Archive of EMusician Xtra news items, page 2

Apr 10, 2002 12:00 PM

Sony licenses music for song-swapping CenterSpan

LOS ANGELES, Feb 28 (Reuters) - CenterSpan Communications Corp. on Thursday said it struck a deal to distribute Sony Music Entertainment's music on its peer-to-peer service, marking the first time a major record label has licensed its content to a file-sharing company.

CenterSpan agreed to pay Sony Music, a unit of Sony Corp. , about $2 million in cash plus 283,556 shares and a warrant to buy 189,037 additional shares of its common stock at an exercise price at $8.11 per share, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

CenterSpan's stock on Thursday closed up almost 41 cents at $8.75 on Nasdaq.

Internet content distributor CenterSpan bought controversial Napster-like audio and video Web site Scour.com in 2000 after Scour declared bankruptcy in the wake of a copyright infringement lawsuit.

CenterSpan in April 2001 launched a free trial of a new secure service known as C-Star CDN, including the underlying peer-to-peer technology of Scour that allows users to trade encrypted files authorized for copying by copyright holders.

The agreement lets CenterSpan provide music from Sony Music Entertainment artists to online service providers seeking to offer their subscribers streaming and downloadable music.

A CenterSpan spokesman said the company is also talking with other major recording labels, movie studios as well as online subscription services, such as Pressplay.

"This deal continues the experimental phase the music industry is going through as it tries to figure which digital distribution
model is going to work," said PJ McNealy, analyst with GartnerG2.

Napster, a once-popular peer-to-peer service that was also idled due to a copyright lawsuit, has signed a conditional licensing deal with MusicNet, a major label-backed subscription service.

When the deal between MusicNet and Napster was announced, several of the big labels involved in the venture said they would not license their music to Napster unless they were satisfied it had created a secure service that compensates artists fairly.

Analysts expect Napster's deal will be abandoned because Napster is currently negotiating settlement and future licensing terms individually with each label involved in the copyright infringement lawsuit who are the partners in the MusicNet venture.

Portland, Oregon-based CenterSpan on Thursday also reported a fourth-quarter net loss from continuing operations of $6.4 million or 73 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $2.2 million or 35 cents per share.

Music biz in a funk

NEW YORK (Variety) - The total number of units shipped by the major record labels sank by more than 10% in 2001 -- a decline the industry blamed in part on the ballooning growth of Internet piracy, but which others claim may also reflect more fundamental troubles in the business.

The five majors, which together represent nearly 90% of all music sold in the U.S., shipped 969 million units last year (net of returns), including CDs, cassettes, LPs and DVD music videos, according to data compiled by the Recording Industry Assn. of America. That's down from 1.08 billion in 2000.

The downturn was not as pronounced on a dollar-value basis, as more-expensive CD-format shipments continued to account for a larger part of the mix. Music product worth $13.7 billion shipped to stores, down 4.1% from the year before.

The shipment numbers provided by the RIAA are not the same as actual sales at retail, which include the effect of independent-label stock and exclude record club sales. They also diverge because of fluctuations in retailers' inventories. Retail sales in the U.S. fell nearly 3% in 2001, according to data released earlier this year by SoundScan.

The industry said a large part of its woes in 2001 are attributable to the Sept. 11 effect and the dismal economic backdrop, which has pounded consumer goods makers of all stripes. But the RIAA saved the bulk of its ire for cyberpirates, whom they claim are siphoning off the industry's growth prospects.

"When 23% of surveyed music consumers say they are not buying more music because they are downloading or copying their music for free, we cannot ignore the impact on the marketplace," RIAA president Hilary Rosen said, citing a study commissioned by the trade group.

But the industry has also been broadly criticized for relying on a business model that is fast becoming outdated and for choosing to fight online music fans rather than find an effective way to sell to them.

The record biz's two main stabs at a legal alternative to the free file-swapping world, Pressplay and MusicNet, went online nearly two years after the rise of Napster, and have taken heat for the restrictions they place on copying and transporting music files.

"They have begun to wake up, but it probably would have helped if they had done that 18 months ago," said James Glicker, CEO of independent music Netco FullAudio, which has developed its own digital distribution platform. "The technology radically changed the business model, and some of the things they're facing are very difficult to correct. On the other hand, they could have been a lot more aggressive in providing alternatives."

One of the most intractable problems for the industry, according to both Glicker and the RIAA, is the proliferation of CD-burning technology.

The industry-sponsored study found that more than half of people who download free music from the Net also copy it onto a burned CD or MP3 player, and that ownership of CD-burning hardware has tripled over the last three years to 40% of music consumers surveyed.

