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Last month the music industry and Apple, long uneasy partners, seemed a picture of harmony when they agreed on new terms for pricing on iTunes, Apple’s online music store. Behind the scenes, however, the relationship remains as tense and antagonistic as ever. The announcement on Jan. 6 seemed to signal a rapprochement between the music industry and its biggest distributor: record companies gave up their demand for copyright protection (called digital rights management) and Apple allowed flexible pricing, so the labels could charge more for new or popular tracks. But according to one music industry executive involved in the negotiations,… Read more »

Fourteen news organizations, including The brief filed Thursday in the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals argues that allowing webcasting of the Feb. 24 hearing is in the public interest, and is in keeping with camera access already granted in the courts. The Recording Industry Association of America is appealing a Boston judge’s decision to allow the webcast, which it says goes against federal court guidelines on cameras and threatens its ability to get a fair trial. “It is hard to imagine a hearing more deserving of public scrutiny through the same technological medium that is at the heart of… Read more »

EMI has made a number of key appointments to its new Music Services’ division. Merchandising and packaged goods veteran Peter Palmer will lead EMI’s global Merchandising group. Dominic Pandiscia will head a global Label Services unit and Violet Gonzalez, who joins EMI from Live Nation, will establish a new sponsorship department. “Music Services is all about delivering revenues to EMI’s artists, as well as to the independent label and artist community. We now have the industry’s only one-stop shop for accessing a global marketplace of traditional and non-traditional commercial partners,” said EMI Music Services President Ronn Werre.   “This team… Read more »

Indie heavyweights Nettwerk, INgrooves, IRIS Distribution, RoyaltyShare and Wind-up have all signed deals to have their music featured and sold on MySpace Music. Indie aggregators The Orchard and IODA signed on several months ago. Today’s announcement leaves Merlin and its supporters including Koch and Beggars as the last large indie holdouts. When MySpace Music launched late last year, the indie community cried foul because they had not been offered the same equity position that the social networker gave the four major label groups. “Without an equitable participation by independents, that creates a situation that is both unhealthy and dangerous,” Merlin… Read more »

After years of watching music fans flood online social networks to interact with their favorite recording artists, the music industry is starting to get serious about adding community features to its own websites. Hoping to become a big player in that effort is networking giant Cisco, which during the Consumer Electronics Show January 8-11 in Las Vegas introduced its Eos platform — a set of hosted online tools designed to enable media and entertainment companies to build social networking functions into websites. For record labels that means adding fan community services to artist sites. Warner Music Group (WMG) is the… Read more »

In true Las Vegas fashion, Sin City will usher in the New Year with “Tribute Palooza,” a concert featuring performances by David Bowie, the Eagles, U2, Kiss, the Rolling Stones, Queen, Aerosmith and Billy Joel… impersonators. 2U will substitute for U2, Queen Nation will copycat Freddie Mercury, Aeromyth will channel Aerosmith, the Long Run will welcome you to the Hotel California and much, much more. Unfortunately, despite the presence of not one but two KISS cover bands, neither act is the Rock Daily faves Mini-KISS. The whole fake fest party will go down at Vegas’ infamously tented Fremont Street, where… Read more »

Sirius XM faces an incredibly difficult road to survival in 2009, multiple media sources report. Almost a billion dollars of debt will mature by the end of the year; should the satcaster not be able to cover that debt, it faces bankruptcy. The bills coming due include almost $200 million in February, $350 million in May and another $400 million in December. The Motley Fool’s Rick Aristotle Munarriz predicts that, “Between its present liquidity and its authorization to have as many as 8 billion shares outstanding, Sirius XM has enough ammo to get through February. Now it needs to clear… Read more »

173,000 of the 1.23M albums available sold at least 1 copy last year That means 85% of albums did move a single copy all year. 80% of of all single track sales revenue came from 52,000 tracks All this is according to a new study by Will Page, chief economist of the MCPS-PRS Alliance, the UK based not-for-profit royalty collection society. Does this mean that we should all be back to chasing hits? No, but if correct, the study should remind us that making music available for sale is the beginning and not the end.