Search Results for: Record Store Day

Universal Music Group’s strategy of lowering its CD prices is good news for music fans, but some traditional music retailers on Thursday worried the move may damage their business. A day after Universal announced a cut on the wholesale price of most of its CDs and an end to advertising discounts, retailers large and small began assessing how the new pricing plan would affect them. Large retailers such as Borders, BestBuy, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Amazon.com generally reserved judgment Thursday on the change, although several noted it could be an effective consumer lure. Several of them declined to discuss how… Read more »

Vivendi Universal’s (V) Universal Music Group plans to sharply lower the consumer cost for compact discs, in an effort to bring customers back into retail stores and boost music sales. The move comes as the music industry grapples with a continuing decline in retail sales in the face of rampant piracy and other problems. In a press release Wednesday, Universal Music said it will reduce wholesale prices and implement a $12.98 manufacturer suggested retail price on virtually all of its top-line CDs in the U.S. The plan will eliminate MSRPs of as much as $18.98, and the company believes retailers… Read more »

Hollywood will win the war against illegal downloading but the battlefield will be littered with casualties, including the DVD and CD formats as physical means of distributing video and audio, according to a Forrester Research study released Tuesday. The study predicts that in five years, CDs and DVDs will start to go the way of the vinyl LP as 33% of music sales and 19% of home video revenue shifts to streaming and downloading. Part of that stems from the continued proliferation of illegal file trading, which has caused an estimated $700 million of lost CD sales since 1999. But… Read more »

Blink 182 and Taking Back Sunday are set to perform a benefit concert on September 6 in San Diego for professional surfer Jason Bogle, who suffers from a rare kind of bone cancer called Ewing Sarcoma. At the same time, Blink 182 is readying the release of a new self-titled album, the follow-up to 2001’s Take Off Your Pants and Your Jacket. The set hit stores on November 18. Some parents who take their kids to Blink 182’s shows are often surprised at the giant burning expletive in the background, but band members Mark Hoppus and Tom Delonge revealed that… Read more »

Details on Pink’s upcoming album have been hard to come by this summer – until now. Due in stores on November 11, the singer’s album now has a tentative title, Try This. The track list is still under wraps, but the first single – also tentative – will most likely be called “God Is a DJ,” an energetic, melodic pop song that merges Pink’s exuberant dance-floor energy with a grinding, rock edge. On the hook, Pink sings, “If God is a DJ, life is a dance floor, love is a river, and you are the music/ If God is a… Read more »

A.F.I. fans should check out the import section of their favorite record store for the upcoming Australian CD-single release of “The Leaving Song Part II,” from the band’s current album Sing The Sorrow. The Australian CD, which will be released on August 4 to coincide with the band’s tour there, includes three additional tracks-demo versions of “This Celluloid Dream” and “Synthesthesia,” plus a CD-ROM video for the band’s first single from Sing The Sorrow, “Girl’s Not Grey.” On the home front, “The Leaving Song Part II” is currently at Number 25 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart. A.F.I. has been… Read more »

Napster may be long dead, but the name and the “kitty” logo of the pioneer online music-swapping program could return to cyberspace before the year is out. Santa Clara-based Roxio Inc., which owns the rights to the Napster name, plans to shelve its current online music service, pressplay, and roll out Napster 2.0 by Christmas, Chris Gorog, Roxio’s chairman and chief executive, told The Associated Press. Gorog was scheduled to announce details of the venture Monday at the Jupiter Plug.IN Conference & Expo in New York. Software maker Roxio acquired pressplay, a joint venture of Universal Music Group and Sony… Read more »

Arista recording artist Avril Lavigne’s Try To Shut Me Up Digital Download EP, her first official commercially released live concert tracks, became the #1 best-seller overnight following its July 15th launch on the Apple iTunes Store, it was announced today by Antonio “L.A.” Reid, president and CEO, Arista Records. This is the first live digital-only album released by a major artist on legitimate digital distribution services. The 5-track digital-only album is currently available exclusively (for 30 days) on iTunes for $4.95 download. On August 15th it will become available on all legitimate digital distribution services, including eCast, LiquidAudio, Musicnet, Pressplay,… Read more »

A new Internet music download site for PCs debuting Tuesday boasts the cheapest per-song rates yet but many of the same restrictions on copying that have stymied wider use of other music services. Although online retailer BuyMusic.com will offer a catalog of more than 300,000 songs from the five major record labels, users of the service will not necessarily have the freedom afforded customers of Apple Inc.’s iTunes service to transfer the music purchased to multiple computers and portable devices, or to burn it to compact discs. BuyMusic hopes to score the sort of attention that helped drive sales for… Read more »

Long an artist’s sanctuary, the commercial recording studio is becoming a virtual fortress, guarding against the potentially devastating consequences of theft. The thieves’ targets are the rough mixes, outtakes, alternative takes and finished masters that traditionally have been loosely handled, even by the artists themselves. Leaks of this material are nothing new, but the advent of unauthorized file sharing on the Internet has greatly increased the consequences of this phenomenon. Recent albums by Eminem, 50 Cent, Korn and Radiohead were all available online prior to release, because unauthorized copies were leaked to unknown parties. In such cases, marketing strategies are… Read more »