Search Results for: soft play

We know Coldplay are capable of wooing Gwyneth Paltrow, creating a media circus in Toronto and selling out concert halls in a matter of seconds. But it turns out the British softies are also responsible for a declining profit from EMI Group, their record company. Reuters reports British-based EMI, the world’s third-largest music company, said its full-year profit fell after delays in two key albums from Coldplay and the animated band Gorillaz. According to The New York Daily News, EMI’s stock plummeted 16 per cent in one day when the company announced the latest releases by Coldplay and Gorillaz would… 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 »

Microsoft Corp. launched a new online store for music downloads on Wednesday, taking direct aim at Apple Computer Inc.’s popular iTunes music service. MSN Music, which is aimed at luring more users to the world’s largest software maker’s online service, launched in beta, or test mode, offering songs for download at 99 cents each, the same price as Apple’s online store. Users can access MSN Music from a browser as well as a brand new version of the Windows Media Player that also was unveiled. “We believe we’ve built a better service than the Apple service,” Yusuf Mehdi, MSN vice… Read more »

Apple Computer Inc. will make a slimmed-down version of its iTunes jukebox software that No. 2 cell phone maker Motorola Inc. will install on some wireless phones it will start selling in the first half of 2005, the companies said on Monday. The world’s second-largest cell phone maker also introduced seven new wireless telephones that will be available in the second half of the year, including products aimed at helping corporate customers cut costs. Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs made the announcement via video conference at an event the night before Motorola’s annual analyst meeting in the Chicago suburb of… Read more »

Working to provide consumers with the most compelling digital content whenever and wherever they desire, HP and Apple(R) today announced a strategic alliance to deliver an HP-branded digital music player based on Apple’s iPodâ„¢, the number one digital music player in the world, and Apple’s award-winning iTunes digital music jukebox and pioneering online music store to HP’s customers. As part of the alliance, HP consumer PCs and notebooks will come preinstalled with Apple’s iTunes(R) jukebox software and an easy-reference desktop icon to point consumers directly to the iTunes Music Store, ensuring a simple, seamless music experience. This offering is yet… Read more »

Some popular online services are using a new kind of software to divert sales commissions that would otherwise be paid to small online merchants by big sites like Amazon and eToys. Critics call the software parasite-ware and stealware. But the sites that use the software, which is made by nearly 20 companies and used by dozens, say that it is perfectly legal, because their users agree to the diversion. The amounts involved are estimated by those in the industry to have mounted into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and are likely to continue to grow – in part because… Read more »

Digital-music subscription service Pressplay will offer subscribers access to exclusive new online tracks to stream or download from forthcoming albums well in advance of their release on CD, the company said Wednesday. The first material for the program, which will offer songs from both established and developing artists, will come from upcoming work by Bon Jovi, LL Cool J, Nine Days and Natalie Cole. Once the albums are out, users will also be able to transfer the selected tracks to a portable device and burn them onto a recordable CD. Separately, Pressplay is set to announce Thursday that its service… Read more »

Nine months after 9/11, Fred Durst is standing by his vow not to be a “hater,” despite what an interview in the July issue of Playboy might suggest. In the piece, Durst bashes Christina Aguilera, Kurt Loder and Filter’s Richard Patrick, but the interview was conducted long before the singer’s post-September 11 pledge to give peace a chance. “That interview is one-and-a-half years old that just got published with some extra comments about Wes [Borland],” Durst wrote on the official Limp Bizkit Web site. “I was really feeling negative about a lot of things back then.” One reason readers were… Read more »

If you’ve always thought Britney Spears was ahead of her time, here’s your chance to take a backwards glance at the pop princess as she would have appeared at the height of the doo-wop explosion, the ’60s beach-blanket blitz and the psychedelic Flower Power era. Britney Spears will reprise her role as Pepsi pitchwoman in commercial breaks during Sunday’s Super Bowl, according to a spokesperson for the soft-drink company. Spears will perform her renditions of Pepsi jingles past and present in “Now and Then,” a 90-second spot that revisits the company’s ad themes of the past five decades, including the… Read more »

Kazaa, the wildly popular free music-swapping service that emerged in the wake of Napster’s decline, may finally have shown a chink in its armor. Consumer Empowerment, the Amsterdam-based company that developed Kazaa and the Fasttrack file-sharing network on which it operates, has suspended all new downloads of the software, pending a decision by a Dutch judge in a copyright suit filed against the company by a European publishers’ rights group. The move doesn’t affect users who have already downloaded the Kazaa software; they were still able to swap music and other digital files via Fasttrack last week. Consumer Empowerment also… Read more »