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Beck, Deftones and Offspring singer Dexter Holland joined Recording Artists Coalition founders Don Henley and Sheryl Crow at California’s State Capitol on Wednesday to support new legislation that could change the relationship between recording artists and their labels. Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, Matchbox Twenty’s Paul Doucette, Stevie Nicks, John Fogerty, Carole King, Ray Parker Jr. and Jonatha Brooke also appeared in Sacramento, California, calling on legislators to support Democratic Sen. Kevin Murray’s Senate Bill 1246, legislation that would allow artists to function more like free agents, according to a spokesperson for the Recording Artists Coalition. Murray’s bill aims… Read more »

Pressplay, a Web music service owned by Sony Corp. and Vivendi Universal Thursday said it hopes to make its online service available to Apple Computer Inc.’s Macintosh computers sometime this year. “We are hoping that sometime this year that Pressplay will be available (on Macs), although we can’t guarantee,” said Andy Schuon, chief executive officer of Pressplay, during a conference call hosted by research firm Jupiter Media Metrix. Heads of other subscription services such as Pressplay’s big label-backed rival MusicNet and independently owned FullAudio and Listen.com also joined the call. The commercial services are launching in hopes of tapping the… Read more »

Satellite radio broadcaster Sirius Satellite Radio said Monday it had begun offering its 60 commercial-free music channels on its Web site ahead of the launch of its subscription radio satellite service next month. New York-based Sirius also announced more details of its launch plan, with eight cities to be gradually added throughout the spring to the original four ahead of a nationwide launch sometime in July or August. Sirius will launch in Phoenix, Ariz.; Denver; Houston and Jackson, Mississippi, Feb. 14, followed by Albuquerque, N.M.; Tulsa, Okla.; Little Rock, Ark., and Dallas in early April, and then Indianapolis; Nashville, Tenn.;… Read more »

Sirius Satellite Radio, the satellite radio broadcaster, today unveiled its redesigned web site, offering live streaming of its 60 commercial-free music channels. Created to serve as an interactive complement to Sirius’ broadcast programming, www.siriusradio.com also features “customer command,” which allows consumers to subscribe and manage their Sirius accounts online and interact with customer service representatives 24 hours a day, seven days a week, via live chat and e-mail. To listen to Sirius music on the site, visitors must first sign-up to become “Sirius Insiders.” In addition to listening to live streaming audio, Sirius Insiders can go “backstage” on their favorite… Read more »

Veteran rockers U2 grabbed a leading eight Grammys nominations Friday, including record, album and song of the year. But the day’s biggest surprise was neosoul newcomer India.Arie, who nabbed seven nominations. Her debut “Acoustic Soul” was nominated for album of the year, while her breakout song “Video” received bids for record and song of the year. She was also nominated for best new artist. “I don’t know what to do,” said India.Arie, who help announce the nominations. “My spirit is flying and I want to jump and shout.” The numerous nominations were surprising because India.Arie’s disc was only a moderate… Read more »

Pressplay (www.pressplay.com), the online music service launched Dec. 19, is an order of magnitude better than rival MusicNet (www.musicnet.com), which launched Dec. 4. The gap is so great that I don’t think MusicNet deserves to sign up a single additional subscriber without first undertaking a major overhaul to match pressplay. Not that pressplay is perfect; the major record labels are still struggling to figure out how to sell their music online without opening the door to further piracy. But pressplay succeeds at delivering all three components of the online music experience: “streaming,” where you listen to songs without putting them… Read more »

Welcome to 2002: The Year of the Living Dangerously. For the record labels that is. The major labels took their sweet time and finally rolled out Pressplay and MusicNet, online music subscription services, as 2001 came to an end. The reaction thus far has been, in a word, blah. And the reaction I am talking about is not coming from consumers, it is coming from inside the industry. “The services are useless right now,” one major label executive told me. “Unless we crush file-swapping, we’ll fail online. And if that happens the industry will have to rethink its strategy beginning… Read more »

Pressplay, an online music joint venture between Sony Corp. and Vivendi Universal, yesterday said it will launch to consumers in the United States on Wednesday, December 19. The service, which will offer fans streaming, downloading and CD-burning of music from Sony Music, Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, EMI Group as well as several independents. It will be available to the first several thousand consumers through Microsoft Corp.’s MSN Music, Roxio and Yahoo! and will soon be offered through MP3.com and other affiliates, the companies said. Pressplay said it plans to widen the availability of its service after the New Year.

Performing rights organization BMI on Tuesday plans to announce two licensing deals covering public performances of millions of songs on Microsoft Corp.’s MSN Music and Yahoo Inc.’s music Web sites. BMI, founded in 1940, represents about 350,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers and grants businesses and media access to its repertoire of about 4.5 million musical works. Once payment and performance data is received, fees collected from the public performances on these sites will be distributed as royalties to the songwriters, composers and music publishers of the works BMI represents, the organization said.

Consumer electronics company SONICblue Inc. on Monday unveiled a high-end home entertainment hub that can store an entire music collection and furthers the company’s thrust into the budding market for digital audio and video entertainment. At about $1,500, SONICblue’s Advanced Digital Audio Center can become the centerpiece of a music enthusiast’s wired home. It features a 40-gigabyte hard drive that can record up to 650 hours of music. Through the system, available only via SONICblue’s Web site, music from a CD can be recorded to its hard drive, played back over receivers within the house, downloaded to an MP3 player,… Read more »