Free music has proliferated on the Net over the past year, as the demise of Napster's free service has given way to several more efficient and harder-to-stop successors. The RIAA has suits pending against the most popular of these, including Morpheus, Kazaa and Grokster, but it's unclear as yet how effective their enforcement efforts will be.

By the RIAA's numbers, CDs continued to grow as a percentage of the total shipment mix, even though the numbers sold declined 6.4% overall (2.3% in dollar terms). CDs represented 91% of units sent to retailers, compared with 87% in 2000.

DVD music video shipments surged along with the larger DVD market as the format continues to be embraced by consumers. Shipments of that format leapt nearly 140% in both unit and dollar terms.

Meanwhile, shipments of LPs held steady at just over 2 million, and music cassettes continued their steady decline into oblivion, with shipments slumping by 40% from the year before.

-Reuters/Variety

Internet music piracy pact gets into swing

GENEVA, Feb 21 (Reuters) - A ground-breaking international pact to protect musicians and the multi-billion dollar recording industry from Internet piracy will finally go into force in May, a United Nations agency announced on Thursday.

Over five years after the treaty was signed, the needed number of ratifications for it to take effect was achieved on February 20 when Honduras became the 30th country formally to join, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) said.

The treaty -- the WIPO Phonograms and Performances Treaty (WPPT) -- bars the unauthorised exploitation of recorded or live performances on the World Wide Web.

It formally takes effect on May 20.

Together with a sister pact on protecting the copyright of authors and publishers, due to come into force in March, the new treaty will bring "international copyright law into line with the digital age," WIPO said in a statement.

The IFPI, the record industry association, welcomed the news, saying that the treaty would "benefit all record companies globally -- independent and major record labels, in developing and developed countries."

"It strengthens our industry's protection from piracy on the Internet and it provides the foundation needed for the music industry in every country to introduce new online delivery services," it added.

There are no consensus figures for the cost to the music industry of Internet piracy. But the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), a U.S. pressure group, calculated that U.S. industry lost $2 billion in 2001, up from $1.8 billion the year before, from copyright piracy of music and records.

Under both treaties, countries guarantee the rights of "creators, performers and recording producers to control and/or be compensated for the various ways in which their work is used or enjoyed by others," WIPO said.

It noted that the music business pact would also give recording artists and record companies the right to use technology to prevent the unlicensed reproduction of their work on the Internet.

The United States was among the first states to ratify the pact, which only has the force of law in those countries that have adopted it.

Ratification in the European Union is taking longer because the bloc's 15 members all have to bring their domestic legislation into line. But this process is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

"Of course we want all countries covered, but this is an important political statement," said Jorgen Blomqvist, director of WIPO's copyright law division.

- Reuters

US appeals court reinstates digital recording suit

NEW YORK, Feb 21 (Reuters) -Rhythm and blues artists who recorded albums dating back to the 1950s won a court battle on Thursday when an appeals court reinstated a copyright suit against major record companies over digitized works sold on the Internet or downloaded from Web sites.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a lower court ruling that had thrown out the case filed by members of The Chambers Brothers, The Coasters, The Original Drifters and The Main Ingredient.

Defendants in the suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, are AOL Time Warner Inc, Sony Corp of America, a unit of Sony Corp, BMG Entertainment, a unit of Bertelsmann AG, and Universal Music Group and MP3.Com, which are owned by Vivendi Universal.

The appeals court ruled the district judge had improperly considered certain materials when he dismissed the suit. It sent the matter back to the district judge for further consideration.

The lower court had dismissed the case after finding the plaintiffs' recording contracts effectively transferred their rights in digital versions of their recordings to the record companies and thus barred their federal copyright infringement claims.

The artists had recorded music for labels owned by the defendants from the 1950s through the mid 1990s. Under the contracts, the plaintiffs assigned ownership rights, including copyrights, to the record companies in exchange for royalties from the sale of their records.

However, they said that the "digital revolution" changed the way music is recorded, distributed and sold.

They argued that when the original analog master recordings, which served as the basis for the production of vinyl records and cassette tapes, were remastered digitally and placed on CDs, they became susceptible to rapid reproduction by computer as digital audio files. Once the files were placed on the Internet, they could be downloaded to a computer or simply broadcast over the Internet in a process called "streaming."

The recording artists alleged that their contracts did not grant the record companies the right to sell or authorize others to sell digitized versions of their pre-1996 performances on the Internet or to "digitally download" or "stream" their works.

