DailyFinance.comhttp://www.dailyfinance.comDailyFinance.com%http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/BlogURL%/media/feedlogo.gifDailyFinance.comhttp://www.dailyfinance.comen-usCopyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only.Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/Citigroup Could Claim EMI, Famed Label of the Beatles, Pink Floydhttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/03/31/citigroup-could-own-emi-famed-beatles-and-pink-floyd-label/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/03/31/citigroup-could-own-emi-famed-beatles-and-pink-floyd-label/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/03/31/citigroup-could-own-emi-famed-beatles-and-pink-floyd-label/#commentsFiled under: ,

Abbey RoadEMI, the legendary recording industry titan responsible for releasing albums by the likes of the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Coldplay is in danger of defaulting on its debt and being taken over by Citigroup (C), its largest creditor.

Feverish talks to license its catalog or raise more money fell through, Reuters reported Wednesday morning, largely because of the complexity of the financing deal.

EMI, which was bought by the private equity firm Terra Firma in 2007, needs to raise an undisclosed amount of cash by the end of today, March 31, in order to meet a debt covenant and avoid being taken over by Citigroup in June.

The Financial Times, in reporting on the deal's abandonment, noted that there were internal concerns that the sale could have been blocked by Citigroup.

All Fall Down

Earlier this week, reports surfaced that EMI was negotiating with Vivendi-owned Universal Music Group over the rights to distribute EMI's catalog in the Americas for the next five years in exchange for $300 million up front.

Wednesday morning, Reuters reported that those talks had run aground, largely because of the complexity of the financing deal. Talks for a similar arrangement between EMI and Sony's Sony Music Entertainment division also fell apart.

If EMI fails the banking covenant test, Terra Firma will have until the middle of June to get the company's financial books in order. Failure to do so will result in Citigroup, which Terra Firma borrowed heavily from in order to finance its purchase of EMI, taking over the record company.

Terra Very Firma

Since Terra Firma purchased EMI in August 2007 for $6 billion, the worldwide market for recorded music has declined and credit markets have tightened. Approximately $2.6 billion of the money Terra Firma used to purchase EMI came from a Citigroup loan.

Like the other major labels, EMI has been walloped by a worldwide decline in record sales. In 2009, it had 9.2% of the American recorded-music market, which was up from its 9% market share in 2008 but down from its 2006 share of 10.2%.

The company reissued a slew of albums by the Beatles -- who were the best-selling musical act of the last decade -- in September 2009. Coldplay's 2008 album, Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, sold 2.7 million copies, but new releases by other acts on the label have stalled in the marketplace; EMI commanded only 7.8% of the market for current releases in 2009.

Hands Down Failure

In 2008, Terra Firma wrote off approximately half of its investment in EMI and the company's founder and chairman, Guy Hands, stepped down as CEO. Terra Firma has subsequently sued Citigroup, saying that the firm artificially inflated EMI's price during negotiations by claiming that Cerberus Capital Management LP was bidding on the company as well. A trial is set for October.

In February, Terra Firma was reportedly interested in selling Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles recorded many of their most iconic tracks, to raise capital. In the wake of public outcry, the studio was given protected status by the British government. The company responded to this move by saying that it was merely looking to "revitalize" the iconic building.

On the bright side, EMI currently distributes one of the year's biggest-selling albums, Lady Antebellum's Need You Now. It has sold 1.5 million copies and is the only album released in 2010 to break the million-sold mark.

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]]>citigroupemiterra firmaMaura JohnstonWed, 31 Mar 2010 10:00:00 ESTMichael Jackson's Unreleased Catalog: Behind Sony's Risky Purchasehttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/03/16/michael-jacksons-unreleased-catalog-behind-sonys-risky-purcha/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/03/16/michael-jacksons-unreleased-catalog-behind-sonys-risky-purcha/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/03/16/michael-jacksons-unreleased-catalog-behind-sonys-risky-purcha/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

Sony's (SNE) agreement with Michael Jackson's estate, worth an eye-popping amount of money, proves the company is betting on audiences' perpetual inspiration to lay out their cash for his "new" recordings.

The pact is worth as much as $250 million and encompasses 10 album releases, to be parceled out over seven years, The Wall Street Journal reports. The deal guarantees the Jackson estate at least $200 million.

In one way, betting on Jackson's unparalleled musical starpower makes sense. In the wake of his June 25 death, Jackson's power to generate revenue reverted to Thriller-era levels, as radio stations played MJ marathons (and saw higher ratings as a result), and listeners actually bought his records, a feat few artists achieved on a mass scale last year.

