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Top executives at the major record companies have finally found an online music service that makes them excited about the digital future, sources said Monday. The new service, developed by Apple Computer, offers Macintosh users many of the same capabilities that are already available from services previously endorsed by the labels. But the Apple offering won over music executives because it makes buying and downloading music as simple and nontechnical as buying a book from Amazon.com, one source said. “This is exactly what the music industry has been waiting for,” said one person familiar with the negotiations between the Cupertino… Read more »

The music of pop-jazz chanteuse Norah Jones garnered seven Grammy awards Sunday night, catapulting her past crowd favorite Bruce Springsteen and his three awards for the Sept. 11-inspired “The Rising.” As unknown as Springsteen was acclaimed before the last year, Jones won four individual Grammys while her producer, engineers and the writer of her hit “Don’t Know Why” were honored as well. “I never ever thought that the music I made would become popular music, so this is amazing,” Jones said as she picked up an award for best pop vocal album. She also won for best female pop vocal,… Read more »

A music industry trade body launched Monday electronic identity tags to keep tabs on Internet music sales in a bid to compensate musicians and song writers as more of their works become available online. The Global Release Indentifier, or GRid, is a code akin to the Universal Product Code (UPC) bar code found on a CD or cassette tape in stores. The aim is to track each time a record label, online retailer or distributor such as Microsoft’s MSN or Italian Internet service provider Tiscali sells a song in the form of a Web stream or download. Such tracking initiatives… Read more »

We know Metallica and Limp Bizkit will headline the Summer Sanitarium Tour, but what we don’t know is who will be in those bands. Or do we? “We got Yngwie Malmsteen,” Fred Durst deadpanned Wednesday at a press conference to announce the tour, which also features Linkin Park, the Deftones and Mudvayne. “Oh man, he was next on my list,” Lars Ulrich said of the Swedish metal guitar virtuoso. “I’ll take Steve Vai and give you him,” Durst shot back. Of course, Durst and Ulrich were joking. Metallica’s bassist slot and Limp Bizkit’s guitarist slot remain vacant. The latter band… Read more »

Six retail record store chains ? hurting from competition from CD burning, online music and large discount stores ? are teaming to offer consumers digital music downloads in their stores and over the Internet. The stores have formed a joint venture called Echo that will provide technology and allow them to offer individual tracks for downloading to portable devices and computers. The stores are Best Buy, Tower Records, Virgin Entertainment Group, Wherehouse Music, Hastings Entertainment Inc. and Trans World Entertainment Corp., operator of FYE, Strawberries and Coconuts stores. “We’re trying to make digital music work in a mass market way,… Read more »

Technology companies and advocacy groups announced a new lobbying organization Thursday to counter Hollywood in the battle over access to digital music, movies and books. Founding members of the Washington-based Alliance for Digital Progress ? which one Hollywood executive demeaned as “a bit strange” ? include Microsoft Corp., Dell Computer Corp., Motorola Inc. and the Information Technology Association of America. The group wants to fight Hollywood efforts to require anti-copying technology in digital entertainment devices. Technology advocates say embedding such technology in computers and software would crimp product innovation ? and trample consumers’ rights. “Hollywood leaders… would have organized the… Read more »

The leading trade associations for the music and technology industries, which have been at loggerheads over consumers downloading songs on the Internet, have negotiated a compromise they contend will protect copyrights on movies and music without new government involvement. Lobbyists for some of the nation’s largest technology companies will argue under the new agreement against efforts in Congress to amend U.S. laws to broaden the rights of consumers, such as explicitly permitting viewers to make backup copies of DVDs for personal use or copy songs onto handheld listening devices. “How companies satisfy consumer expectations is a business decision that should… Read more »

Blamed by shareholders for AOL Time Warner’s sharp fall in fortunes, Steve Case said he will step down as chairman of the conglomerate he helped create – a marriage of old and new media first hailed as revolutionary but now struggling for a future. Case’s departure means the company’s leadership will be without any of the key architects of the blockbuster merger of America Online and Time Warner in 2001. The company said Sunday he would step down in May. In a brief statement, Case said he had concluded AOL Time Warner was better off without him as chairman. “Some… Read more »

Sixty years after his birth, one of the most important artists ever to emerge from Seattle is – at least officially – almost invisible here. There’s no Jimi Hendrix Boulevard, no Hendrix Arena, no Hendrix Elementary School. The only thing the city has done to recognize the man many consider the world’s greatest guitar player is to give him a rock – in the African Savanna exhibit at the Woodland Park Zoo. Biographer Charles Cross of Seattle, who has spent years researching Hendrix for an upcoming book, called the oversight “almost criminal.” “The Seattle city government has never given any… Read more »

Eddie Vedder has found plenty of material in mortality over the years. His band, Pearl Jam, was born of a heroin overdose more than a decade ago. Rival songwriter Kurt Cobain of Nirvana committed suicide while at the height of popularity. Two of Pearl Jam’s biggest hits, “Jeremy” and “Last Kiss,” deal with teen death. Now comes renewal, an appropriate topic as the lead singer and his bandmates re-emerge from their most proximate shock: the deaths of nine fans trampled during the 2000 Roskilde festival in Denmark. “Riot Act,” released Nov. 12, is Pearl Jam’s first studio album since the… Read more »