Search Results for: plan b entertainment

The lesson learned in the courtship between Vivendi Universal and MP3.com is that record companies and technology companies need each other to succeed in the whipsaw world of Internet music. The world’s five largest record labels are racing to launch alternatives to Napster, the once popular song-swapping service now barred by a federal court from offering most songs copyrighted by the labels. And Vivendi, which owns the world’s largest record company Universal Music Group, is betting that MP3.com will raise its online presence and offerings above its competitors. Vivendi plans to launch a music subscription service called Duet this summer… Read more »

John Lydon, the former Sex Pistols vocalist, also known as Johnny Rotten has compared Eminem to Sid Vicious. He says that there are similarities between the two although Eminem has more kudos. Speaking to Belgian magazine Mao he said, “Yeah, there are similarities, but I give him more kudos than Sid, I think he’s a little bit more clued in. Some of his poetry is quite great – it’s really clever, shifty stuff and he can run with it at the speed of lightning.” “There’s not many rappers out there that can be that fast. It’s not all of us… Read more »

French media giant Vivendi Universal said on Sunday it will buy its one-time legal foe MP3.com Inc. for about $372 million in hopes of bolstering its online music business. MP3.com, which operates a music download Web site and a series of other music services, represents one possible springboard for the distribution of music over the Internet for Vivendi Universal, which owns the world’s largest record company, Universal Music Group. Major record companies have been looking for a way to replace the embattled Napster song swapping service, with services of their own. Vivendi said MP3.com could become an integral part of… Read more »

Record companies face off against music publishers and songwriters like Lyle Lovett in Washington this week in a growing dispute over royalty payments that threatens industry plans to sell music online. The major recording labels and music publishers, who own music rights, are at odds over on-demand or interactive music streamed over the Internet, which allows consumers to listen to whatever song they want when they want. While the world’s big music labels argued successfully that free song-swap service Napster infringed their copyrights, songwriters and music publishers now claim that at least one major label, Vivendi Universal’s Universal Music Group,… Read more »

In what will mark her first regular TV involvement since she began her career dancing in the Flygirl ensemble of the Fox comedy series “In Living Color,” Jennifer Lopez has made a deal with NBC to star in and produce a special this fall. She will produce three additional specials for the network and also develop a half-hour sitcom based on her family and upbringing in the Bronx. At the same time, Lopez, who returns to theaters on Friday in the Luis Mandoki-directed drama “Angel Eyes,” is in talks to star in “One,” a Nick Kazan-written romance with supernatural overtones.… Read more »

RIAA and NARM will seek to institute revised voluntary restrictions in response to FTC criticism that the industry markets inappropriate materials to kids The Recording Industry Association of America has announced plans to form a task force to investigate ways to answer criticisms levied in the Federal Trade Commission’s May 1 report that accused the music industry of marketing to children products it labeled as explicit. The task force, which will also have representatives from the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) will seek to institute revised voluntary restrictions for marketing “stickered” materials in media outlets that are targeted to… Read more »

Long before gun-toting rap stars roamed America, the first manager of the Rolling Stones was terrorizing “Swinging” London, throwing errant journalists out of windows and others off bridges. Accompanied by a thuggish bodyguard, teenage pop Svengali Andrew Loog Oldham was said to be quite the rogue 40 years ago: Sporting a cape, he would careen around the city in his Mini Cooper, speakers blaring from the roof of the tiny car. This is not all completely true – especially the bit about the cape – but the anecdotes and rumors metamorphosed into “facts” over the years, a consequence of the… Read more »

Bertelsmann AG Chief Executive Thomas Middelhoff said in an interview published on Saturday that the company’s music division Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) would not be put up for sale. “There will be no sale of BMG,” Middelhoff said in an interview with German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The comments come after the collapse of a planned merger of BMG and Britain’s EMI Group earlier this week as the two groups failed to crack regulatory concerns. Last July, Middelhoff said the sale of BMG could be possible under certain conditions but told Sueddeutsche Zeitung that the situation had changed after his company’s… Read more »

A federal appeals court in Manhattan heard oral arguments yesterday in a case that questions the constitutionality of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA was passed by Congress in 1998 when a number of entertainment companies and trade organizations pressured lawmakers to make unauthorized electronic distribution of digital copyrighted materials illegal. The DMCA legislation has given rise to a move by the RIAA to require radio stations streaming on the Internet to pay both performance and publishing royalty fees. If it is upheld in the online world, it’s also possible that the practice will be extended to on-air broadcasts,… Read more »

The American Civil Liberties Union last week criticized proposed legislation that would give the government added regulatory power over the entertainment industry. In so doing, the ACLU called the move a serious threat to America’s constitutional freedoms. “At the end of the day, parents must have the ultimate say in what children see, hear and read,” said Marvin Johnson, an ACLU Legislative Counsel, in a prepared statement. “If allowed to become law, this bill would place such a responsibility in the hands of Congress and the executive branch. The government must not be turned into a dormitory matron policing America’s… Read more »