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In a rare open letter from CEO Steve Jobs on Tuesday, Apple urged record companies to abandon digital rights management technologies. The letter, posted on Apple’s Web site and titled “Thoughts on Music,” is a long examination of Apple’s iTunes and what the future may hold for the online distribution of copy-protected music. In the letter, Jobs says Apple was forced to create a DRM system to get the world’s four largest record companies on board with the iTunes Store. But there are alternatives, Jobs wrote. Apple and the rest of the online music distributors could continue down a DRM… Read more »

Sony Corp and Bertelsmann AG have refiled a request for EU regulators to clear a 2004 deal merging their music units, the European Commission said Thursday. Regulators have to re-examine the deal they cleared in July 2004 because an EU court struck down their original approval last July, citing “manifest errors” in how authorities decided that combining the two music majors would not restrict customer choice. The judgment sent lawyers into a flurry because it undermined the legality of the Sony BMG deal that formed the world’s second-largest record label behind Universal, bringing Sony artists like Aerosmith, George Michael and… Read more »

By now, you might be aware that Fall Out Boy’s new album, Infinity on High, somehow leaked online over the weekend. What you might not know is what FOB’s label, Island Records, plans to do about it. You may have heard that the label was thinking about moving the album’s release date up a week, from February 6 to January 30. And you probably read the reports on various message boards that FOB mouthpiece/bassist Pete Wentz all but confirmed that move onstage at a Friends or Enemies Tour stop in Atlanta. Well, it turns out that none of that information… Read more »

Drummer Travis Barker is leaving a European tour with his new band +44 because of an unhealed fractured arm. The former Blink-182 drummer had been on tour despite a fractured right arm he suffered Sept. 9 while filming a video, according to Interscope Records. Barker, 31, will return to Los Angeles to be treated. The band, fronted by former Blink-182 singer and bassist Mark Hoppus, has not announced a replacement drummer. A message left at Interscope Records was not immediately returned Sunday. Barker starred in the MTV reality series “Meet the Barkers” with former Miss USA Shanna Moakler, to whom… Read more »

EMI Group Plc, which ousted its two top music executives last week after issuing a profit warning, announced on Thursday two key appointments to its EMI Music management team. JF Cecillon will become chairman and chief executive of the newly established EMI Music International unit which will focus on EMI’s recorded music business outside the UK and North America. Cecillon, who was previously in charge of EMI Music for continental Europe, will now oversee Asia, Latin America and Australia and New Zealand. Ian Hanson, previously senior vice president, chairman’s office, EMI Music, has been promoted to the global role of… Read more »

EMI Group PLC said Friday two top music executives are leaving the company and said it expects revenue to fall at its music division after lower-than-expected sales over the Christmas period. EMI Music Chief Executive Alain Levy and Vice-Chairman David Munns will leave the world’s third-largest music company with immediate effect, EMI said. EMI, home to Coldplay and Robbie Williams, said in October that it expected the bulk of its full-year sales to be generated in the second half of the financial year ending March 30. However, on Friday, the company downgraded its full-year revenue forecast significantly. It expects a… Read more »

Fall Out Boy will headline the 2007 Honda Civic Tour, which will begin April 18 in Charlotte, N.C. The full routing and support acts will be announced later this month; tickets go on sale to the general public beginning Feb. 17, with pre-sale information to be announced. In honor of the tour, Fall Out Boy has created a custom Honda Civic Hybrid that will be showcased at each performance. At the end of the tour, one lucky fan will win the car, which features Fall Out Boy graphics, hemp upholstery, Alpine Electronics subwoofers and amplifiers and an audio system loaded… 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 »

IRVINE, California – After 13 years, three labels, seven albums and a career-retrospective DVD, MxPx say they have a record that will put their past work to shame. “This record will kick all of our other records’ asses!” singer/bassist Mike Herrera said. The band’s forthcoming LP, Panic, is its first disc for SideOneDummy and the follow-up to 2003’s Before Everything & After, which spawned punk-pop singles like “Well Adjusted” and “Everything Sucks (When You’re Gone).” “[This record] is raw, but it’s heavy, and it’s a different MxPx,” said the 29-year-old Herrera. “Someone that’s known us in the past may be… Read more »

In one of the most unusual summer-tour pairings in recent memory, the Ozzfest Web site announced Monday night that there will be one final act added to this year’s second-stage lineup: actress Jada Pinkett Smith’s rock group, Wicked Wisdom. The addition of the Christian-leaning rock-and-soul hybrid to a summer touring package that boasts ferocious metal merchants like Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Shadows Fall, Mudvayne, In Flames and the Black Dahlia Murder is unexpected, to say the least. Wicked Wisdom is an Evanescense-esque act that Pinkett Smith, the band’s frontperson and the wife of actor/rapper Will Smith, has said is influenced… Read more »