Arctic Monkeys announced a global deal Saturday to pool access to their catalogs, seeking to grab a bigger share of online music sales from the major record companies. Indies and their trade groups from more than a dozen countries signed up to Merlin, a nonprofit licensing agency that will cut deals on their behalf with download sites under the terms of the agreement unveiled at Midem, a music industry gathering in the French Riviera town of Cannes. Smaller record companies with just a handful of successful artists fear… Read more »

After a hectic year which saw the band crisscrossing the globe, performing to sold-out crowds and grabbing several awards, Seattle horror-punksters, Aiden are set to accomplish even more in 2007…with Conviction, which will be the title of their upcoming full-length effort on Victory Records. The band begins pre-production on their eagerly anticipated release January 15, according to leading WiL Francis, 14 songs have already been written. “I’ve never been more excited about new songs,” he declares. “I’ve never written songs like this, mainly because I was scared that it wasn’t “punk” enough. But I woke up one day and asked… Read more »

Chris Cornell, prepare to get your transcendence on. Audioslave are hitting the road in support of their upcoming second album beginning April 14 in Las Vegas, and from sound of things, opening night can’t come soon enough for Cornell. “I can just go out onstage and get lost in the music and get lost in whatever it is I am doing and it becomes transcendent, and it is kind of addictive now,” the singer said Wednesday (March 16). “With Audioslave, I’ve really started to like the road a lot. There is a certain dedication and work ethic that the band… Read more »

Los Angeles – Academia’s loss is heavy metal’s gain. Ian Kilmister, a.k.a. Lemmy, the frontman for Grammy-winning English rock trio Motorhead, could have made a stimulating history professor, sharing his begrudging admiration for Goering and disdain for “bastards” like Hitler and Roosevelt with eager students. Instead, the 59-year-old achieved cult fame with generations of headbangers by singing and writing furious anthems like “Killed By Death” and “Orgasmatron.” But he remains fascinated by World War II and he spends his money collecting Nazi memorabilia, which is piled high in his two-bedroom apartment off the Sunset Strip. “I was born in ’45,… Read more »

Patrice Pike, a true woman in rock behind the Rock/Alternative group Sister Seven (from Austin, TX, USA) has won the overall top prize of the 2004 Songwriting Competition. “My Three Wishes” was the winning song written by Patrice Pike, Wayne Sutton, Sean Phillips and Darrell Phillips. Winners came from United Kingdom, United States, Czech Republic, Australia, The Bahamas, Germany, Canada and Denmark. David Francey (of Ontario, CANADA) was a finalist in 2003, won first prize in the Folk category of the 2004 USA Songwriting Competition. Canadians have won the prize in this category three years in a row. In 2002… Read more »

Detroit – Karl Haas, who brought classical music to millions of listeners through his syndicated radio program, “Adventures in Good Music,” has died. He was 91. Haas died Sunday at a hospital in Royal Oak, according to WCLV-FM in Cleveland, which produced his program. “Adventures in Good Music,” an hour-long program in which Haas blended music and talk aimed at casual listeners, was syndicated to hundreds of stations in the United States, Australia, Mexico and Panama and was broadcast by Armed Forces Radio. Haas delighted listeners with his vast musical knowledge and his penchant for punny program titles, such as… Read more »

The message posted in an Internet chat room read, “Seeking well-built man, 18-30 years old for slaughter.” A few months later, a user responded: “I offer myself to you and will let you dine from my live body. Not butchery, dining!!” It wasn’t a joke, and what followed was far more gruesome and bizarre than the plot of nearly any horror film. In March 2001, Armin Meiwes, a 42-year-old computer technician in Hesse, Germany, killed, dismembered and ate 43-year-old microchip engineer Bernd Juergen Brandes. While Brandes was still alive, the two dined on parts of his flesh together, then Meiwes… Read more »

New York – Dreams of world domination must be hard for MTV executives to avoid when they host a party at the Kremlin, with a Russian diva and Queen dueting on “We Will Rock You” and Russian soldiers performing a hip-hop dance routine. MTV Networks will reach a milestone in February when the turn of a switch starts an MTV outlet in Africa, the company’s 100th channel worldwide and first based on that continent. Most of its American audience is probably unaware of the extent to which MTV and its sister networks have blanketed the world in an aggressive expansion… Read more »