The plaintiffs argued that unauthorized "clones" of their digital recordings are competing with sales of recordings in the vinyl, cassette and CD formats, thereby reducing their royalty stream.

-Reuters

U.S. to rule on royalty rates for online broadcasts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. government panel will announce on Wednesday how much Internet broadcasters should pay musicians and recording companies for use of their songs, setting the ground rules for the growing "Webcasting" industry.

The decision will have an impact for years to come, say those involved in the negotiations, as more consumers tune in to Internet-based broadcasts from online music providers and existing radio stations over the next few years.

At issue is the royalty rate that Webcasters pay record companies and musicians whose songs they play. Only fractions of a penny apart, the two competing proposals could mean a difference of millions of dollars in payments, negotiators said.

Unlike the music industry's much-publicized battles with Napster and other online song-swapping services, neither side is disputing the fact that money is owed for millions of broadcasts dating back to 1998. The issue is how much.

"Webcasters have built a business based on artists' work," said Ann Chaitovitz, national director of sound recordings for the American Federation of Television and Recording Artists.

"We want to pay and we want to pay fairly for their works," countered Kenneth Steinthal, a partner with Weil, Gotschal and Manges who represents Webcasters. "But that doesn't give them the right to charge whatever they want to."

GOVERNMENT STEPS IN

Radio stations and other broadcasters are exempt from paying royalties to performers, but the exemption does not apply to digital broadcasts.

The Copyright Office stepped in last summer and conducted hearings through the fall after the two sides were unable to reach an agreement on their own.

Record companies and musicians want four-tenths of a penny per listener per song, while Webcasters have proposed paying fifteen-hundredths of a penny for each hour logged by a listener, roughly one-thirtieth the copyright owners' proposal.

Recording companies say the higher rate reflects the market value of their material.

"Our request is based on deals that we've done in the market with other Webcasters who aren't part of the arbitration," said Steve Marks, a lawyer with the Recording Industry Association of America.

Marks said the RIAA has signed agreements with 25 different Webcasters, including Internet portal Yahoo Inc

Webcasters say their lower rate reflects the rate radio stations pay to songwriters, an amount Steinthal said totals between $300 million and $400 million each year.

"The Webcasters' case was significantly more tied to facts and reasoned analysis, and I think we made that case in the arbitration," said Jonathan Potter, executive director of the Digital Music Association, which represents Webcasters.

Webcasters who agreed to the higher rates did so to curry favor with the labels or for other unrelated reasons, Potter and Steinthal said.

In December, recording companies and established broadcasters like Clear Channel Communications Inc. reached an agreement on the rate that commercial radio stations should pay for online broadcasts of their existing programs.

But the Copyright Office rejected the settlement after the two sides refused to disclose the terms of their deal due to fears that it would influence the outcome of other matters before the panel, such as the rate online-only broadcasters should pay.

The panel's decision, due late Wednesday, must be approved by the Librarian of Congress in May before it takes effect. The rate will apply for Internet broadcasts made between 1998 and the end of 2002, at which point the two sides must try again to reach an agreement.

Whatever the outcome, both sides agreed it will not be the end of the issue.

"We can anticipate that one or both sides are certain to appeal this decision, because everybody wants it to be always a little better," Potter said.

-Reuters

MusicMatch touts subscribers as Web music stallsSEATTLE, Feb 20 (Reuters) -Music software maker MusicMatch Inc. said on Wednesday it had 100,000 paying subscribers for its custom Internet radio service, but forecast onerous license terms from major record labels meant it would be a long time before it could offer songs for download.

Privately held MusicMatch makes a "jukebox" program for recording and playing music on a personal computer, competing with industry heavyweights like RealNetworks Inc. , Microsoft Corp. and AOL Time Warner Inc. .

Last May, it launched Radio MX, a subscription service that lets users listen to custom Internet radio stations built around personal preferences and groupings of similar artists for a monthly fee.

The service now, which charges $5 a month or $40 a year, claimed 100,000 users, making it one of the largest Web music subscription services, MusicMatch Chief Executive Dennis Mudd said in an interview.

That figure showed Radio MX was more attractive than new fee-based download services recently launched by the major record labels.

Those services -- MusicNet and Pressplay -- are hoping to tap the big appetite for downloaded music demonstrated by song-swap service Napster, which was shut down last July after the music industry successfully sued for copyright piracy.

MusicNet is backed by the Bertelsmann AG , EMI Group Plc and AOL Time Warner music labels, and uses RealNetworks technology. Pressplay involves Sony Corp. and Vivendi Universal and runs on Microsoft technology.

