Universal, the planet’s biggest music corporation, has told Apple that it won’t be renewing its annual contract to sell music through iTunes.
According to an anonymous executive cited in the New York Times, the mighty Universal Music Group of Vivendi will now market music to Apple at will, leaving the company free to remove its songs from the iTunes service at short notice if pricing and terms can not be agreed.
Continue reading Universal in Dispute With Apple Over iTunes
Motorola have a new campaign to push a set of their stereo BlueTooth music headphones, the Motorola S9 or MotoRokr S9 as they’re sometimes called.
Continue reading Stereo Bluetooth Headphones: Motorola S9 Campaign Launches
Music mega retailed HMV has announced that it will start selling “DRM-free” digital downloads from September 2007.
Over one million “DRM-free” tracks will be available for download at launch, including EMI’s full catalogue with big names like Coldplay, Lily Allen, Gorillaz and Robbie Williams.
They’ll also be existing content made available from other labels distributed by HMV’s digital partner, MusicNet, adding to the 3 million+ tracks already offered online by HMV.
Continue reading HMV To Undercut iTunes With “DRM-free” Music Downloads
Seemingly metamorphosing at a rate of knots as the iPhone rumbles over the horizon, iRiver’s W10 media player has re-emerged again as a sleek all-in-one media player.
First seen in March 2006, the W10 appeared as a UMPC-like clamshell gadget running Windows XP with a 5in display and a 60GB hard drive for storage.
Continue reading iRiver W10 Reappears As A VoIP/Media Player
BeeBird, another FM transmitter reaches us, this time with a pretty decent look about it.
The Chinese manufacturer, netSharp, got in touch with us give us the heads up.
There’s a not-insubstantial 199 channels available for transmitting your fave sounds. The frequency range that can be chosen between, is 88.1 – 107.9MHz.
The chosen frequency is displayed on the LCD display, while the simple up/down shuffle changes the frequency.
It’s got FCC approval, and as long as its output is under 50 nanoWatts, it will be legal in the UK under OfCom rules too.
It looks at light as it is at 30g excluding the one AAA battery it runs on (there’s also a car power adaptor available). As you’d expect, it has a 3.5mm headphone jack, so will play from any sensible music source.
Price? Not clear yet. We hadn’t heard back before going to press.
UK music service last.fm has been sold to US media giant CBS, whose empire covers TV, radio and Web.
Last.fm is the darling of the ‘new’ Internet kids, as it is based on buzzword-tastic technology. While that’s true, it doesn’t take away from the fact that it is really rather good, using the listen preferences of everyone else on the service to automatically pick the tracks that probably match the music that you like.
Its major strength is that it throws in tracks that you may well have never found under your own volition – vital in a world where personal playlists can kill variety.
At £140m ($280m) the BBC are calling it the “largest-ever UK Web 2.0 acquisition.” Quite how that’s defined is anyone guess, but it is a lot of lolly, so trebles all round.
One of the founders, Martin Stiksel told the BBC that “this move will really support us to get every track ever recorded and every music video ever made onto Last.fm,” quite an ambition, but as he added, “with a strong partner like CBS, this is now within our reach.”
It’s planned that the site and company will continue to operate separately under it’s own branding.
Stiksel also bigged up the UK’s capital city, by saying “being in London has helped us; it’s the best place to do things with music full stop. It’s the place that leads the world.” Hurrah!
(Via)
We know Tech is hitting all media businesses, but how are they currently responding?
Howard Scott covered North One TV yesterday; today it’s Sony BMG; and the final piece tomorrow is Kempster, their work with European football and the conclusion.
Highlighting through italics are ours.
Duncan Bird, VP of Futures, Sony BMG
Duncan Bird is an ex-Leagas bod, just like me – so he’s got to be cool, right?
For Duncan, change in anything is good and is often the best way to learn. For Sony BMG, the music industry is in a state of constant change, and as an example, the Justin Timberlake album (got you copy yet? No? Strange!) sold in 71 different formats. That’s a big change from CD, Tape and Vinyl!
Continue reading TV, Music and Marketing: Their Current Response To Digital Media (pt 2)
British private equity firm Terra Firma looks to have fought off heavyweight rivals – including the mighty Warner Music – to put in a winning offer for the ailing EMI music group.
The deal values the music group at just over £3.2 billion (including debt), and is set to see off other hopeful suitors including US investment firms Cerberus, One Equity Partners and Fortress, all of whom had been granted given access to EMI’s books in preparation for finalising their bids.
Continue reading EMI Agrees Terra Firma £3.2bn Takeover
T-Mobile and independent music download site ARTISTdirect have pressed the flesh, slapped each others backs and distributed manly business hugs after agreeing to work together to launch a new UK music download service.
Continue reading T-Mobile UK Launches Music Download Site
Rockers Nine Inch Nails have released three tracks from their new album, “Year Zero” via the controversial BitTorrent mega-site, The Pirate Bay.
Although the band has already acquired a reputation for dishing out the freebies – new Nine Inch Nails (NiN) content has been available for free both online and on their website for some time – it’s the first time that they’ve released material directly via the torrent protocol.
Continue reading Nine Inch Nails Release Tracks Via Pirate Bay