Search Results for: plan b entertainment

Sony/ATV Music Publishing had a lot more country tunes to croon Tuesday after it paid $157 million to acquire the storied Acuff-Rose music publishing catalog fromNashville-based leisure and resort firm Gaylord Entertainment. The purchase adds 55,000 copyrights to the Sony/ATV catalog, including popular work from such country and pop acts as Roy Orbison and Hank Williams, as well as newer stars such as Brooks & Dunn and Tim McGraw. Sony was already far and away the largest country-music publisher in the world, with more than 150,000 titles in its archives before the Acuff-Rose deal. But as songwriters have become increasingly… Read more »

Stunned fans of The Who’s John Entwistle left flowers and consoled each other outside a casino concert hall where the bass player who helped make the band one of the biggest in rock history had been expected to perform Friday. Entwistle was found dead Thursday in his Hard Rock Hotel room of an apparent heart attack. He was 57. “The Ox has left the building – we’ve lost another great friend,” bandmates Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey wrote on Townshend’s Web site. The Who’s celebrated drummer, Keith Moon, died in 1978. Former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman described Entwistle as… Read more »

Acknowledging that online piracy is forcing dramatic changes in the music industry, the world’stwo largest record companies are poised to make it easy and cheap for fans to buy-rather than steal-songs off the Internet. The moves by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment accelerate the industry’s transition to an era in which music is distributed electronically. Other major labels are likely to follow as the record business grapples with the rise of online music copying through unauthorized services such as Napster, Kazaa and Morpheus and potentially billions of dollars in lost sales. Rather than trying to force consumers to… Read more »

Popular music has been upended by every technological advance from electricity and the phonograph to cassette tapes and recordable CDs. The switch from analog to digital accelerated the pace of illicit duplication and distribution, sounding the loudest alarm yet. As Napster struggles to survive, other sites from Gnutella to KaZaa are filling the void. Last week, labels and music publishers sued Audiogalaxy, a booming file-swapping network that lured 3.5 million users in March. The complaint: The Recording Industry Association of America, on behalf of labels, is vigorously seeking to stamp out proliferating Web sites that permit free downloads of music.… Read more »

When Courtney Love has her day in court to argue her case against Geffen Records, Inc., she and her attorney won’t be able to use a pivotal claim Love has touted since the dispute started over a year ago. One of Love’s key arguments has been that recording artists are unfairly excluded from a labor law provision that allows other entertainment workers, such as actors, to be freed from their contracts after seven years. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Fumiko Wasserman dismissed that argument from the suit on Wednesday, according to a court spokesperson. Wasserman green-lighted Love’s other claims… Read more »

The people who tried to take away your VCR are at it again. Hollywood has always dreamed of a “well-mannered marketplace” where the only technologies that you can buy are those that do not disrupt its business. Acting through legislators who dance to Hollywood’s tune, the movie studios are racing to lock away the flexible, general-purpose technology that has given us a century of unparalelled prosperity and innovation. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed the “Content Protection Status Report” with the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, laying out its plan to remake the technology world to suit its… Read more »

A legal fight that has pitted file-swapping software companies Kazaa BV and StreamCast Networks against big record labels and movie studios is collapsing as the small companies run out of funds. Netherlands-based Kazaa BV, which created the file-swapping technology underlying Kazaa, Grokster and earlier versions of Morpheus, is conceding defeat-although its founders already appear to have started another near-identical company. Meanwhile, StreamCast is losing a high-powered attorney with a winning track record against the music companies in court. The disintegration of the companies’ legal case will have little immediate affect on the popular Kazaa and Morpheus file-trading networks themselves. But… Read more »

Bad-boy rapper Eminem’s eagerly awaited album, “The Eminem Show,” is to be released a week earlier than planned, on May 27, because pirate copies are already in circulation, his record label said on Monday. Interscope Records, a unit of France’s Vivendi Universal, said the early worldwide release of the album, which had been due on June 4, should minimize the impact of the illegally manufactured copies. “We’re disappointed that inferior pirated copies of “The Eminem Show” are in circulation, which is why we’ve decided to make the legitimate version available sooner than originally planned,” said Max Hole, Universal’s head of… Read more »

Infinity Resources, Inc. announces the launch of its newest e-commerce web site, DeepDiscountCD.com. DeepDiscountCD.com is the latest addition to IRI’s network of entertainment sites selling VHS videos, DVDs and Compact Discs. With a lowest total price guarantee and free shipping, IRI hopes to duplicate the success that it had with DeepDiscountDVD.com launched in early 2001. DeepDiscountDVD.com rapidly gained popularity among the online community with its low price and free shipping guarantees and its reputation has since spread offline helping to make it one of the largest stand alone DVD stores online. “DeepDiscountDVD.com is a success because customers understand the value… Read more »

German media conglomerate Bertelsmann has agreed to acquire Napster in a deal that will keep the controversial file-sharing service alive for the near future. Napster CEO Konrad Hilbers and Shawn Fanning, Napster’s creator, will remain with the company. On Tuesday Hilbers announced his resignation after Napster’s board of directors rejected a deal for the company to be acquired by the German company. Fanning at that time also decided to leave the company, sources said. Under Friday’s deal, Bertelsmann will pay $8 million to Napster’s creditors to acquire the company’s assets. The transaction opens the door for Napster to file for… Read more »