Search Results for: decade

In a dramatic demonstration of the economic toll of digital piracy on the music industry, EMI Group is expected to fire more than a quarter of the London-based company’s employees and radically alter the way it does business to further cut costs. Guy Hands, who was installed as chief executive of the world’s fourth-largest record company after it was bought last year by investment company Terra Firma, is expected to announce cuts of at least 1,500 employees today as part of a major restructuring, two EMI executives said. EMI also will become the first major label to eliminate the large… Read more »

For the typically rowdy rock band on the road, “scoring” might not necessarily have anything to do with film music. Yet over the last couple of decades of making music, a number of rock talents have made the career leap from arenas to scoring stages, and the ranks of today’s A-list composers include many with rock ‘n’ roll pedigrees. Randy Newman had a successful career as a songwriter and solo artist; Mark Mothersbaugh was a founder of Devo; and Danny Elfman started out in Oingo Boingo (a band that also included future composers Steve Bartek and Richard Gibbs). Trevor Rabin… Read more »

After failing to crack the million mark with her last two albums, Janet Jackson is wary of using the “c” word to describe her upcoming release, “Discipline,” which hits stores on February 26. “I think a comeback is when you leave and then you … come back,” Jackson said with a laugh during a recent interview. “People are always quick to use that word ‘comeback,’ but I never went anywhere, really.” “Discipline” marks her 10th studio disc, and her debut release for Island Def Jam after more than a decade at Virgin Records. Her last album, 2006’s “20 Y.O.,” stalled… Read more »

In a move that would mark the end of a digital music era, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is finalizing plans to sell songs without the copyright protection software that has long restricted the use of music downloaded from the Internet, BusinessWeek.com has learned. Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony and Bertelsmann, will make at least part of its collection available without so-called digital rights management, or DRM, software some time in the first quarter, according to people familiar with the matter. Sony BMG would become the last of the top four music labels to drop DRM, following Warner Music… Read more »

High-priced reunion tours by the Police, Van Halen and Genesis failed to prevent the North American concert industry from posting its worst year since 2004, according to a music industry trade publication. The top 20 tours generated $996 million, down 15.6 percent from the year before, according to preliminary data issued on Friday by Pollstar, which covers the concert business. The previous low was $951.1 million in 2004, when Prince and Madonna topped the box office, it said. The comeback tour by Anglo-American rock trio the Police was the top draw this year with ticket sales of $131.9 million, followed… Read more »

Cover bands and tribute bands have been a mainstay of the music scene for decades. When a company licenses a composition, it may find that licensing the original master recording is outside the budget or unavailable for licensing. Hiring the original band members to rerecord the song may not be an alternative because of contractual rerecording restrictions in the band’s record deal, the members no longer sound like they once did or they may be dead. So when someone wants to record a cover version of a song, when does it violate the original artist’s rights? Michael Novak, the Detroit-based… Read more »

Roadrunner Records has named veteran promotion man Mike Easterlin SVP of Promotion as it merges its promotion team with Lava Records under the Roadrunner banner. Easterlin will join the Roadrunner staff in its New York office on January 2. He replaces current SVP of Promotion Dave Loncao, who will leave the label at the end of the year in order to pursue other music industry endeavors and move to Florida with his family. Roadrunner president Jonas Nachsin commented, “This is a natural in so many ways. We have had a long history working with Mike Easterlin at two different companies,… Read more »

Getting fired wasn’t the first time Don Imus had hit rock bottom. Like his stumble into addiction in the 1980s, Imus fell into a personal purgatory after calling the Rutgers University women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos.” “I analogize it to being an alcoholic and a drug addict, which I also am,” the talk-show host said during an apologetic return to the airwaves Monday. “If you get into recovery, as I am for 20-some years now, you have the opportunity to be a better person, to have a better life than you ordinarily would have had. And that’s true in this… Read more »

The lead singer of well-known Mexican band K-Paz de la Sierra was abducted and strangled to death, justice officials said on Monday, adding to a list of performers killed in a violent crime wave. Sergio Gomez, whose group had close ties to the U.S. city of Chicago, and two music promoters, were seized by armed men in the western Mexican state of Michoacan in the early hours of Sunday after a show. The promoters were released on Monday but Gomez was found dead on the outskirts of Morelia, the state capital, according to Magdalena Guzman, spokeswoman for Michoacan’s justice department.… Read more »

The new owner of EMI Group PLC has said he will drop artists the music group believes are not working hard enough and will overhaul the company’s own executives’ pay packages, the Financial Times reported Friday. EMI, which has Coldplay, the Rolling Stones and Kylie Minogue on its roster, also threatened to withdraw stars’ lucrative advances if record sales are disappointing, the FT said, quoting an internal memo to staff from the chief executive of the private equity firm that bought the company in August. Guy Hands, the CEO of Terra Firma Capital Partners, said the company would in the… Read more »