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No big surprise, but apparently Marilyn Manson is more of a Halloween guy. At least, that’s the holiday he cited as the date on which he and estranged wife Dita Von Teese went their separate ways, disputing her claim that the glam-Goth twosome uncoupled on Christmas Eve. Manson counter-filed for divorce last Friday in an attempt to block Von Teese from being awarded spousal support, although the burlesque performer did not request it when she filed her own divorce petition Dec. 29. Her heavily made-up hubby has also stated that he wants Von Teese to pay her own attorney fees,… Read more »

Struggling U.S. auto manufacturers are hoping music will do for them what it did for Apple after the introduction of the iPod — make them cool. And in so doing, they aim to attract a new generation of car buyers who expect digital entertainment at all times. Two-thirds of 2007-model cars will enable users to connect MP3 players to factory-installed stereos. Leading the charge is Ford Motor, which at the Detroit Auto Show January 9 introduced a new factory-installed, in-car communications and entertainment system called Sync, developed in partnership with Microsoft. While auto manufacturers have offered iPod-integration kits as a… Read more »

A surge in downloaded songs and mobile-phone ringtones failed to make up for declines in sales of compact discs last year, an industry group said. Music downloads almost doubled to about $2 billion last year, accounting for about 10 percent of the industry’s global sales, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said in a statement today. While that’s up from 5.5 percent in 2005, it’s still not enough to offset the revenue lost due to piracy and declining sales of physical media such as CDs. “I would like to be announcing that a fall in CD sales is being… Read more »

LOS ANGELES – Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris resents that MTV and other cable music channels built multibillion-dollar businesses around videos given away by record companies anxious to promote their artists. So when he saw his own grandson watching 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” video on Yahoo, it got him asking: “How much are we getting paid for that?” The answer – nothing – led Morris to pull all of Universal’s videos from the giant Web portal until it agreed to a licensing deal in 2005. He wrangled similar arrangements from Time Warner Inc.’s AOL and other Internet portals… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO – Apple’s new iPhone appears to be the clearest statement yet of what Steve Jobs’s impact has been on consumer electronics. It is not that he invents new technologies. He refines existing ones. Mr. Jobs himself acknowledged that when asked during an interview on Tuesday whether he thought the iPhone represented a trend toward the convergence of computing and communications. “I don’t want people to think of this as a computer,” he said. “I think of it as reinventing the phone.” If the iPhone succeeds commercially, it will be new proof of Mr. Jobs’s power and influence over… 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 »

BEVERLY HILLS, California – If only iTunes charts meant as much as Billboard charts. “I’d be on the front of People magazine every week,” Ben Folds joked. “I have a real disproportionate Internet fanbase. On iTunes, it’s me and the Boss.” In “the real world,” a.k.a. record stores, though, Folds has pretty much tossed in the towel. “You don’t have to walk in the mall for very long to realize I’m not really in that world,” Folds said during a promotional trip to Los Angeles last week that included, of all things, an in-store performance at Virgin Records. “The misconception… Read more »

Los Angeles – America Online is set to reveal a dramatic new addition to its public Web presence Tuesday (April 19) with the announcement that it will make thousands of music videos available for free and on demand. The media company disclosed an agreement with Universal Music Group (UMG), and a deal with Warner Music Group is expected shortly. Additional labels already are in negotiations as well. AOL has begun encoding the videos and plans to put them up at www.aolmusic.com gradually as the technical work is completed, beginning this week. America Online senior vp programing Bill Wilson said that… Read more »

Washington – Congress is toying with the idea of mandating one standard for all online music platforms. Thanks but no thanks – the industry can figure it out, said music industry and consumer groups at a congressional hearing about the plan Wednesday. During a hearing to discuss mandating interoperability standards between competing music platforms such as Apple’s iTunes and RealNetworks’ Rhapsody, lawmakers sounded off on the lament of some hipsters frustrated by playback snafus when they try to transfer music files from other platforms to their iPods. Although Real and Apple support Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), a compression format defined… Read more »

Los Angeles – Fans will be able to build libraries of their favorite music videos because of deals set to be announced Wednesday (March 16) involving digital entertainment companies CinemaNow and MediaPass Network. CinemaNow announced agreements with Warner Music Group, Epitaph Records and TVT Records to sell music videos on a download-to-own basis. This marks the first time music videos will be made available specifically for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile-based secure devices, a category that includes Portable Media Centers, Pocket PCs and Smartphones from many different manufacturers. The videos also can be viewed on PCs and laptops. The company is set… Read more »