Digital Media News
Yesterday the great Peter Kafka reported in All Things Digital that Android head Andy Rubin said the upcoming Google Music Store will have a “twist”. The latest rumor is that the “twist” may actually be a limited form of music sharing. According to a digital media source, “it will probably be limited to a small number of plays”, but the source was unfamiliar with any…
Industry sources tell me that Sean Parker is working furiously behind the scenes with Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies to put together a winning bid for EMI. According to insiders, Parker really wants this to happen. The main competition seems to be Junior Bronfman, who’s new duties at Warner Music seem to consist solely of trying to outbid everyone else for EMI. Since Junior has been shown…
Lawyers for EMI are confident that they will prevail in their lawsuit against Michael Robertson’s MP3Tunes, according to well-informed sources. The label also believes that they will get a ruling on the case fairly soon, though Robertson has heard nothing indicating an imminent decision from the courts. A reason for this optimism on the part of EMI is unknown at the moment, but if a…
A member of the Warner Music Group board of directors is about to become embroiled in a copyright infringement lawsuit against CNET and its owners CBS Interactive that could be extremely embarrassing for the music company and bring unwanted attention to the pending sale of WMG to investor Len Blavatnik. Plaintiffs in the copyright infringement lawsuit Alki David v. CSB Interactive have pointed out that…
I hate saying I told you so, but I told you so. Last week it was first reported here that the new free iCloud music locker service would focus on only tracks purchased at iTunes. A couple of months ago it was also first reported here that Apple would be charging about $25 a year for a locker service. Right on both accounts, but that’s…
A new rumor is circulating about the features, or lack of them, of Apple’s soon to be launched music cloud service. The word is that the service will only store tracks purchased from iTunes as opposed to a users entire music collection. With the caveat that this is just rumor at this point and not completely verified, it makes sense given the label’s paranoia about…
Billboard Magazine reported last night that Google would be finally be launching its long anticipated music locker service today—without major label licenses. As you probably know, the news of Google’s intentions to follow Amazon’s lead and bypass the typical music industry tsuris was first reported here a few weeks ago. The Billboard story cites sources that say Sony and Universal were the problem children whose…
Last week Spotify announced that they were cutting back their “freemium” service and limiting the number of plays per song and number of monthly hours that a user could enjoy the service without subscribing. The service caught a lot of flack in the media for doing this, which was totally unfair. Do you actually think that Spotify wanted to do this? Hell no! So why…
The latest rumor to emerge from the Google campus is that the company’s much anticipated music service is just about at the end of their rope with the major label licensing process. A source close to the negotiations characterizes the search giant as “disgusted” with the labels, so much so that they are seriously considering following Amazon’s lead and launching their music could service without…
The Music Void
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