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Sony Corp.’s earnings plunged 26 percent for the latest quarter as expenses for job cuts and other restructuring costs and lower profits from its electronics, moviemaking and video games business offset profit improvement in its music business. But the Japanese electronics and entertainment giant said Wednesday its sales rose for the October-December quarter and it boosted its profit forecast for the year due to a gain on a currency investment. Sony said it earned 92.6 billion yen ($875 million) in the October-December period, down from 125 billion yen a year earlier. Sales inched up 0.7 percent to 2.32 trillion yen… Read more »

On Pennywise’s self-titled debut, singer Jim Lindberg screamed about “Living for Today.” Thirteen years later, the Southern California punks still live for those days, as demonstrated by their latest single, “Yesterdays.” “As you get a little older, you get a lot more responsibilities, so it’s kinda like a retrospect of when things were easy,” bassist Randy Bradbury said of the song, a favorite of tastemakers KROQ-FM. “All you had to worry about was getting home on time, getting something to eat, not making your parents mad and getting good grades.” “Actually, all that stuff he said was a lie, because… Read more »

Evanescence lead singer Amy Lee has told Australia’s UndercoverNews website that former Cold guitarist Terry Balsamo is now a permanent member of Evanescence. Balsamo stepped in as a temporary replacement late last year for founding axeman Ben Moody, who abruptly departed in the middle of a European tour last October. Lee said that Balsamo and her band “just clicked” the more they played together. “[It is] better than I ever expected…Terry’s an insane guitar player with awesome stage presence. He has a good personality and he’s down to earth and on top of all that stuff, he’s a great writer… Read more »

A dispute over royalty rights on copy-protected CDs and other types of music discs is helping to stall the release of some new music technology, and could result in record labels owing tens of millions of dollars in back payments to music publishers. At issue are “double session” CDs that include two versions of each song on a disc, formatted for playback on different kinds of devices. The most widely distributed type are copy-protected discs that prevent CD tracks from being copied to a hard drive, but that also include a digital version of the songs, often in Microsoft’s Windows… Read more »

A near-death experience on his ATV bike has convinced Ozzy Osbourne to take a break from the road. In light of the serious injuries he suffered in last month’s accident, the Prince of F–ing Darkness has decided to scrap a 20-date British tour to give himself more time to recover. “I am deeply disappointed, but it’s out of my control,” the 55-year-old heavy metal icon said in a statement released through his London-based publicist. “Right now I need to concentrate on my recovery and unfortunately this is something I cannot rush.” Osbourne suffered several broken ribs, a fractured collarbone and… Read more »

Rick Van Santen, a co-president of Goldenvoice, a Los Angeles concert promotion company that ushered punk rock from the fringes of the music scene to a wide audience, died last Sunday at his home in Ventura County of flu-related complications, his Goldenvoice partner Paul Tollett said. He was 41. In the 1980s, a time when major promoters shunned punk because of its reputation as a violent subculture, Goldenvoice presented acts in large, established rooms with quality sound, such as the Hollywood Palladium and the Palace (now the Avalon). “There cannot be any L.A. band since the early ’80s that was… Read more »

Bruce Springsteen was the top concert draw across North America in 2003 as more than 1.6 million fans paid to take in his marathon shows and musings on the struggles of the working man. According to preliminary data published on Tuesday by concert trade publication Pollstar, the 54-year-old New Jersey rocker grossed $115.9 million from 47 shows to lead the annual rankings. His tour ranks as the second-biggest of all time, behind the Rolling Stones’ 1994 outing, which grossed $121.2 million. While Pollstar is still calculating final figures, it expects sales for all acts to rise for the fifth consecutive… Read more »

There’s one drawback to Blink-182’s decision to release “I Miss You” as their next single. “This is the thing, the song’s really hard to play,” singer/guitarist Tom DeLonge said backstage at KROQ-FM’s annual Almost Acoustic Christmas on Sunday. “We’ve never played it before. We might play it in the future, or we might have it on a ghetto blaster onstage and we might do an interpretive dance. It’s one of those things, but it’s gonna be good, though, no matter what it is.” It’s not like the band doesn’t have a good excuse for not having the ballad of sorts… Read more »

German media giant Bertelsmann named a new chairman Wednesday to take over for Gerd Schulte-Hillen, who announced his resignation last month after a clash over corporate strategy with the company chief executive. Dieter Vogel, Schulte-Hillen’s former deputy, will start Jan. 1 in the new position, a company statement said. Schulte-Hillen, a 63-year-old company veteran, agreed to step down as supervisory board chairman after he and CEO Gunter Thielen developed “different views on the strategic direction of Bertelsmann,” according to the Guetersloh-based company. Bertelsmann and Sony Corp. are merging their music businesses, bringing together the world’s No. 2 and No. 5… Read more »

Metallica and Godsmack are gearing up for a 2004 North American arena tour which could stretch as far as 80 dates, Billboard.com has learned. The trek will begin March 2 in Phoenix; other confirmed dates include March 8 in San Francisco and March 28 in Seattle. The first batch of ticket on-sales will begin Saturday (Dec. 20) via Ticketmaster. Metallica has already committed to the Big Day Out tour of Australia and New Zealand after the first of the year, plus European festival dates beginning in late May and stretching into July. The group is touring in support of its… Read more »