Search Results for: Record Store Day

Apple ® today announced that EMI Music’s entire digital catalog of music will be available for purchase DRM-free (without digital rights management) from the iTunes ® Store (www.itunes.com) worldwide in May. DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song. iTunes will continue to offer its entire catalog, currently over… Read more »

“We have been wrestling with the issues around interoperability for some years and have concluded that it is not so much a technology problem as a business problem,” wrote the consortium to Jobs. No kidding? And all along the world at large thought downloading DRM-free MP3 files presented huge technical issues. Seriously though, late last year Apple itself gave a few of us media folk a glimpse of why record companies fear the computer turned consumer electronics company. At the Apple Australia Christmas party in Sydney, a young band treated us all to a couple of songs. They were pretty… Read more »

CUPERTINO, California – Apple® today announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded more than 300 million songs from the iTunes® Music Store. Additionally, the benefit single “Across the Universe,” available exclusively on the iTunes Music Store, debuted as number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart making it the most successful exclusive digital track ever in its first week of release. “We’re honored to offer “Across the Universe” exclusively on the iTunes Music Store with all proceeds going to tsunami survivors and their families,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Applications. The iTunes Music Store features more… Read more »

New York – Digital music sales notched a third consecutive record-breaking week in the period ended Jan. 2, thanks to the ripple effect from a Christmas-inspired sales surge of MP3 players and download gift cards. Digital track volume spiked by 1.6 million transactions last week, making a seven-day total of 6.7 million downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The jump marks an all-time high for download sales in a single week, breaking the benchmark of 5.04 million in the week ending Dec. 26. This marks the first time in the history of the Billboard Hot Digital Tracks chart that download sales… Read more »

New York – “eMOTIVe,” the new album from Virgin Records recording group A Perfect Circle, was greeted with spectacular one-day sales upon its Tuesday arrival in stores. The collection, which sees APC reimagining radical rock classics for a new generation, is the week’s #1 album on iTunes. In addition, “eMOTIVe” is expected to debut as the top-selling rock record on next week’s Soundscan charts. The album’s first single, a twisted take on John Lennon’s “Imagine,” is lighting up the switchboards at rock radio outlets coast to coast. The song is quickly bulleting up the chart at both Active Rock and… Read more »

Major and independent record labels today announced the first-ever retail availability of the much anticipated DualDisc – a two-sided disc made up of a CD player side and a DVD player side. A broad range of titles have begun to hit retail shelves in the first wave of products that will continue throughout the holiday season and into next year with releases from EMI Music, Silverline Records, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group. DualDisc is a new music product that combines audio and video content on a single disc. In addition to a full album… Read more »

Green Day leads the roster of rock and rap artists contributing music to Madden 2005, the latest in the series of football video games bearing the name of legendary announcer John Madden. The title track from Green Day’s forthcoming album, American Idiot, will appear on the game even before it reaches radio stations or record stores, while other artists contributing tracks from current albums include Franz Ferdinand, Hoobastank, the Hives, Chevelle and New Found Glory. Madden 2005 arrives on August 17. Green Day’s new album, American Idiot, is set for release on September 21. Hard rockers Earshot contribute their own… Read more »

With the music industry looking to cut costs amid lower profit margins, record companies see fewer incentives to investing in artist-run label projects. Twelve years ago, Madonna decided to apply the business instincts that made her a superstar toward finding and developing new acts for her own music label. Maverick Records flourished early on. It generated hits by the likes of Alanis Morissette and Prodigy, validating the decision by Warner Music to form a partnership with its biggest star. But Maverick’s good fortunes started to turn during the industrywide sales slump that began in 2000. The label-parent relationship soured, landing… Read more »

In its first year, Apple Computer Inc.’s online music store has sold more than 70 million songs and the computer maker is offering a free song to customers for the next eight days to mark the store’s anniversary, the company said Wednesday. Apple, maker of the Macintosh computer and the wildly popular iPod digital music players, also upgraded its iTunes digital jukebox software with new features such as “iMix,” which lets customers publish their playlists on the iTunes online music store which other customers can then purchase. “We’re very, very excited about the results from the first year,” Steve Jobs,… Read more »