Search Results for: amazon music

Every day, the roughly one million people who visit the iTunes Store home page are presented with several dozen albums, TV shows and movie downloads to consider buying — out of the four million such goods the Apple site offers. This prime promotion is analogous to a CD being displayed at the checkout stands of all 940 Best Buy stores or featured on the front page of Target’s ad circular. How do bands get these boosts? Who decides whether Arcade Fire is plugged at the top of the iTunes site — or whether Nickelback gets no mention? Apple has jettisoned… Read more »

SAO PAULO, Brazil – Grammy-winning singer and guitarist Jack White of the rock duo White Stripes married British model Karen Elson this week in a canoe in the Brazilian Amazon, according to a message on the band’s Web site. The marriage, conducted by a shaman priest, took place on Wednesday at the confluence of the Amazon, Negro and Solimoes rivers with a group of close friends attending, the site reported. The band’s drummer, Meg White, was maid of honor, and manager Ian Montone was best man. The couple were later blessed by a Catholic priest in a church in the… Read more »

Serious record collectors generally do not flip through the CDs and DVDs at Wal-Mart, Best Buy or Target. The music departments in those stores are mainly known for offering a narrow selection of chart toppers. But increasingly mass merchandisers and electronics retailers have become the place to go for music that cannot be found anywhere else. That is because many big-name artists with new releases to promote do not just turn to their labels, they also strike exclusive deals with major retailers. In this holiday shopping season, for example, an extended version of Rod Stewart’s new CD, “As Time Goes… Read more »

When the record industry announced in June that it would begin filing individual lawsuits against hundreds of illegal file-swappers, it was not just a bad PR move, it was a signal that the music business is more desperate than ever. Halfway through 2003, sales continue to slump, down eight percent from the first six months of last year. Three of the ten best-selling albums so far this year were actually released in 2002, and only three artists – 50 Cent, Norah Jones and Linkin Park – managed to sell more than 2 million copies between January and June. 50 Cent,… Read more »

In late April, Madonna gave a rare in-store concert before 400 fans to plug her new American Life album. Outside the event, which took place at Tower Records in New York’s Greenwich Village, another 2,000-plus fans thronged. For years, Tower has harnessed such star power to burnish its credentials as a purveyor of hipness. “It was the buzz around town,” boasts store manager David Montes of the Madonna love-in. But the splashy appearance obscured a harsh backstage truth: Tower Records is in such deep trouble that its parent, privately held MTS Inc. in West Sacramento, has put the company on… Read more »

Tech’s big guns are wading into the online music business – and now the big question is whether Microsoft will squash its rivals like a bug, as it has so many others. Industry watchers say this time Bill Gates has his hands full. Microsoft, Amazon.com and Yahoo! are three of the players, along with AOL Time Warner and Viacom’s MTV, according to a story in The Los Angeles Times. While Gates considers a digital music launch, his company will now likely have to face off with the almighty music industry, which he needs to win over if he’s going to… Read more »

In a pairing that would alter the architecture of the music business, Apple Computer Inc. is in talks with Vivendi Universal to buy Universal Music Group, the world’s largest record company, for as much as $6 billion, sources said. Such a seemingly unlikely combination would instantly make technology guru Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and chief executive, the most powerful player in the record industry. Universal, which reaps about $6 billion in sales annually from artists such as 50 Cent, Shania Twain, U2 and Luciano Pavarotti, would be controlled by a maverick who revolutionized the computer market and coined the mantra… Read more »

Top executives at the major record companies have finally found an online music service that makes them excited about the digital future, sources said Monday. The new service, developed by Apple Computer, offers Macintosh users many of the same capabilities that are already available from services previously endorsed by the labels. But the Apple offering won over music executives because it makes buying and downloading music as simple and nontechnical as buying a book from Amazon.com, one source said. “This is exactly what the music industry has been waiting for,” said one person familiar with the negotiations between the Cupertino… Read more »

The embattled record industry got more bad news on Sunday as a study showed online sales of music dropped 25 percent in the first nine months of 2002. The survey by research firm ComScore Networks Inc, which monitored more than 1.5 million Web users, showed online sales of music – in the form of physical singles, albums, CDs and tapes – fell to $545 million from $730 million in the same period a year earlier. Sales of digital downloads were also included in the survey but accounted for a tiny portion of the total, ComScore said. As the music industry… 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 »