Napster really hoping someone will buy it
Online-music service Napster's management says the company is "open to a sale" — to anyone, that is, except the activist shareholders trying to get on its board. [PaidContent]
Kid Rock has a hit without iTunes
"All Summer Long" is one catchy tune. Built on the groove of the late Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London," spiced up with Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama," the song nonetheless soars on Robert James Ritchie's down-homey delivery of one of the best ballads to hit the airwaves in years. I've heard it on Top 40,…
Muxtape's spending real cause of music site's shutdown
Muxtape founder Justin Ouellette says he's shut down the mixtape-hosting website because of a problem with the Recording Industry Association of America. A statement from the RIAA itself seems to confirm the story. Bu we hear another reason Muxtape is shutting down is that it got too expensive for Ouellette to keep…
Pandora throws temper tantrum over music rates
The days of marveling over online music service Pandora's ability to know that you hella heart Oakland's own Digital Underground may soon be over. A court decision adored by the recording industry doubled the royalties Web broadcasters have to pay. Radio stations pay nothing to for rebroadcast rights to recordings,…
RIAA "problem" shutters online-music startup Muxtape
Muxtape, a New York-based online-music startup much favored by the Tumblr set, has shut down its website, citing a "problem" with the RIAA, a music-industry organization which polices copyright. Could it have anything to do with the ease with which users can download music files from the site, despite founder Justin…
Google's Android now a fake OS for more gadgets
Google's mobile OS Android might have a future in "set-top boxes for televisions, mp3 players and other communication and media devices and services," reports VentureBeat. Silicon Alley Insider confirms the story — or at least the fact that Google's working on Android-loaded cable boxes — and wonders if maybe Google…
MySpace music venture lonely at the top
MySpace Music, the joint venture between the social network and three big record-label groups, is struggling to find a CEO, according to The Deal. There's a long list of prospects who have turned the News Corp.-owned social network down: Ian Rogers, the former head of Yahoo Music; Jim Bankoff, formerly of AOL; Eric…
Napster finds music-buying sucker market shrinking
Napster — or rather, the pathetic music store which picked up the famous file-sharing service's brand — reported a drop in quarterly revenues to $30.3 million, despite the launch of an MP3 store. Subscribers fell from 760,000 to 708,000 in a quarter's time. Here's Napster's latest commercial, obviously not effective…
Google plays catchup in China with MP3 search
Google announced today a search service, available only in China, to find and download MP3s from popular artists through partner Top100.cn, a Chinese music site funded by basketball star Yao Ming. Baidu, the search company which emerged from China's homegrown bubble and producers of crazy ads, has had MP3 search…
Buckcherry apparently too drunk to spoof BitTorrent
The grindy reporters at the Wall Street Journal have confirmed what the guys at TorrentFreak figured out a couple of weeks ago: Hard rockers Buckcherry (I recommend listening to "Lit Up" and "Ridin'" as a primer) leaked their own single "Too Drunk ..." from a computer at their manager's office in early July. The band…
$700k salary can't get Sony BMG a digital exec
After EMI hired paisley-shirted IT exec Douglas Merrill away from Google to run the record label's digital business, other music groups have been on the hunt for a digital savior. Sony BMG, we hear, has been trying to fill an EVP position to run its digital music ventures. But after dangling a $700,000 salary in…
Amazon limps its way to 4 percent of U.S. digital-music market
eMusic CEO David Pakman estimates that Amazon.com's MP3 store may have sold 27 million tracks since opening 6 months ago — which sounds good until you consider that Apple's iTunes moves 2 billion songs a year. Pakman also estimates that Amazon's store is adding $7 million, after the labels' take and expenses. At least…
MTV launches another surely doomed music service
MTV is continuing its push into digital music, despite its long litany of failures in the past, by introducing a music recommendation service and social network called Soundtrack. Most of the song recommendations will be based off of MTV's list of shows such as The Hills, Shot at Love, and G's to Gents.…
EMI sues Hi5 and VideoEgg for listening to EMI
Record label EMI may have tired of suing individual file sharers for copyright infringement. But a number of music-industry plaintiffs, all partners and subsidiaries of EMI, are suing social network Hi5 and advertising startup VideoEgg in New York Southern District Court for copyright infringement. According to the…
Bono agrees with U2 manager's attack on Internet service providers
U2 frontman Bono disagreed with manager Paul McGuinness's judgment on the failure of Radiohead's Web busking for In Rainbows, but like McGuinness, he lays the blame for the death of the music industry's business model at the feet of those greedy Internet service providers in his open letter to New Music Express:
Trent Reznor is showing show business how it's done digitally
Trent Reznor is busy demonstrating how a bankable artist can go independent, give away music for free, and still make a mint. Though he initially expressed concern over an album he produced for hip-hopper Saul Williams that was released as a "pay what you will" download, he's changed his mind and now considers it a…
Paula Abdul to get her game on at D6 conference
Lame lame lame Guitar Hero world tour demo ... Paula Abdul is judge
Zune no longer taking up valuable GameStop shelf space
Microsoft's iPod imitator, the Zune, will no longer be sold at videogame and electronics retailer GameStop according to GameStop CFO David Carlson. They probably need that space for Grand Theft Auto IV, which has sold more copies in a few weeks than Microsoft's portable media player has sold since launch. [Digital…
Weezer understands how to work YouTube: allude to these 24 viral videos
Weezer has been geek rock since before I was logging onto the Internet using Prodigy in fifth grade. And who among us never wondered: what's with these homies, dissing my girl? Point is: the band gets the geeks. So it's no surprise that they understand one of the easiest way to go viral on YouTube and across the Web…
Nine years later, Napster repeats its feat of making MP3s widely available
The celestial jukebox is back, far too late to matter. Napster is now selling a library of 6 million songs, from all four major labels, as MP3 files, a format which lacks copy protection and hence is compatible with any number of devices — most importantly, the iPod. In other words, the state of affairs that existed…
