Search Results for: void of vision

The world’s five largest music companies and the three largest music retailers will pay $143.1 million to settle a CD price-fixing case launched by New York and Florida two years ago, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said on Monday. In August 2000, most U.S. states joined in a lawsuit alleging that an industry practice called “minimum advertised pricing” (MAP) artificially inflated the price of CDs between 1995 and 2000, violating federal and state antitrust laws. Under MAP, the labels subsidized advertising for retailers that agreed not to sell CDs below a certain price. The five record labels –… Read more »

The world’s biggest music labels on Wednesday said they have offered major concessions to a group of angry pop stars to try to settle a high-profile dispute regarding recording industry contracts. But a representatives for the artists, who have been lobbying for a change to California labor law, said that a settlement was still not in sight. “I want the artist community to know that the record companies came to the table with substantial compromises and it’s now in the artists’ hands,” said Hilary Rosen, president and chief executive officer of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Rosen said… Read more »

A clash with shareholders cost Thomas Middelhoff his job at the helm of media giant Bertelsmann – even though the company made money while rivals like AOL Time Warner and Vivendi ran into trouble. Not even one of the deals of the decade – reaping billions from selling a stake in AOL Europe at the height of the Internet bubble – could save Middelhoff from the same fate as Vivendi’s former chief Jean-Marie Messier and Robert Pittman, ousted as head of AOL Time Warner’s AOL division in a management shakeup. Bertelsmann said Sunday that Middelhoff was leaving due to “differing… Read more »

There will be no more drugs and violence on Mexican radio stations in and around Tijuana. Baja California state radio stations signed an agreement Thursday to ban songs known as narco-corridos, and instead have decided to play only songs that promote positive messages and good values. They also urged Spanish-language U.S. stations across the border in California to do the same. Casio Carlos Narvaez, a representative of the Radio and Television Industry Chamber, said stations will not be able to compete if their U.S. counterparts don’t take the same step. “We should promote this self-imposed regulation to avoid converting into… Read more »

Following the success of its secure and simultaneous digital distribution in early June of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ long-awaited new single and title track “By The Way,” DG Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: DGIT – News), announced today that Warner Bros. Records collaborated with DG Music for the simultaneous, digital delivery of all 15 songs from the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s (RHCP) latest album. The distribution of one single from the RHCP album per day on 15 consecutive days by DG marks the first time that an entire album has been digitally delivered to radio stations through a private digital network.… Read more »

All things must pass-including criminal sentences-and that has the family of the late George Harrison ticked off. The rocker’s wife and son are angrily objecting to the release last week of the deranged fan who broke into the ex-Beatle’s mansion in December 1999 and nearly killed him in a knife attack. An independent panel in England comprising a judge, a psychiatrist and a British citizen determined 36-year-old Michael Abram, a former drug addict who suffers from schizophrenia, was well enough to be released back into the community and set him free on July 4 from the Scott Clinic, a psychiatric… Read more »

A mohawked Eddie Vedder put the regal Waldorf-Astoria hotel in a punk rock state of mind Monday night when he inducted the Ramones into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Nearing the end of his 17-minute speech, Vedder said, “After this, I’m sure the evening will move quickly, but it’s the Ramones and it’s punk rock and I’m just about finished and I hope you’re OK with that.” The crowd’s response included some jeers and boos. “Apparently you’re not. F– you,” he replied. But overall, the night was filled with special moments – including a Talking Heads induction and… Read more »

Avoiding what was expected to be an intense bidding war over Kurt Cobain’s journals, a New York imprint snapped up the world publishing rights on Monday for a seven-figure sum. Publishers who got an advance look at the diaries were told to submit their bids by 11 a.m. on Monday, but the auction was called off around 10 a.m. after a deal was struck with Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Putnam. “The journals are an intimate, unadulterated portrait of an artist of great influence,” Riverhead’s Julie Grau, who will be the project’s editor, said in a statement released Tuesday… Read more »

Just when you thought the mystery of where ex-Beatle George Harrison died might have been solved, it may actually have deepened. A spokesman for ex-Beatle Paul McCartney Thursday strongly denied a local television report that said Harrison, who died of cancer in Los Angeles on Nov. 29, passed away at a house owned by McCartney. He also said McCartney did not even own a house in California. The Los Angeles affiliate of the UPN network, UPN News 13, reported Tuesday that Harrison died at a secluded home in Beverly Hills that McCartney bought from rock star Courtney Love six months… Read more »

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 »