Search Results for: plan b entertainment

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 »

Listen.com, which on April 5th acquired TuneTo, gave 35 employees pink slips and severance packages on Wednesday, citing current market conditions and the arrival of 15 employees from TuneTo. The company is only one of many in April to have let workers go due to a slowing dot-conomy. Challenger, Gray, & Christmans, a Chicago-based firm that has tracked Internet layoffs since 1999, says that dot-com companies released a record number-17,554-of employees in April alone. That’s an 84 percent increase from the previous month, in which 9,533 Internet workers were fired. In the first four months of this year alone, more… Read more »

www.warpedtour.com – The Vans Warped Tour and Blink-182 come together for a one-time only show on July 14 in Minneapolis, Minn. at Somerset Park. LAUNCH Media Inc. today announced that MCA recording artist Blink-182 will join this summer’s Vans Warped Tour for a one-time only performance in Minneapolis at Somerset Park on July 14. Veterans to the Warped Tour, Blink-182, first played the punk and skate festival back in 1997. Since then, they have experienced worldwide success, with their records reaping platinum status and their concert tours packing ’em in all across Europe, Australia, Asia, and the Americas. Just six… Read more »

Madonna will now play six concerts in Britain after all tickets for what was to be her only British appearance sold out minutes after they went on sale Thursday. The Material Girl will perform at London’s Earl’s Court on July 6, 7, 9, 10 and 12 in addition to her originally planned show at the venue on July 4, American Independence Day. Madonna fans camped out overnight to make sure they got tickets for the singer’s first public performance in Britain for seven years. Promoters said all 16,000 tickets for the first show had sold out within 15 minutes. Ticket… Read more »

ActiveBuddy Inc., the messaging industry’s foremost provider of interactive agent technology, and Capitol Records today announced an agreement to build branded interactive agents. Capitol Records will deploy the technology to promote its artists and new album releases beginning with a Radiohead-branded interactive agent. Capitol Records plans to launch the Radiohead agent as part of its global marketing campaign for “Amnesiac,” the Grammy Award-winning band’s fifth album, due for release on June 5. Through ActiveBuddy’s technology, Radiohead will be the first band to provide exclusive Radiohead content directly to its fans through instant messaging. The Radiohead agent will be the most… Read more »

Bowing to a threatened recording industry lawsuit, a Princeton University computer scientist decided against revealing Thursday how he and other researchers thwarted security measures meant to protect copyright digital music. Edward Felten, an associate professor whose team included Rice University and Xerox-PARC researchers, had been silent for days on whether he would present his findings at the International Information Hiding Workshop in Pittsburgh. On Thursday, a frustrated Felten said he decided against releasing the information because of the potential for lawsuits against the researchers, their schools and conference organizers. He did not say what he would do next. “Litigation is… Read more »

In yet another boon to ad insertion companies everywhere, Yahoo! has announced plans to diversify their advertising revenue streams by adding audio advertisements to Yahoo! Broadcast. The new streaming destination being offered by the king of all portals will carry streamed audio and video entertainment from content providers such as National Lampoon, ABCNews.com, Accuweather, CourtTV.com, The Sporting News and Travelocity.com. In 1999, Yahoo! bought its way into the multimedia content and streaming market when it purchased the talent and technology that was Broadcast.com from Mark Cuban, who now owns the Dallas Mavericks. Last month, Yahoo! confirmed that despite the site’s… Read more »

With the Hollywood-Washington war expected to be reignited today, Motion Picture Assn. of America prexy-CEO Jack Valenti on Monday warned lawmakers in no uncertain terms to back off. “May God save the First Amendment,” Valenti said during a keynote speech before the National Assn. of Broadcasters, which is meeting here for its annual confab. Valenti, like his counterparts in the music biz, was gearing up for the release this morning of a Federal Trade Commission report that will chart how well the entertainment biz has done in stopping the marketing of violent or suggestive fare to kids. The FTC reportedly… Read more »