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London – EMI Group PLC, one of the world’s ‘big three’ music companies, reported a fall in sales and a net loss for the first half of its fiscal year Friday but said it expected an improvement in the second half when its album release schedule kicks in. EMI, whose artists include Coldplay, Norah Jones, Kylie Minogue and Robbie Williams, said it was confident the global music industry was returning to a growth phase after a sales slump from 2000 to 2003. Chairman Eric Nicoli said the global industry recorded a decline of 1.3 percent for the first half of… Read more »

Washington – Know a marathon runner whose 10-year old Beastie Boys’ CD has become his second language? A best friend who’s 1992 faux-wood CD tower is the eyesore of their ultra-chic bachelorette pad? Riptopia launches you into the new digital music age by freeing you from the constraints of CDs. By simply logging on to Riptopia.com, you can buy a new MP3 player that comes fully loaded and organized with your entire CD collection. Riptopia realizes that although CDs can be converted to MP3 players through a process called “ripping,” it is a tedious, time-consuming task that requires special technical… Read more »

New York – If there was an increase in the number of people who took the day off from work or stayed home from school Tuesday, it may not have been the flu that kept them at home and on the couch. “Halo 2,” the long-awaited sequel to the 2001 game that set the standard for first-person shooters, went on sale Tuesday (November 9) at midnight, and thousands of people around the country waited in line for hours, just to be among the first to get their hands on what promises to be the biggest video game of the year.… Read more »

The French Competition Council has dismissed the case brought by Virgin’s French arm, Virginmega.fr, against Apple for alleged abuse of market dominance. The French download site wanted to force Cupertino to lift the lid on its DRM, to enable Virgin to make its downloads compatible with the iPod. Apple has always refused to open up its proprietary Fairplay – the system DRM that allows songs from the iTunes store to only be played on iPods – to competitors. Virginmega.fr, on the other hand, has opted for Microsoft’s DRM – which means its downloads can’t be played on iPods at all.… Read more »

BURBANK, Calif. – Buena Vista Interactive, a publishing label of Buena Vista Games, Inc., announced today its much-anticipated first person shooter, TRON 2.0: Killer App, has shipped for the Xbox® videogame system from Microsoft to North American retail outlets. TRON 2.0: Killer App is also available at retail for the Game Boy® Advance. “We are pleased to bring the TRON franchise to the Xbox®, and the Xbox(TM) Live gaming community,” said Bob Picunko, director of product marketing for Buena Vista Games. “With an intriguing storyline, innovative and deep multiplayer features, hit music and wide range of Xbox(TM) Live functionality, Killer… Read more »

Hewlett-Packard on Friday unveiled its much-anticipated HP-branded iPod, a deal that instantly gives the company a popular product and greatly extends the retail reach of its partner, Apple Computer. Currently, Cupertino’s Apple has a healthy lead over its competition with its iPod digital music players and its iTunes Music Store. But competition is heating up. Other companies including Creative, Samsung and Sony have their own lineups of portable music players. Microsoft is expected to jump into the fray next week with its own online music service and an updated version of the Windows Media Player software. As for Friday’s unveiling… Read more »

For the first time, the No. 1 album in the United States is loaded with anticopying protections, marking a clear step into the mainstream for the controversial technology. According to figures released by Nielsen SoundScan, Velvet Revolver’s “Contraband” was the top-selling album in America last week, despite being prominently labeled on its cover as being “protected against unauthorized duplication.” The success of the album is likely to prompt more experiments from BMG, the band’s label, and other record companies, industry watchers said. “It’s too soon to tell whether the rest of the industry is going to be heartened by this,”… Read more »

Apple Computer Inc. launched its highly anticipated iTunes Music Store in Europe on Tuesday, expanding the popular digital music service to users in Britain, France and Germany. Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said iTunes would be available without subscription. The charge for downloading a single track would be 79 pence ($1.43) in the United Kingdom and 99 euro cents ($1.20) in Germany and France. Jobs boasted that more than 85 million songs have been downloaded from iTunes in the United States. Along with the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom account for 60 percent of global music sales.… Read more »

Representatives of the Beatles are in discussions with various online music services about licensing their songs for distribution on the Internet, people familiar with the discussions said on Tuesday. The Beatles have been one of the biggest holdouts in releasing their catalog for sale online, and the lack of such mega-hits as “Let it Be” and “Yesterday” has been cited as a major weakness for fledgling, Web-based music stores. Negotiators for the Beatles have talked with several companies, with a particular emphasis on Microsoft Corp’s MSN, which is expected to open an Internet music store late this summer, people familiar… Read more »

If anybody can get Internet music downloads right, it should be Sony Corp. The company has years of experience selling records, consumer electronics and personal computers – and it’s had plenty of time to study earlier digital-music ventures. So how could the Connect music store, unveiled on Tuesday, have turned out so badly? It gets a few things right, but by forgetting that customers want to feel like they actually own their music, it repeats – or exceeds – the mistakes of other music stores. Let’s start with compliments: Sony does more than any other service to bring down the… Read more »