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BMG, the worldwide music division of Bertelsmann AG, announced today that Arista Records will be the company’s first label in the U.S. to release a commercial CD using copy management technology. The CD, Comin’ From Where I’m From, by singer-songwriter Anthony Hamilton, will be released nationwide on September 23rd. Until now BMG’s U.S. labels have used copy management technology only on promotional CDs as part of their overall approach to protecting copyrighted content. “The consumer experience is BMG’s top priority,” said Thomas Hesse, Chief Strategic Officer, BMG. “Consumers who purchase this CD will have broad flexibility, including the ability to… Read more »

The week the music industry brought suit against 261 users of Internet file-sharing services, Donald L. McCabe was in St. Louis to talk about a different form of digital copying. Mr. McCabe, a Rutgers University professor, has made a career of studying the cheating of American high school and college students. His most recent study found that cheating was spreading almost like file-sharing. Of more than 18,000 students surveyed, 38 percent said they had lifted material from the Internet for use in papers in the last year. More striking to Mr. McCabe, 44 percent said they considered this sampling no… Read more »

Making good on its promise to sue online pirates, the recording industry filed a round of lawsuits against computer users in federal courthouses Monday. More than 260 civil lawsuits were levied against people targeted by the cutthroat campaign, which the Recording Industry Association of America hopes will stamp out the rampant piracy believed to be causing a slump in record sales. The users’ identities were given to the RIAA by their Internet service providers, who were compelled to do so by the more than 1,500 subpoenas that have been filed since July. The first of what may amount to thousands… Read more »

“You may know this song,” Evanescence singer Amy Lee uttered demurely nine songs into the group’s headlining set Tuesday night at the Congress Theatre. “It’s the song that got us here.” Understatement of the year. Without “Bring Me to Life,” the ubiquitous rap-rock confection featured on Fallen, the Little Rock, Arkansas, troupe would be far more concerned finding people who can pronounce “Evanescence” than finding wall space for their double-platinum album. Now, only five months after the release of Fallen, Evanescence are headlining the Nintendo Fusion Tour, a 20-date excursion that has the band performing after Cold, the group that’s… Read more »

More than a quarter-century after his death, Elvis Presley has something new to get his fans all shook up. A never-before-released song recorded by Presley nearly 40 years ago was recently unearthed and will be issued this fall by RCA Records as part of a new collection of favorites from the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, the label said on Friday. The announcement comes on the eve of the 26th anniversary of Presley’s death, on Aug. 16, 1977, at age 42. The song, “I’m a Roustabout,” originally was written for the 1964 Presley film “Roustabout,” co-starring Barbara Stanwyck, and was… Read more »

Sam Phillips, the man who discovered Elvis Presley and helped kickstart the rock and roll era, died of respiratory failure at St. Francis Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, on Wednesday (July 30). He was 80. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, Phillips founded the Sun Records label in Memphis in 1952 and recorded the debut single from Elvis Presley (“That’s All Right, Mama” b/w “Blue Moon of Kentucky”) in 1954. Elvis’ first recording helped secure both his and Phillips’ places in rock history and set the stage for Phillips’ work with some of the giants of… Read more »

Leading up to the 2004 date targeted for the release of his sixth album, Ben Folds will release a three-EP series of new material online. The first set, Speed Graphic, will be available starting tomorrow at Folds’ Web site, attackedbyplastic.com. The set features a cover of the Cure’s “In Between Days” as well as four new songs, “Protection,” “Dog,” “Wandering” and “Give Judy My Notice.” The second EP, called Sunny 16, will be ready in September, and the third, yet-to-be-titled set is scheduled for November. The point of the EPs? “I have twenty-four hour access to a studio now,” Folds… Read more »

A new Internet music download site for PCs debuting Tuesday boasts the cheapest per-song rates yet but many of the same restrictions on copying that have stymied wider use of other music services. Although online retailer BuyMusic.com will offer a catalog of more than 300,000 songs from the five major record labels, users of the service will not necessarily have the freedom afforded customers of Apple Inc.’s iTunes service to transfer the music purchased to multiple computers and portable devices, or to burn it to compact discs. BuyMusic hopes to score the sort of attention that helped drive sales for… Read more »

Long an artist’s sanctuary, the commercial recording studio is becoming a virtual fortress, guarding against the potentially devastating consequences of theft. The thieves’ targets are the rough mixes, outtakes, alternative takes and finished masters that traditionally have been loosely handled, even by the artists themselves. Leaks of this material are nothing new, but the advent of unauthorized file sharing on the Internet has greatly increased the consequences of this phenomenon. Recent albums by Eminem, 50 Cent, Korn and Radiohead were all available online prior to release, because unauthorized copies were leaked to unknown parties. In such cases, marketing strategies are… Read more »

Nielsen SoundScan on Wednesday said it will start tracking digital downloads of music from commercial online services as sentiment for music on the Web brightens with successful offerings like Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes music store. Nielsen Soundscan, a unit of Nielsen Entertainment, which is owned by VNU NV,, provides weekly retail music sales information that serves as the basis for the popular weekly Billboard Magazine music charts. The company said that it will now be tracking downloads sold on Apple’s service, Pressplay, MusicNet, and also Listen.com and Liquid Audio. Nielsen Soundscan said it will also track data from Napster when… Read more »