Search Results for: System of a Down

Napster launched a test version of its new copyright-compliant service Thursday in a bid to restart the once wildly popular song-swap Web site that was shut down by a record industry lawsuit. The test or “beta” version, which lacks content from the major music labels, is not open to the public. Instead, it will be offered to 20,000 people randomly selected from a group of more than two million who e-mailed Napster showing interest in participating in the beta test. Napster’s service has been sidelined since July as a result of an injunction issued by U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn… Read more »

Online music company Listen.com Tuesday scored licensing deals with two major music labels for its nascent music subscription service, a move that underscored the record industry’s new readiness to cut deals with independent Internet distributors. The agreements with EMI, a unit of EMI Group Plc and BMG, a unit of Bertelsmann AG, represent a coup for Listen.com, one of the few remaining independent firms competing with Web services backed by the major music companies themselves. Listen.com said it expects to soon announce more licensing deals with major labels. Listen.com launched its service called Rhapsody in early December but its content… Read more »

Pressplay (www.pressplay.com), the online music service launched Dec. 19, is an order of magnitude better than rival MusicNet (www.musicnet.com), which launched Dec. 4. The gap is so great that I don’t think MusicNet deserves to sign up a single additional subscriber without first undertaking a major overhaul to match pressplay. Not that pressplay is perfect; the major record labels are still struggling to figure out how to sell their music online without opening the door to further piracy. But pressplay succeeds at delivering all three components of the online music experience: “streaming,” where you listen to songs without putting them… Read more »

R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck will be retried beginning March 4 on assault charges and other allegations stemming from incidents on an April flight from Seattle to London. Isleworth Crown Court Judge John Crocker dismissed Buck’s first trial on November 13, after a day of opening arguments from the prosecution. He did not make the reason for the dismissal public. A spokesperson for the Crown Prosecution Service, which monitors the justice system in England, told Reuters Monday (December 17) that Buck’s lawyers had argued there had been an abuse of process during the trial. Neither the court nor the CPS were… Read more »

Consumer electronics company SONICblue Inc. on Monday unveiled a high-end home entertainment hub that can store an entire music collection and furthers the company’s thrust into the budding market for digital audio and video entertainment. At about $1,500, SONICblue’s Advanced Digital Audio Center can become the centerpiece of a music enthusiast’s wired home. It features a 40-gigabyte hard drive that can record up to 650 hours of music. Through the system, available only via SONICblue’s Web site, music from a CD can be recorded to its hard drive, played back over receivers within the house, downloaded to an MP3 player,… Read more »

iRiver America announced today the US introduction of iMP-350 SlimX(TM), its top-of-the-line CD/WMA/ASF/MP3 player. As the world’s slimmest multi-CODEC and CD player (16.7 mm), the SlimX supports MP3, WMA (Windows Media Audio), ASF, optional AAC (Advanced Audio Coding), multiple CD formats, holds up to 650 MB (over 250 songs) on a single CD, and upgradeable firmware consumers can download via the Internet. “We are meeting the demands of increasingly sophisticated audio consumers,” said John Kim, President of iRiver America. “iRiver’s award- winning engineers have unveiled SlimX, which harnesses the latest technology to deliver top quality sound using less storage space… Read more »

Network Commerce Inc., a provider of Internet commerce tools and services, said on Wednesday it is suing digital music firm Liquid Audio Inc. for allegedly infringing its patent on a way to conduct online transactions. Network Commerce, which was delisted from the Nasdaq in August, said the patent covered a method for online shopping that uses separate servers and a piece of downloaded software to coordinate purchase information. “Despite our notifying Liquid Audio and offering to license the patent, Liquid Audio would not cease its unauthorized use of the patented system,” Network Commerce Chief Executive Dwayne Walker said in a… Read more »

For the first time, consumers can access MusicNet, a digital distribution platform for streaming and downloading music, through RealOne(TM) Music starting today. In development for more than a year, MusicNet combines the music catalogs of major and independent record labels – which now include Warner Music Group, BMG Entertainment, EMI Recorded Music, and Zomba, with media delivery technology from RealNetworks ® to create a subscription-based technology platform. MusicNet will continue to add music to the service over time, providing customers with a broad selection of content. MusicNet is based on RealNetworks’ RealSystem(TM) iQ and RealSystem Media Commerce Suite which provide… Read more »

He was called the “Quiet Beatle,” but “Frustrated Beatle” may have been a better tag for George Harrison, who found himself overshadowed in the Fab Four by two of the most important songwriters in history. Still, the guitarist managed to create a memorable body of work with the Beatles, and he notably turned his bandmates onto Eastern mysticism. Harrison, who died in Los Angeles Thursday after a long battle with cancer, wrote and sang such Beatles nuggets as “Something,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Here Comes The Sun” and “Taxman.” After the Beatles broke up, he embarked on a patchy… Read more »

In a major victory for Hollywood movie studios, a federal appeals court on Wednesday barred a Web site from revealing how to make unauthorized copies of digital video discs (DVDs). The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled that the controversial 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) does not infringe on the free speech protections of the U.S. Constitution. There were actions in two other DMCA-related cases on Wednesday. A federal judge in Trenton, New Jersey, dismissed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the DMCA filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). In that case, a group of… Read more »