Search Results for: century media

If 2006 was the year of user-generated content, 2007 will be the year the music industry learns to generate new revenue from the hugely popular trend. Labels are striking licensing deals with sites like YouTube so that fans can post copyrighted content or include it in videos they make themselves. Additionally, labels are expected to start releasing new types of content — such as unused clips or video montages — specifically created for fans to manipulate in new ways. By doing so, record labels can then share in the advertising revenue these sites collect. Rather than just suing YouTube and… Read more »

One sunny afternoon not long ago, Dick Copaken sat in a booth at Daniel, one of those hushed, exclusive restaurants on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where the waiters glide spectrally fro table to table. He was wearing a starched button-down shirt and a blue blazer. Every strand of his thinning hair was in place, and he spoke calmly and slowly, his large pink Charlie Brow head bobbing along evenly as he did. Copaken spent many years as a partner at the white-shoe Washington, D.C., firm Covington & Burling, and he has a lawyer’s gravitas. One of his bes friends calls… Read more »

Used record bins are flooded with albums from swaggering British lads whose bands have conquered England and have their eyes set on cracking the States. Not too many of them can claim to have their music used in two of the most popular TV shows in the country before most Americans have ever heard of them, though. The vaguely scary, beat-crazy sound you might have heard on recent episodes of “Desperate Housewives” and “CSI: Miami” comes courtesy of Kasabian, currently infecting American ears with the intense marriage of druggy beats and massive guitar riffs from their self-titled debut. “We’re going… Read more »

Washington – Congress is toying with the idea of mandating one standard for all online music platforms. Thanks but no thanks – the industry can figure it out, said music industry and consumer groups at a congressional hearing about the plan Wednesday. During a hearing to discuss mandating interoperability standards between competing music platforms such as Apple’s iTunes and RealNetworks’ Rhapsody, lawmakers sounded off on the lament of some hipsters frustrated by playback snafus when they try to transfer music files from other platforms to their iPods. Although Real and Apple support Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), a compression format defined… Read more »

So much for that “Ebony and Ivory” stuff. At least as far as Stevie Wonder and Eminem go. Speaking to Billboard magazine, Wonder comes to the defense of old Motown roster mate Michael Jackson, saying he was “disappointed” Em mocked Jackson’s child-molestation allegations in the rapper’s video for “Just Lose It.” “Kicking someone when he’s down is not a good thing,” Wonder tells Billboard. “I have much respect for his work…[b]ut I was disappointed that he would let himself go to such a level. “He has succeeded on the backs of people predominantly in that lower pay bracket, people of… Read more »

There’s something a little different about Black Sabbath’s performance at Ozzfest nowadays, and if you blink you might miss it. Two images of George W. Bush, shown during Sabbath’s performance of the metal classic “War Pigs,” have been removed from the video montage that accompanies the song, which usually kicks off the band’s headlining set. One image that juxtaposed Bush and Adolf Hitler was captioned “Same sh-, different a-hole,” while the second superimposed a round, red clown nose on the president, along with the words “White House Clown.” The edit comes days after Sabbath drummer Bill Ward, who claimed he… Read more »

Beyoncé Knowles, multiplatinum sweetheart of the music award show circuit this year, was exhausted. She’d just appeared on the Vibe Awards and breathlessly arrived across town just in time to change clothes and take bows at the VH1 Awards. “Too many,” she said as she leaned against a wall backstage. Bad planning by VH1 and Vibe? Not really, there were four award shows that week including the American Music Awards and they were bound to butt heads somewhere. With television networks relentlessly reaching for younger viewers, an unprecedented 26 music award shows are now on cable and network TV. “There’s… Read more »

When Paul McCartney first got married, tears from lovelorn Beatles fans who pined for “the cute one” could’ve rivaled the Thames. Still, 30 years later, McCartney’s marriage to Heather Mills left nary a dry eye in the castle. The 59-year-old former Beatle wed Mills, 34, just after 5 p.m. Tuesday (June 11) in Glaslough, Ireland, according to Reuters. The private ceremony took place at St. Salvator’s Church on the 1,000-acre estate of Castle Leslie, a 17th century castle that now functions as 14-room luxury hotel near the Northern Irish border. Following the ceremony a grand reception was thrown for the… Read more »

The people who tried to take away your VCR are at it again. Hollywood has always dreamed of a “well-mannered marketplace” where the only technologies that you can buy are those that do not disrupt its business. Acting through legislators who dance to Hollywood’s tune, the movie studios are racing to lock away the flexible, general-purpose technology that has given us a century of unparalelled prosperity and innovation. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed the “Content Protection Status Report” with the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, laying out its plan to remake the technology world to suit its… Read more »

South by Southwest, Austin’s annual music conference that usually showcases the best new artists coming down the pike, kicked off, oddly enough, with a plea to go back. The call came from Robbie Robertson. The onetime leader of the Band expressed mild alarm at the state of the music business during his keynote address Thursday morning. Go back, he suggested, to that first moment of musical discovery. “Music took us on a journey, and we’re still on that journey,” he told a packed ballroom at the Austin Convention Center, noting that his own first impressions came during childhood visits to… Read more »