Subscriber data for those offerings, which launched late last year, are unavailable, but analysts believe they have so far seen a tepid reception from music fans, who complain many artists are unavailable and decry restrictions on moving the songs to portable players and recording them on CDs.

"We think this really does serve as an indication that MusicNet and Pressplay are going about this the wrong way," Mudd said.

For a subscription service to be successful, Mudd said, "You need all the content from all the artists across the labels, it needs to be all you can eat and you need an easy way to find playlists and music that you want."

San Diego-based MusicMatch hoped to offer downloads at some point, but said current licensing terms by the labels were too restrictive and costly to make such a service viable.

"We're in the same meetings that everyone else is, trying to obtain economic and compelling licenses from the labels. But that's going to be a long way off," Mudd said. "I don't want to offer consumers something that's not compelling."

MusicMatch, which competes against software like Real's RealOne player, Microsoft's Windows Media Player and AOL's Winamp, had some 25 million registered users and 13 million active users of its free player, Mudd said.

It had sold about 1 million copies of its $20 premium software, Mudd said. Apart from being available over the Internet, MusicMatch is bundled with PCs from Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Gateway, and also comes with many portable digital music players.

-Reuters

Elton John airs his thoughts on the today's music biz

LONDON - "Rocket Man" Elton John rued on Wednesday the thrust for instant success among undistinguished and indistinguishable modern pre-fabricated pop bands.

"It is like packets of cereal. There are too many of them, and too many of them are just average and mediocre," he told BBC television in an interview filmed during his current tour in the United States.

"It is just fodder. It doesn't sound. It has no distinguishing marks. A lot of it you can't tell one from the other. There is too much of it, just too much of it," the high-spending flamboyant rock legend lamented.

The 54-year-old singer and composer, born Reginald Kenneth Dwight who was knighted in 1998, harked back to the old days when he burst onto the music scene in league with songwriter Bernie Taupin more than 30 years ago.

"I would ban every single video being made -- by a new band anyway. I would just get them on the road...playing second on the bill to people. That is how I started out," he said.

John, who petulantly announced he was quitting the music scene last year but is still going strong, regretted the emphasis put on immediate profits by the record companies.

"Nowadays, they think more about their quarterly earnings and there is no longevity. There is no thinking 'we want this artist to be around in seven to 12 years time'," he said.

"It is kind of heartbreaking because you see most of the emphasis placed on instant success.

"It is kind of disgusting really. It is about time some of these young acts were nurtured and given the time. There certainly is the talent out there. There is as much talent out there now as there was when I was getting going," he added.

The tubby soccer fanatic said he had enjoyed his three decades at the top and remained young at heart, but that realistically his career was now in its sunset phase.

"In a way it is a relief. It is like 'it is over Elton. You have had 31 years where you had a record in the America top 40 every year'. That can't realistically happen any more," he added.

-Reuters

EMI revamps labels, streamlines structure

LONDON, Feb 7 (Reuters) -EMI, one of the world's top music companies, pushed on with yet more restructuring on Thursday when it rejigged its labels under two global brands -- Virgin and Capitol -- and streamlined its international management.

British-based EMI Group, whose stars include Lenny Kravitz and Janet Jackson, said it was scrapping the "EMI" name as a label and combining back-office operations of all its imprints as part of plans to cut costs and improve creativity.

The moves come two days after EMI issued its second profit warning in six months and a week after dropping pop singer Mariah Carey from its roster in an effort to save money.

Music groups have been under pressure to slash costs and restructure after one of the industry's worst years on record when a a dearth of major hits, rampant piracy and an economic downturn hammered album sales.

In its latest restructuring, EMI said the EMI brand would now only be used at a corporate level. The group said it was also scrapping duplication in its management, leaving just one managing director for each country, where in many cases there had been two as a result of buying Virgin Records.

"This change in structure clarifies the roles of our creative record labels and focuses them on the key activities that will make a difference in signing, developing and marketing great talent," EMI's new head of recorded music Alain Levy said in a statement.

Levy has been trawling through the sprawling music group for possible cost savings and restructuruing, and is due to deliver the findings of a strategic review next month.

Reuters

Never mind the rock band, feel the gold medal

SOLDIER HOLLOW, Utah Feb 10 (Reuters) - Maybe there are some things better than being a rock star.

During Sunday's news conference after Finland's Samppa Lajunen won the Olympic gold medal in the Nordic combined he was asked just a few too many questions about his rock band.

"Forget the band. Hey, I just won a gold medal!" Lajunen told a reporter after she asked how many musicians were in the band. The reply prompted laughter among the media.

