Search Results for: GERMANY

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Lisa Marie Presley is keeping Graceland but selling the bulk of the Elvis estate, including rights to her father’s name and image, in a deal worth approximately $100 million. Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc. announced an agreement Thursday to sell 85 percent of its assets to businessman Robert F.X. Sillerman, founder of music and sports promoter SFX Entertainment. The Presley estate brought in almost $45 million last year. Sillerman said more aggressive marketing, supported by capital raised through a new publicly traded company, can make Elvis an even bigger earner. Presley occupies a unique place in American pop… Read more »

MUNICH, Germany – Prosecutors have dropped an investigation of Oasis singer Liam Gallagher over a 2002 brawl at a Munich hotel in exchange for a $65,200 fine, a spokesman said Monday. The Dec. 1, 2002, fight at the hotel left Gallagher with several broken teeth, and police said at the time that he had kicked an officer outside the hotel’s nightclub. Anton Winkler, a spokesman for Munich prosecutors, said contradictory statements by those involved left authorities unable to clearly establish who started the brawl. “We have closed the investigation against the payment” of $65,200, he said. Gallagher, 32, had been… Read more »

London – When the curtain went up on MTV’s Europe Awards in Rome on Thursday, only one of the performers was signed to an independent record label. And at European pop music’s annual showcase event where fans vote for their favorites either online or by mobile phone, not only were the majority of acts from the United States, but all major prizes went to Americans. The independent record industry says the business has been taken over by four mega-companies that are helping to entrench American cultural “hegemony” across the music world. “The record business is stacked in favor of the… Read more »

London – EMI Group PLC, one of the world’s ‘big three’ music companies, reported a fall in sales and a net loss for the first half of its fiscal year Friday but said it expected an improvement in the second half when its album release schedule kicks in. EMI, whose artists include Coldplay, Norah Jones, Kylie Minogue and Robbie Williams, said it was confident the global music industry was returning to a growth phase after a sales slump from 2000 to 2003. Chairman Eric Nicoli said the global industry recorded a decline of 1.3 percent for the first half of… Read more »

Los Angeles/New York – Columbia Records has moved up by one day the North American release of the new Destiny Child’s album, just as the R&B trio confirmed the first dates for its 2005 world tour. “Destiny Fulfilled” will be issued off-cycle from a traditional Tuesday stateside release on Nov. 15, the same date that the disc will be available internationally. The company says the change is due to the “potential for Internet leaks and ‘burned’ CD counterfeits” that could “lead consumers to experience inferior and incomplete versions of the album.” The move by follows Wednesday’s (Nov. 3) announcement that… Read more »

Apple(R) today announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded more than 150 million songs from the iTunes(R) Music Store, marking another major milestone for the online music business. The 150 millionth song was “Ex-Factor” by Lauryn Hill and was purchased by Beth Santisteven from Ignacio, Colorado. iTunes users are now downloading more than 4 million songs per week, a rate of over 200 million songs per year. Apple also announced the immediate availability of iTunes gift cards at all Best Buy stores. “Crossing 150 million downloads marks another major milestone for the online music business,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s… Read more »

Apple Computer says it has sold five million songs in the first 10 weeks after opening three European iTunes Music Stores on the Internet in Germany, France and Britain. It made the announcement in a presentation on the fringes of the annual Apple Expo on Tuesday. Worldwide, Apple has sold more than four million of its market leading iPod digital music players and sold more than 100 million tracks on its iTunes online music store in the United States since it was launched in April last year.

The success of the Black Eyed Peas flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that the music business sacrifices long-term artist development in favor of quick hits and short-term corporate profits. Signed to Interscope Records more than six years ago by chairman Jimmy Iovine, the progressive hip-hop group’s first two albums, “Behind the Front” in 1998 and “Bridging the Gap” in 2000 earned rave reviews but failed to go gold (shipments of 500,000 copies). The first album peaked at No. 139 on the Billboard 200 with sales of 197,000 units, according Nielsen SoundScan, while the sophomore set stalled at… Read more »

Independent record labels are on the verge of striking an agreement with Apple Computer that will allow its iTunes music service to sell tracks by artists such as the White Stripes and Basement Jaxx across Europe. A pact could be announced as early as today, sources close to the talks have told The Times, ending a feud that has kept independent labels off iTunes since its launch in the UK, France and Germany last month. The new deal is expected to ease the concerns of independent record labels that they would be locked into long-term contracts at fixed prices. The… Read more »

Apple Computers’ iTunes Music Stores in the United Kingdom, France and Germany have lost little sales momentum in their second week of operations. The services have registered more than 1.5 million combined download sales since launching June 15, the computer giant claims. Apple has not released details on the best-selling titles in the markets. The European download services made a big splash in their debut week, shifting 800,000 songs in total. Comparatively, it took Apple just seven days to sell 1 million songs in the United States when it introduced the iTunes Music Store for Macintosh computers there in April… Read more »