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Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment have secured a massive distribution channel for their Duet subscription service, which is expected to launch this summer. Duet will be made available to visitors to the Yahoo! network and Yahoo!* Music web sites. According to Media Metrix, Yahoo! receives 185 million visitors per month worldwide. By comparison, Media Metrix estimates that Napster receives 16.9 monthly site visitors. The on-demand Duet subscription service will offer consumers the ability to compile personalized playlists and to share them with other Duet members still while respecting artists’ rights. The service will provide users with the ability… Read more »

Gerald Kearby, president and chief executive officer for Liquid Audio, testified today before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Online Entertainment and Copyright Law. The hearing, which will take place in Washington, D.C., has been called by Committee Chairman Orin Hatch to discuss issues involving the online distribution of copyrighted materials. Throughout his testimony, Kearby pointed to the need for companies in converging industries to partner together to create viable digital distribution technologies that also protect rights holders. “Over the last several months I have been dismayed and frustrated by the extraordinary traction in the marketplace and public attention awarded… Read more »

RioPort.com and the MTVi Group have announced that they will offer paid music downloads from all five major music labels on Radio MTV.com and VH1atWork Radio beginning this month. Leveraging RioPort’s PulseOne Media Service, Radio MTV.com, (which officially launches today) and VH1atWork Radio will be the first online destinations to link Internet radio with commercial downloads for consumer use. Through its partnership with RioPort, Radio MTV and VH1atWork Radio, both of which are DMCA-compliant, will be the first Internet radio destinations to offer listeners a blend of streaming and downloadable music in addition to providing features that allow consumers to… Read more »

Not many can pretend to know what it’s like in Eminem’s head Ö but a Michigan man has moved into the rap superstar’s old house. What’s it like? Well Ö “We’ve had it for five weeks, and we’re still cleaning,” Darren Martens tells the Detroit News of his new Sterling Heights home. In addition, Martens, who bought the home last month for $475,000, is not keen on the rapper’s sense of design. He’s ripped out the bright purple carpeting the rapper and his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Kim Mathers, put in, and he’s slowly working to add some consistency to the interior –… Read more »

Although the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has chosen to celebrate its rebel heroes with a black-tie dinner at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, the anarchic spirit of the form still permeated the air as the class of 2001 was inducted Monday night. There was presenter Keith Richards, beautifully rambling in tongues, the way all rock gods should, as he inducted Burton and Johnson. There was inductee Burke, looking like a sultan pimp in a sparkling burgundy suit and fur-trimmed cloak. There was Kid Rock diving headlong into Aerosmith’s past excesses as he inducted the band, joking of their 1977… Read more »

Anyone hoping that the music industry’s infatuation with youth was just a passing fad got a big wake-up call when 21-year-old Lance Bass announced he was opening a management company last year. A member of pop group ‘NSYNC, Bass sent a message to all of the jaded industryites who refused to take young superstars seriously: they’re here, they’re hot, and they ain’t going away. That Bass’ first client would be 16-year-old country singer Meredith Edwards (she turned 17 in early March) therefore seemed somehow appropriate. Bass obviously knows something about launching teen acts; as for entering the world of Nashville,… Read more »

In the latest attempt to link music and school violence, the songs of California pop-metal band Linkin Park are being implicated in Monday’s Santee, Calif., shooting, in which 15-year-old Charles “Andy” Williams opened fire on his Santana High schoolmates, killing two and wounding 13. A friend of Williams’ appearing on NBC’s Today show said that Williams was a fan of the band and that he was influenced by three songs on the band’s Hybrid Theory album: “One Step Closer,” “Papercut,” and “In the End.” Linkin Park released a one-sentence statement about the shooting via its publicist. It reads, “Like everyone… Read more »

Music giants Sony and Vivendi Universal are to form a company called Duet, which will offer a rival service to Napster. According to BBC news, the two labels, who have on their rosta artists including Elton John, Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez, will allow users to get access to music for a subscription fee in a secure environment. Speaking to French newspaper La Tribune, Vivendi’s Jean-Marie Messier said: “In Duet, we have something to start with and no one can imagine launching online music without the world’s number one and number two companies…we hope to licence 50% of the world’s… Read more »

Napster, the wildly popular online song-swap service, Tuesday offered to pay $1 billion over five years to the recording industry to end a bitter lawsuit that threatens its survival. Napster officials, outlining a strategy they hope will keep their company alive in the face of a threatened legal injunction, said they were willing to pay $150 million per year in licensing fees to major record companies and $50 million per year in fees to independent labels and artists. “We updated on short notice everyone in the music industry,” Andreas Schmidt, president and chief executive of the e-commerce group at German… Read more »

On Monday (February 12), the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the wildly popular song-swap service Napster to stop its millions of users from trading copyrighted material. Calling the decision a major victory, recording industry officials and legal experts said the ruling by a three-judge panel could destroy Napster as a free song-swapping service. Napster, a company formed around a computer program developed by a teenage college dropout, was gloomy. “Napster is not shut down, but under this decision it could be. We are very disappointed in this ruling by the three judge panel and will seek appellate review,”… Read more »