Search Results for: soft play

Napster may be long dead, but the name and the “kitty” logo of the pioneer online music-swapping program could return to cyberspace before the year is out. Santa Clara-based Roxio Inc., which owns the rights to the Napster name, plans to shelve its current online music service, pressplay, and roll out Napster 2.0 by Christmas, Chris Gorog, Roxio’s chairman and chief executive, told The Associated Press. Gorog was scheduled to announce details of the venture Monday at the Jupiter Plug.IN Conference & Expo in New York. Software maker Roxio acquired pressplay, a joint venture of Universal Music Group and Sony… Read more »

Japanese electronics and entertainment giant Sony Corp. reported a 98 percent decline in profit for the April-June quarter as sales faltered in key businesses such as electronics, video games, movies and music. Sony said Thursday it earned 1.1 billion yen ($9 million) in the first quarter of its fiscal year, down from 57.2 billion yen for the same period last year. Sales for the Tokyo-based company fell 6.9 percent to 1.6 trillion yen ($13.5 billion) from 1.7 trillion yen. Sony set off a plunge in Tokyo share prices in April after it reported a loss in the final quarter of… Read more »

A new Internet music download site for PCs debuting Tuesday boasts the cheapest per-song rates yet but many of the same restrictions on copying that have stymied wider use of other music services. Although online retailer BuyMusic.com will offer a catalog of more than 300,000 songs from the five major record labels, users of the service will not necessarily have the freedom afforded customers of Apple Inc.’s iTunes service to transfer the music purchased to multiple computers and portable devices, or to burn it to compact discs. BuyMusic hopes to score the sort of attention that helped drive sales for… Read more »

In another move to reduce its debt, AOL Time Warner Inc. said Friday it is selling Warner Music’s DVD and CD manufacturing businesses to a Canadian company for $1.05 billion. The cash deal was the latest in a series of moves aimed at cutting AOL’s debt from nearly $26 billion at the beginning of this year to $20 billion by the end of 2004. In recent months, AOL has sold its 50 percent stake in the Comedy Central cable channel to Viacom Inc. for $1.2 billion and shed an $800 million stake in Hughes Electronics Corp. AOL settled a lawsuit… Read more »

Ticket sales are down, and big tours are scaling back to smaller venues. It looks to be a long, hot summer for the touring industry. On the cusp of the industry’s peak period, a number of high-profile tours and festivals have already hit snags, among them highly touted outings from Mariah Carey, the Field Day Music Festival, Lollapalooza, and Beck and Dashboard Confessional. Faced with a crowded tour market combined with high ticket prices, permit hassles, a sluggish economy and poor buzz, these tours and a handful of others have either had to scale back the size of the venues… Read more »

Electronics retailer Best Buy Co. said Monday it has shed its troubled Musicland Group, turning it over to Sun Capital Partners, a Florida-based private investment company. Best Buy shares rose. Sun Capital Partners paid no cash but assumed all of Musicland’s liabilities including its lease obligations. Musicland operates around 1,100 Media Play, Sam Goody and Suncoast stores across the country. Best Buy said in March that it planned to sell the group. Richfield-based Best Buy paid nearly $700 million for Minnetonka-based Musicland two years ago, but the group failed to meet Best Buy’s expectations, especially in consumer electronics sales. When… Read more »

Liam Lynch was onstage about two minutes total, yet it was his song that best summed up Saturday’s 11-hour KROQ Weenie Roast. It was truly the “United States of Whatever.” As in, whatever goes. Good Charlotte unplugged, Pink got the party started with the Transplants, and Jane’s Addiction played unannounced, proving nothing was off-limits at the trend-setting radio station’s 11th annual summer festival. The lineup itself was a little bit of whatever, and certainly more diverse than last year’s “diet Ozzfest,” as Jack Osbourne called it. All three stages showcased a variety of bands, although it was surprisingly the main… Read more »

No other contemporary chart-topping rock album sounds remotely like Metallica’s St. Anger. Never mind the whirlwind tempos, multiple rhythm changes and seven-minute songs. What’s really unusual are the lo-fi tones and unconventional constructions. The drums don’t crack, they clang, and cymbals cut out abruptly. There are no guitar solos. Once in a while a guitar lick lags behind the beat, and frontman James Hetfield’s vocals occasionally veer off key. Stranger still, that’s exactly the way Metallica and producer Bob Rock wanted it to sound. “I wanted to do something to shake up radio and the way everything else sounds,” said… Read more »

Tech’s big guns are wading into the online music business – and now the big question is whether Microsoft will squash its rivals like a bug, as it has so many others. Industry watchers say this time Bill Gates has his hands full. Microsoft, Amazon.com and Yahoo! are three of the players, along with AOL Time Warner and Viacom’s MTV, according to a story in The Los Angeles Times. While Gates considers a digital music launch, his company will now likely have to face off with the almighty music industry, which he needs to win over if he’s going to… Read more »

It’s time to buy, mix, and burn, according to Apple Computer Inc. The Silicon Valley company that angered the recording industry with its “Rip. Mix. Burn” ad campaign was expected to launch an online music service Monday that promises to make it easier for consumers to pay for music downloaded from the Internet. The announcement is the result of an intense effort by Apple CEO Steve Jobs to court music industry executives, who have been leery of digital music downloads, and have aggressively filed lawsuits and pushed for new laws to stem the illegal copying and distribution of copyright works.… Read more »