Search Results for: extreme

A stark truth facing any aspiring digital music service these days is that working with record labels is going to carry a hefty price. The last 18 months have seen the major music labels accept new technological and business models — such as dropping digital rights management and allowing ad-supported free music — that have given rise to a new generation of digital music services. But the flip side of this willingness to experiment is a demand for higher upfront advances for licensing music and in some cases a substantial equity stake in the company. Ad-supported download service SpiralFrog, for… Read more »

Mike Smith, the lead singer of the 1960s British band the Dave Clark Five, died on Thursday of pneumonia at an English hospital, his U.S. agent said. Smith, 64, was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday morning with a chest infection resulting from complications of a 2003 spinal cord injury that had left him paralyzed from the waist down, his New York agent, Margo Lewis, said in a statement. His death at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, north of London, came just two weeks before the Dave Clark Five — one of the leading bands of the 1960s “British invasion” — was… Read more »

Pink’s marriage was apparently not a feel-good time. The pop-punk princess and her husband of just two years, the motocross-racing, Surreal Life-starring Carey Hart, have separated. And by the sounds of things, rather amicably. “This decision was made by best friends with a huge amount of love and respect for one another,” said the singer’s publicist, Michele Schweitzer. “While the marriage is over, their friendship has never been stronger.” Indeed, in a post on her official site (pinkspage.com), Pink blames dueling careers for torpedoing the union. “The most important thing for you all to know, is that Carey and I… Read more »

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 »

British rock band Radiohead scored its second No. 1 album on the U.S. pop charts on Wednesday with a release that was initially sold on the Internet under a revolutionary “name-your-own-price” system. “In Rainbows” also topped the charts in Britain, Canada, France, Japan and Ireland, a representative for the group said. The critically acclaimed album sold a relatively modest 122,000 copies during its first official week in U.S. stores, according to Nielsen SoundScan data for the week ended January 6. It sold an additional 10,000 copies the week before, when some retailers put it on shelves ahead of its January… Read more »

Radiohead has hit out at the chief of its former label after a news report claimed the rock band rejected a 3 million pound ($5.95 million) advance for its new album and demanded the rights to some of its older albums. According to the report, published last Friday by The Times of London, Radiohead’s demands to EMI Group chairman Guy Hands totaled more than 10 million pounds ($19.8 million). In addition to the advance, the Times said the band also wanted a 3 million pound international marketing budget for the album, “In Rainbows,” while the reversion of the rights to… Read more »

Morrissey has identified his latest quarry. The singer is suing British music magazine NME for defamation, claiming the publication twisted his words in a recent interview to make him appear racist. Morrissey was quoted by the magazine as saying he would no longer live in Britain because an “immigration explosion” was stripping his native land of its identity. “The gates are flooded and anybody can have access to England and join in,” he reportedly said. “Other countries have held on to their basic identity yet it seems to me that England was thrown away.” The singer’s representatives claimed the magazine’s… Read more »

Former Smiths frontman Morrissey is suing music magazine NME for defamation after it printed an article in which he discussed his views on immigration in Britain. The magazine criticized the 48-year-old singer for allegedly saying Britain had lost its identity as a result of higher levels of immigration than other European countries. “We can confirm we have received two writs from Morrissey’s legal representatives pertaining to NME and its editor Conor McNicholas,” a spokesman for NME said on Friday. “NME takes this matter — and the issues it highlights — extremely seriously and we are currently in discussion with our… Read more »

Relationships in the entertainment world can be famously fraught. And few are more so these days than the one between Steve Jobs and Universal Music chief Doug Morris. You may recall that Morris recently refused to re-up a multi-year contract to put his company’s music on Apple’s iTunes Music Store. That’s because Jobs wouldn’t ease his stringent terms, which limit how record companies can market their music. Now, Morris is going on the offensive. The world’s most powerful music executive aims to join forces with other record companies to launch an industry-owned subscription service. BusinessWeek has learned that Morris has… Read more »