Search Results for: Thursday

Sharon Osbourne and a woman with whom she’s had an ongoing feud were involved in a scuffle Thursday night in a West Hollywood restaurant, according to police. Officers arrived at the Japanese restaurant Koi on La Cienega Boulevard at 10:45 p.m., after Osbourne and Renee Tab, an entertainment agent for International Creative Management, were involved in an altercation, an LAPD spokesperson said. No one was arrested, though police took reports and photographed each woman. It’s unclear how the argument started, but it escalated into a physical altercation that found Tab hitting Osbourne in the face, according to the report given… Read more »

Sony Music Entertainment Inc. and the funk-metal band Incubus have ended their legal standoff with a lucrative new deal that will pay the Calabasas quintet an estimated $8 million in advances for its next album, it was reported Friday. The deal struck Thursday also requires the band to deliver two additional albums and gives Sony an option for a fourth, with an estimated $2.5 million advance due for each, sources told the Los Angeles Times. The company and the musicians “have amicably resolved their differences, and will continue with their highly successful relationship,” Sony and the band said in a… Read more »

British music company EMI Group Plc said on Thursday it bought a further 30 percent stake in a catalog of classic Motown songs such as “My Girl” and “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” for $109.3 million. EMI purchased the stake in the Jobete song catalog from Motown Records founder Berry Gordy, taking its holding to 80 percent. Gordy, who helped create dozens of classic songs from a cramped basement studio in Detroit known as Hitsville, USA, had told EMI last year he would exercise an option to sell all of his remaining 50 percent stake in Jobete. But he… Read more »

Foo Fighters frontman/rock drummer extraordinaire Dave Grohl is showing up everywhere – his latest gig is as the drummer on the new Killing Joke album, Billboard reports in the April 12 issue. The project, which will be out in June on Sony worldwide, is tentatively titled “Axis of Evil.” Produced by Gang Of Four’s Andy Gill, the album is the veteran U.K. rock act’s first since 1996’s “Democracy.” It turns out that Grohl is a huge Killing Joke fan; he met the group’s leader, Jaz Coleman, in New Zealand recently and agreed to play on the album. They recorded the… Read more »

When Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood found out last weekend that his band’s upcoming record, Hail to the Thief, had leaked online, he wasn’t terribly upset. “Shame it’s not a package with the artwork and all,” he wrote at the time. He’s since reconsidered his position. “We’re kind of pissed about it, to be honest,” he posted Thursday (April 3) on the Radiohead fan site At Ease. Mostly, Greenwood and his bandmates are upset that the version of Hail to the Thief currently on the Net is composed of works in progress that were stolen in February while the band was… Read more »

The recording industry’s threats to take legal action against individuals involved in illegal file sharing proved not to be hollow Thursday when four college students were slapped with lawsuits. The complaints, filed in federal courts in New York, New Jersey and Michigan, claim that students Daniel Peng, Joseph Nievelt, Jesse Jordan and Aaron Sherman ran file-sharing systems that offered up more than 1 million song files in violation of copyright law. The Recording Industry Association of America, the organization that represents the copyright-holding record labels, asked that the services be disabled and for monetary damages up to $150,000 per song,… Read more »

The recording industry and Internet music broadcasters hope a new agreement will prevent a repeat of their recent battle over online music royalties, allowing them to focus instead on providing better music services for consumers. The two sides agreed Thursday on how much big webcasters like Yahoo!, America Online, Microsoft and RealNetworks must pay to broadcast songs over the Internet during 2003 and 2004. The new deal, if approved by the U.S. Copyright Office, will allow the two industries to avoid a lengthy arbitration process to set the royalty rates. “We are delighted to have reached an agreement that will… Read more »

The music industry said on Thursday it had begun cascading pamphlets on universities across the globe in its latest blitz against online piracy. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a global trade group representing major and independent music labels and publishers, said it had begun issuing brochures to universities in 29 countries in Europe, South America, Asia and Australia spelling out the legal and technological snares of online file-sharing networks. “In Canada and Europe we have found institutions where users are uploading thousands of files using university computer networks,” said Allen Dixon, general counsel at IFPI in London.… Read more »

A jury decided Thursday that Michael Jackson owes a concert promoter $5.3 million for backing out of two concerts planned to celebrate the millennium on New Year’s Eve 1999. The verdict came in a $21 million breach-of-contract lawsuit filed against the singer by German concert organizer Marcel Avram. Jackson’s attorneys said it was Avram who canceled the shows over concerns they would not be profitable. The jury deliberated for nearly two weeks. Avram’s attorney, Louis “Skip” Miller, said he was pleased that the jury found Jackson was at fault. “The jury believed Avram, they did not believe Michael Jackson. That’s… Read more »

The days of the compact disc could be drawing to a close as an increasing number of music fans, especially technologically savvy youngsters, turn to the Internet for free downloadable music. At a panel of the South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin on Thursday, music industry executives talked about how they plan to stay afloat in the digital world of downloadable music and CD burning. “Unless you’re in a coma, it’s clear that the current business model of selling shiny discs at $17.99 isn’t going to sustain anybody any longer,” said David Adelson, executive editor Hits Magazine and the… Read more »