Search Results for: Record Store Day

Dozens of small stores have been given two weeks to clear their racks of pirated CDs, tell where they got them and pay damages to the five largest record labels, an industry group said on Monday. The Recording Industry Association of America said 78 small retailers across the U.S. – mostly gas stations and convenience and grocery stores – received the demands after investigators purchased pirated CDs at their stores. Retailers who refuse to comply could face civil penalties of up to $150,000 per title, according to a letter sent to them by the RIAA. The pirated merchandise would have… Read more »

Tower Records, the storied 1960s music chain that launched the music megastore and became a cultural retailing icon, strolls into its 43rd holiday shopping season this weekend struggling with debt and on the ropes. The West Sacramento, Calif.-based Tower hopes four weeks of strong sales will reverse a new image as the tottering giant inside a stumbling music industry. Among the chain’s troubles: deep-discounting rivals, changing consumer habits, lack of hits and its own missteps in the 1990s as the music business began a dramatic shift. Tower exemplifies the even deeper woes in a recording industry beset by piracy, computer… 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 »

“Surreal” is about the only word to describe it when that kid you remember from “Gremlins” and “Goonies,” all grown up now, is rocking out in the middle of a record store. And surreal it was when Corey Feldman and his band played for a bewildered crowd numbering less than a hundred recently at Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard. As fans and curious shoppers waited (and waited), a drummer, a guitarist, a bassist named Pharaoh and a keyboard player (none of whom would look lost at a construction site) along with two backup singers crowded onto a makeshift stage, where… Read more »

The world’s largest record companies sued major Internet service and network providers on Friday, alleging their routing systems allow users to access the China-based Listen4ever.com Web site and unlawfully copy musical recordings. The copyright infringement suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks a court order requiring the defendants to block Internet communications that travel through their systems to and from the Listen4ever site. The suit says the plaintiffs have not been able to determine who owns the Web site. Plaintiffs in the suit include such major labels as UMG Recordings, a unit of Vivendi Universal, Sony Music Entertainment, a unit… Read more »

Joey McIntyre will make his television-series debut this fall, and fittingly, he’s playing a new kid on the block. Actually, the youngest of the New Kids is one of two new teachers on “Boston Public,” but very young ones at that. Jon Abrahams (the son in “Meet the Parents”) is the other. “We’re the two squirts coming in,” McIntyre said Wednesday, phoning from his temporary residence, a Los Angeles hotel suite. “My character lets kids call him by his first name and tries to relate with them on the same level, and that may or may not work. The sh-… Read more »

Viewers of Fox’s summer megahit “American Idol” won’t have to wait long to hear the first single from whomever wins the competition. Simon Cowell, the snarly Brit judge-recording exec who’ll be producing the track, said he’ll have the song in stores within three weeks of “Idol’s” Sept. 4 finale. He’ll achieve that feat by asking all of the three remaining finalists to record the song – an original composition Cowell describes as a “big power ballad” similar to Whitney Houston’s “One Moment in Time.” RCA Records has already committed to giving the “Idol” winner a $1 million recording contract that… Read more »

Following the success of its secure and simultaneous digital distribution in early June of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ long-awaited new single and title track “By The Way,” DG Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: DGIT – News), announced today that Warner Bros. Records collaborated with DG Music for the simultaneous, digital delivery of all 15 songs from the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s (RHCP) latest album. The distribution of one single from the RHCP album per day on 15 consecutive days by DG marks the first time that an entire album has been digitally delivered to radio stations through a private digital network.… Read more »

The record industry pleaded on Wednesday with consumers to stop downloading and recording music for free because piracy was strangling the multi-billion-dollar industry. Profits have plummeted, especially in Europe. CD sales in Germany last year were 185 million whereas the number of blank CDs used to copy music was estimated at 182 million. Record executives also believe there are now more unauthorized music files available on the Internet than at the height of Napster ( news – web sites)’s success in the field. “Music for free means less new music, fewer new artists, less choice, thousands less jobs,” said Jay… Read more »

The Eminem Show is raising its curtain even sooner than expected. After being pushed up from June 4 to May 28 a week ago because of bootlegging, Eminem’s latest will now hit stores this Sunday, Interscope announced on Friday (May 24). Although smaller record chains and mom-and-pop stores have for years been known to sell albums the weekend before their official Tuesday release, it is unusual for major chains to be urged to get involved in the practice and go against the industry retail standard. “We found we were able to meet the demand and get The Eminem Show into… Read more »