Search Results for: apple music

By The music industry has long hoped mobile phones will help turn around weak music sales, but music executives privately fear the most obvious contender, the iPhone, may give too much clout to Apple Inc., in shaping the future of the fledgling mobile music market. Sales of CDs, still the dominant music format, have dropped more than 20 percent in 2007 from a year ago, according to Nielsen Soundscan. Digital music sales are gradually claiming a greater portion of the business, but the transition has been slow. Sales of full-length songs on cellphones still claim a small portion of the… Read more »

Imagine a “dream machine” on wheels. It’s easy if you try. But the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is no dream. A state-of-the-art multimedia studio packed in a bus, it’s a vehicle for opening the minds of aspiring young musicians. “Swing open the door, step inside, take three short steps into the main cabin and look around,” writes Mark Garvey in “Come Together: The Official John Lennon Educational Tour Bus Guide to Music and Video,” a recently published history of the bus by Garvey and Yoko Ono Lennon. “You’ve entered a different world. And whether you’re young or old, if… Read more »

The last time Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs took on major recording companies, he refused to budge on his 99-cent price for a song on iTunes. As a new round of talks ramp up this month, however, Jobs has opened the door to higher prices – as long as music companies let Apple Inc. sell their songs without technology designed to stop unauthorized copying. Jobs contends that would “tear down the walls” by allowing consumers to play music they buy at Apple’s iTunes store on any digital music player, not just the company’s iPods. Although most of the major labels… Read more »

Apple Inc. added Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer Inc. movies for sale on the iTunes Web site, offering customers such classic titles as “The Great Train Robbery” and modern hits like “Rocky.” MGM, owner of the world’s largest film library, will sell about 100 of its movies on iTunes, Derick Mains, a spokesman for Cupertino, California-based Apple said today in an interview. Films from MGM, the fourth studio to sign on since Apple started the movie-download service eight months ago, boost the iTunes catalog to more than 500 films, Apple said in a statement. Except for Walt Disney Co., where Apple Chief Executive… Read more »

Apple Inc. and EMI Group Plc will reveal a ground-breaking deal on Monday for Apple to sell the music label’s songs free from copy protection limits, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. The report said music giant EMI plans to sell “significant amounts” of its catalog without anti-piracy software, citing people familiar with the matter, and that the music label is considering not only Apple’s iTunes stores but other outlets. However, a separate source familiar with the situation told Reuters a Beatles deal was not the focus of Monday’s event. “There is no Beatles’ announcement,” the source said. EMI… Read more »

Sensing a revolution in the way Internet traffic is managed, rock musicians find themselves in the unusual position of defending the status quo. Independent, lesser-known musicians and smaller record labels launched a nationwide campaign Tuesday to support the idea that all Internet traffic should be treated equally, which they said is under fire from providers who want to charge a fee to have some Web sites load faster than others. The Rock the Net campaign, made up mostly of musicians who are on smaller record labels or none at all, said they’re fearful that if the so-called “Net neutrality” principle… Read more »

Every day, the roughly one million people who visit the iTunes Store home page are presented with several dozen albums, TV shows and movie downloads to consider buying — out of the four million such goods the Apple site offers. This prime promotion is analogous to a CD being displayed at the checkout stands of all 940 Best Buy stores or featured on the front page of Target’s ad circular. How do bands get these boosts? Who decides whether Arcade Fire is plugged at the top of the iTunes site — or whether Nickelback gets no mention? Apple has jettisoned… Read more »

Struggling music company EMI Group PLC, beset by profit warnings and an accounting scandal in Brazil, was thrown a potential lifeline Tuesday with a possible new takeover bid by former suitor Warner Music Group. A tie-up would bring a badly needed infusion of top U.S. artists including Madonna and the Red Hot Chili Peppers to London-based EMI – whose Beatles remix album has dropped off Billboard’s top 40 and whose great hope for cross-Atlantic appeal, Robbie Williams, has drawn more publicity for rehab than music. EMI confirmed Tuesday it had been approached by Warner, but that it has received no… 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 »

Warner Music Group Corp., home to recording artists such as Red Hot Chili Peppers, James Blunt and Daniel Powter, said Thursday its first-quarter profit fell 74 percent due to fewer albums released during the period and soft domestic and European sales. Its shares fell nearly 5 percent. The New York-based recording company said net income declined to $18 million, or 12 cents per share, from $69 million, or 46 cents per share, during the same period a year ago. Total revenue fell 11 percent to $928 million from $1.04 billion during the prior-year period. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected… Read more »