Lajunen, 22, who sports dyed blue locks, plays guitar with Vieraileva Tahti, or Guest Star. Other band members include team mate Antti Kuisma and members of the Finnish ski jumping team. In October the biggest record company in Finland released Guest Star's hit single, "The Lightest Man in Finland."

But even if winning a gold medal is a dream of a lifetime Lajunen is still excited about his music career. "I hope after this winter I have more time to play music. Maybe we can record something new," he said.

Asked how winning the gold would affect his performance in the upcoming sprint and team events, the Finn, more relaxed, said: "I'm not going to stress any more."

Reuters/Variety

Michael Jackson wants a Children's Day

LOS ANGELES Jan 31 (Reuters) Pop star Michael Jackson thinks children are so cool that the world should set aside an annual holiday to celebrate them.

"There's a Mother's Day and there's a Father's Day, but there's no Children's Day," he said in the upcoming cover story of Vibe magazine. "It would mean a lot. It really would. World peace. I hope that our next generation will get to see a peaceful world, not the way things are going now."

Jackson, 43, who has two children of his own, paid a multimillion-dollar settlement in early 1994 to resolve an accusation of child molestation. He often surrounds himself with tykes, and buses in terminally ill children to play at his sprawling Neverland Valley ranch north of Los Angeles.

-Reuters

PBS gets the blues

BERLIN (Variety) - Top directors Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders and Mike Figgis are joining forces with PBS to shoot six films about the blues.

The projects will examine the nature and emotional impact of blues music and explain how it evolved from folk music into a world language. Also on board to shoot episodes are directors Marc Levin ("Slam"), Richard Pearce ("A Family Thing") and Charles Burnett ("The Wedding").

Scorsese is set to do the first picture in the series, "From Mali to Mississippi," which traces the beginnings of the blues in Africa and its journey to the New World with original compositions from contemporary artists such as Ali Farka Toure, Salif Keita and Habib Koite.

Figgis takes a look at the blues' influence on British music of the 1960s with artists including Eric Clapton, Tom Jones and the Rolling Stones.

Wenders' "Devil Got My Woman" looks at religious and secular elements in the music with profiles of Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J.B. Lenoir. Wenders won acclaim for his 1999 Afro-Cuban documentary "Buena Vista Social Club."

Levin's installment, "Godfathers and Sons," follows Public Enemy frontman Chuck D and Chicago blues label scion Marshall Chess as they bring together hip-hop musicians and blues veterans for their jointly produced album.

Using documentary film material, Burnett highlights the blues' conflicting spiritual and carnal dimensions in "Warming by the Devil's Fire," the semi-fictional tale of a boy in 1955 Vicksburg, Miss. -- the director's hometown.

Memphis is the focus in Pearce's "Moaning at Midnight," which showcases the city that produced Howlin' Wolf, Otis Redding, B.B. King and Elvis Presley. The picture offers never-before-seen footage of Wolf and Redding.

Reuters/Variety

Mars is all a Blur

LONDON Jan 31 (Reuters) Fans of British pop band Blur always thought their music was out of this world. Now it really will be. A musical sequence recorded by the mega-selling foursome will herald the arrival of a British space probe on Mars. The track will be beamed back to Earth when the probe, Beagle 2, lands on the Red Planet in December 2003.

It is part of the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission to find proof of life on Mars. "It is partly based on a mathematical sequence with a few extra notes added," is how Professor Colin Pillinger, the lead scientist working on the British-led space project, described the ethereal recording. "Most (probes) just send back a couple of digits in computer sequence. We thought, why not go the whole hog and send back something that will give us maximum media coverage?" Pillinger said.

Blur, who have enjoyed a string of number one hits including "Parklife" and "Country House" and have sold 10 million albums worldwide, have been involved with the space mission since 1998.

-Reuters

Rare Sinatra "Soliloquy"

LONDON Jan 31 A disc jockey from a remote Scottish island radio station said he would play an 11-minute Frank Sinatra recording that had never been heard in public before. Sinatra sang the version of "Soliloquy," from the musical "Carousel," during a performance he gave at an Atlantic City casino on his birthday in 1988, said Isles FM disc jockey Rodney Collins.

"Hundreds of recordings have come to light since Sinatra's death," Collins, a self-proclaimed expert on Ol' Blue Eyes, told Reuters. "What makes this one special is that it is of such high quality." He said American fans of the late crooner had sent the recording to him at the community radio station where he works on the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. The tape was likely made as a private recording to be passed out among friends who attended the show, which also featured performances by the late Sammy Davis Jr and Buddy Greco, he said.

Reuters