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Apple just got some new competition from online music provider Rhapsody, which is now making its music library available in MP3 format through a brand-new music download store, meaning songs can be transferred to an Apple iPod. “We’re no longer competing with the iPod,” Rhapsody Vice President Neil Smith said. “We’re embracing it.” The move takes direct line at Apple’s immensely popular and profitable iTunes online store. The new Rhapsody site matches Apple’s 99-cent a song download charge, or $9.99 album pricing. But it allows users to listen to an entire song before purchasing, compared to Apple’s 30-second preview. The… Read more »

The red carpet swiftly turned into a red river, but we knew it would take more than a soggy strip of flooring material to put a damper on the MuchMusic Video Awards. An early-evening deluge timed perfectly to truncate the annual, big pre-show build-up to last night’s MMVAs ceremony at Much headquarters on Queen West nevertheless added a new urgency to the usual hysteria that splays around Queen and John at this time of year. There was a real sense of brewing terror in the air on the carpet while everyone who’d gathered outside the old CHUM-City building — the… Read more »

A musicians union has filed a federal lawsuit against the producers of “American Idol,” claiming musicians were underpaid because the show’s live music was re-recorded for reruns. The American Federation of Musicians filed the suit seeking unspecified damages Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, alleging that American Idol Productions Inc. and its subsidiary Tick Tock Productions Inc. violated a collective bargaining agreement. That contract says the show’s musicians should be paid royalties for rebroadcasts of the show, the lawsuit said. The producers are required to pay 75 percent of scale to musicians who appear in the original show… Read more »

Coldplay sold 125,000 copies of its new album on the first day of release in Britain, a solid tally industry experts say should be music to the band’s ears and those of its ailing record label EMI. “Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends” now looks “certain” to top Sunday’s album chart, according to The Official Charts Company which tracks record sales, even though it was released on Thursday rather than at the start of the week. “Coldplay are an international act … and these sales figures in the UK are the first indication of how the album… Read more »

Tapping on fake instruments and screeching into microphones connected to video game consoles has become lucrative for both the music and gaming industries. Downloadable tunes for music-based games “Guitar Hero,” “Rock Band” and “SingStar” have become as vital as iTunes itself – and one of the last ways to expose youngsters to classic rock. The genre will evolve again later this month when game publisher Activision and developer Neversoft release “Guitar Hero: Aerosmith,” the first such play-along rhythm game pegged to one music group, instead of featuring a multi-artist compilation more akin to one of those “Now That’s What I… Read more »

As the recorded music business seemingly careens toward oblivion, John Hiatt is standing on the sidelines having a good laugh. It’s not as if the singer-songwriter has been unscathed by the industry’s decade-long capitulation to piracy. Each of his last three albums sold 30,000 copies less than the one before. His last release, 2005’s “Master of Disaster,” moved 78,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But as he sagely pointed out during a recent breakfast, “I think I’m not the only one. I think we’re doing OK.” That very day his 18th album, “Same Old Man” (New… Read more »

Yoko Ono lost her legal bid Monday to stop the playing of a 15-second excerpt of John Lennon’s song “Imagine” in a film challenging the theory of evolution. Lennon’s widow had sued the makers of “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” saying they used the ex-Beatle’s anthem without her permission. Ono, who had sought a preliminary injunction before the movie gets a wider release, said she would appeal. The other plaintiffs were Lennon’s sons, Sean and Julian. U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein ruled that if the case went to court, the filmmakers would probably win under the fair use doctrine. “That doctrine… Read more »

Honestly, given the amount I write about Digital Rights Management, you’d think that I’d rather the industry kept using it, just so I’d continue to have fodder for writing and writing–and occasionally talking–about it. As I was looking into the trajectory of DRM in this past year for my latest look at DRM, a pattern began to emerge. We’ve seen the prevalence of DRM-free music skyrocket over the last twelve months, with vendors like iTunes, Amazon, and Napster all joining the legions of the undamned. In fact, it’s practically gotten to the point where it’s news when a company launches… Read more »

The secret’s out: MySpace Music Secret Shows are a hit. Social networking pioneer MySpace has created its most successful music program with the intimate Secret Shows series, whose 150th installment will feature Gnarls Barkley on June 8 at Irving Plaza in New York. MySpace Music launched the Secret Shows franchise in January 2006 and has since hosted such acts as Rilo Kiley, Moby, Maroon 5, the Killers, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Tenacious D, Lily Allen, Ice Cube, James Blunt and Neil Diamond in cities around the world. The concept is the brainchild of MySpace Music editor Isac Walter, who wanted… Read more »