Search Results for: thursday

Madonna will now play six concerts in Britain after all tickets for what was to be her only British appearance sold out minutes after they went on sale Thursday. The Material Girl will perform at London’s Earl’s Court on July 6, 7, 9, 10 and 12 in addition to her originally planned show at the venue on July 4, American Independence Day. Madonna fans camped out overnight to make sure they got tickets for the singer’s first public performance in Britain for seven years. Promoters said all 16,000 tickets for the first show had sold out within 15 minutes. Ticket… Read more »

Song-swap service Napster has lost about 20 percent of its users since it began efforts to comply with a court order that bars the trade of copyrighted songs on the directory, according to a study released on Thursday. According to technology research firm Jupiter Media Metrix, 12 million people used the Napster application in March, down from 15 million in February. Napster’s service sparked a revolution by enabling millions of users to swap songs for free by trading MP3 files, a compression format that turns music on compact discs into small digital files. The world’s biggest record labels – including… Read more »

Bowing to a threatened recording industry lawsuit, a Princeton University computer scientist decided against revealing Thursday how he and other researchers thwarted security measures meant to protect copyright digital music. Edward Felten, an associate professor whose team included Rice University and Xerox-PARC researchers, had been silent for days on whether he would present his findings at the International Information Hiding Workshop in Pittsburgh. On Thursday, a frustrated Felten said he decided against releasing the information because of the potential for lawsuits against the researchers, their schools and conference organizers. He did not say what he would do next. “Litigation is… Read more »

A group of researchers who foiled four different copyright protection technologies in a contest launched last year by the music industry is now being asked by the record companies to suppress its findings, one of the researchers said Tuesday. The research group – composed of students and professors from Princeton and Rice Universities and an employee of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center – had initially planned to present its findings Thursday at a Pittsburgh conference on information security but was then threatened with legal action by the forum, the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), a forum representing music and technology… Read more »

Pop icon Michael Jackson, who has a solo album in the works and a reunion concert with his brothers planned for this fall, has severed ties with his powerhouse management company, both parties said Thursday. The Firm, which has represented Jackson’s solo interests for the past year and a half, parted ways with the Gloved One this week. “All I can say is that it didn’t work out,” Jackson publicist Cheri Fein told Reuters. Both she and The Firm declined to give any specific reasons for the separation. But the music news Web site Hits Daily Double quoted one source… Read more »

Lawyers from popular song-swap company Napster and the Recording Industry Association of America held a conference call on Friday with a court-appointed technical expert to resolve disputes over Napster’s compliance with an injunction barring the trading of copyrighted songs on the service. Both sides declined to comment after the call, held on Friday afternoon, and sources familiar with the situation said that U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ordered the transcript of the call sealed. Patel, lawyers from both sides and the expert, A.J. “Nick” Nichols, took part in the call, according to sources familiar with the situation. Russell Frackman,… Read more »

As chatter abounds regarding the urgency of digital distribution, major music conglomerates are moving quickly to demonstrate their eagerness to make their content available online. Further evidence comes with this week’s pact between media giants AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann and EMI and digital behemoth RealNetworks to create MusicNet, a platform for downloadable and streaming services. MusicNet will provide a pool of licensed music from the participating rights holders, with a technology infrastructure by Real. The label groups collectively have a 60% stake in the venture, while Real has 40%. Once the platform is established, any digital music provider satisfying the… Read more »

As the major record labels rush to acquire smaller, independent digital music libraries, Universal Music Group is negotiating to buy EMusic.com Inc. for $24.6 million in cash, sources confirmed Thursday. UMG signed a nonbinding letter of intent to pay 57 cents a share for the Redwood City, Calif.-based music e-tailer, which owns one of the largest MP3 music libraries. The deal still requires a final agreement and the approval of the boards of both companies. Meanwhile, EMusic is restricted from negotiating with other interested buyers as the deal is hammered out. An EMusic spokesman would not confirm the company’s buyer… Read more »

Stone Temple Pilots will let fans watch them make their fifth album – but don’t expect a personal invitation to their rented Malibu home. STP filmed a behind-the-scenes documentary as they recorded the LP in their beach villa-turned-recording studio. “It set out to be like a modern-day ‘Let It Be,’” Chapman Baehler, the film’s director, said Thursday (April 5), referring to Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 Beatles documentary. The film follows singer Scott Weiland, guitarist Dean DeLeo, bassist Robert DeLeo and drummer Eric Kretz through the record-making process, from hammering out songs in preproduction to putting the tunes down on tape. “It’s… Read more »

Moby’s inaugural Area: One roving concert festival is taking shape with the addition of hip-hop duo Outkast and electro-rock group New Order to a lineup that includes previously announced acts Incubus and Paul Oakenfold. Rap ensemble the Roots and techno DJ Carl Cox have also been added to the bill, according to Moby’s publicist. “My reason for doing this is that there is a lot of music in the world that I love that does not always get the appropriate exposure,” Moby said in a press release. The revolving lineup will have Incubus and Outkast playing East Coast dates and… Read more »