RIAA’s budget comes from music labels and distributors because it represents the interests of the music industry. Therefore, it depends on their willingness. TorrentFreak obtained its latest tax filing and the RIAA is facing the same difficulties as the major music labels. Its budget has been cut to $29.1 million for 2010-2011 from $51.35 million two years earlier. Yet, the most important shift… → Read More
French media conglomerate Vivendi this morning reported financial results, posting a decline in full-year profit but beating estimates because the net loss was much narrower than expected. You can read more analysis of the media and entertainment giant’s performance elsewhere, but there was a particular passage in the press release regarding Vivendi’s music subsidiary, Universal Music Group, that… → Read More
Chances are you’ve never heard of Netbiscuits – I sure hadn’t. But the company operates one of the world’s largest B2B web software platforms enabling thousands of publishers to create, manage and generate revenue from mobile websites.
Netbiscuits serves the mobile Internet programs for brands like Yahoo, MTV, and eBay, and well known digital agencies such as Razorfish, Isobar, and ad networks… → Read More
Universal Music Group is partnering with new ad-sponsored digital music download service FreeAllMusic.com to let anyone download music from the record label’s artists, which include Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Taylor Swift and Jay Sean.
Via Free All Music’s platform, thousands of tracks will be offered at a rate of 20 free downloads per month, five per week, starting every Tuesday. The recently launched… → Read More
VEVO, the YouTube-powered “Hulu for music videos” which to date was a joint venture between Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, is gaining a new founding shareholder.
VEVO has just announced a ‘strategic’ investment was made by Abu Dhabi Media Company (ADMC), a giant of a media company with headquarters in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, reports MediaMemo. The… → Read More
Universal Music Group has a long history of bringing lawsuits upon music and video sharing services (MySpace, Veoh and its investors, Grouper / Bolt.com, etc.), so it’s kind of surprising to see them link to a clip of one of their biggest artists, rapper and producer Eminem, which has not been authorized by its copyright holders (i.e. Universal Music themselves).
The link can be found on this… → Read More
Things are not going well for Universal Music Group’s in its lawsuit against video-sharing site Veoh. First, the Los Angeles judge, A. Howard Matz, ruled last month that the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act do apply to the case, contrary to UMG’s request for summary judgment.
On Monday, Veoh scored another point in the preliminary legal sparring that always precedes… → Read More
For those Web companies that comply by it, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is turning out to be their best friend. Last week, Universal Music Group (UMG) was denied a summary judgment by a Los Angeles court in its copyright infringement case against Veoh. (Court order embedded below). UMG wanted a summary judgment against Veoh, arguing that it could not hide behind the safe harbor… → Read More
Much like Radiohead, Trent Reznor and his industrial metal sounds are leaving Universal for greener pastures. That’s right; Nine Inch Nails is no longer under the thumb of some jackass record label. Very exciting. Hello everyone. I’ve waited a LONG time to be able to make the following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract… → Read More
The other day, people started getting freaky because Universal Music Group stated it was not renewing its iTunes contract with Apple. Everyone, myself included, took it as a sign that UMG would be pulling out of iTunes altogether and that millions of available songs would be lost forever. Luckily, that’s not the case. After realizing the public flipped out about the statement, Universal… → Read More
After its CEO said in September that YouTube and MySpace owe Universal Music Group “tens of millions of dollars,” the media giant has followed through with its threat and filed suit against MySpace for copyright infringement, according to the Wall St. Journal (subscription required). The most interesting part of the suit is that Universal is alleging that MySpace participated in the… → Read More
Microsoft has announced that it has struck a deal to deliver to its Zune store music from the Universal Music Group. The deal will give Universal a cut of every Zune player sold. This arrangement is a departure from the Apple standard that only pays studios per song sold, with the studios getting no cut of the electronics. Universal is expected to receive roughly $1 per $250 player sold. It has… → Read More
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