Reign of the King

In 2009, album sales plunged 8.5% over 2008. But Jackson's catalog bucked that trend. He was the top-selling artist of 2009, with sales of his catalog totaling 8.2 million copies between Dec. 29, 2008, and Jan. 3, 2010. (Compare that to Taylor Swift, at no. 2, who sold a total of 4.6 million albums.) His greatest-hits compilation Number Ones, first released in 2003, sold 2.4 million copies in 2009 and was the year's third-biggest-selling album.

But one album mixing Jackson's newer material with older songs also sold well. The soundtrack to his posthumous film This Is It, which included the newly released title track, has sold 1.5 million copies in the U.S. since its Oct. 26 release and continues to move respectable numbers. (It was No. 57 on last week's Billboard 200, which tracks the country's top-selling albums.)

The first new release under the Sony deal, which retroactively includes money made from This Is It, is expected to further mine unreleased material from Jackson's vaults. Jackson's manager, Frank DiLeo, told Rolling Stone that Sony had access to at least 100 unreleased songs in Jackson's archives, including collaborations with current hitmakers like Ne-Yo and will.i.am.

Is This It?

But will a Michael Jackson release with a more muted media response, long after his death, prove as lucrative -- particularly if the material isn't up to his the high standard of the most indelible hits of this notorious perfectionist? Consider the song "This Is It," which contained one piece of new material within a fleshed-out demo of a song he wrote with Paul Anka in the 1980s. The other songs on the collection were bona fide hits: "Beat It," "Black Or White," "Man In The Mirror."

In contrast, look at the 25th-anniversary reissue of Thriller, released in 2008 with remakes of four tracks as duets with the likes of Kanye West and Fergie. The only new track to chart in the U.S. was "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' 2008," remade as a duet with Akon that peaked at No. 81 on Billboard's Hot 100. That was low for Jackson, and for "Wanna," which hit No. 5 when it was first released in 1983.

The deal also encompasses revenue from alternate revenue streams, like video games, movies, and theatrical interpretations of the King of Pop's work. (There's been speculation about a Cirque de Soleil show incorporating Jackson's songs, like the Beatles-themed Love, which is still playing in Las Vegas.)

Relying on Jackson's back catalog as a revenue source will surely prove to be a smart move for Sony, and Jackson is one of the few pop stars left to have a wide-reaching audience willing to pony up for his music. But audiences might grow weary of paying for unproven material, and Sony should be wary of saturating the market with songs that Jackson himself didn't think worthy of including on his albums.

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]]>akonfrank dileomichael jacksonne-yowill.i.amMaura JohnstonTue, 16 Mar 2010 16:10:00 ESTOK Go: How State Farm Insurance Got Behind a Viral Rock Videohttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/03/13/ok-go-how-state-farm-insurance-got-behind-a-viral-rock-video/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/03/13/ok-go-how-state-farm-insurance-got-behind-a-viral-rock-video/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/03/13/ok-go-how-state-farm-insurance-got-behind-a-viral-rock-video/#commentsFiled under: ,

The pop-rock band OK Go created the template for viral-music-video fame in 2006 with its simple clip for the catchy "Here It Goes Again," which you may recall as "the treadmill video." In it, the members of the band dance an intricately choreographed routine on eight running treadmills. It quickly became a viral sensation, attracting one million sets of eyeballs in its first week on YouTube.

The band has spent much of the last eight months producing another visually astonishing video. "This Too Shall Pass" is a one-shot tracking of the machinations of an intricately designed "Rube Goldberg machine," an incredible perpetual-motion chain reaction full of "How'd they do that?" moments.

But look closely at the very beginning, when a bandmember tips off a row of dominoes with a toy truck. The truck has a logo on it, for insurance giant State Farm. The Illnois-based company helped fund the clip, which took many months and 60 engineers to fully execute. At the end of the video, State Farm gets a wholly transparent "Thank You" screenshot from the band.

An Insurance Giant Says "OK, Go"

The unlikely marriage was arranged after the band came up with the video concept in August. "Our guitarist Andy Ross sent me a little clip of a Rube Goldberg machine online a year ago," recalls lead vocalist Damian Kulash (pictured, at left). "Obviously, all Rube Goldberg machines have this universal 'wow' factor. I went into this phase where I was madly searching the Internet to see who else was making Rube Goldberg machines these days." The band's fascination with the intricate contraptions led to them conceptualizing a music video around the idea of one long Goldbergian run.

Kulash put out word that he was looking for engineers, and State Farm was looking for artists to support financially. And suddenly, OK Go's label, EMI-owned Capitol Records, had put the band and the insurance company in touch.

Kulash met with company representatives last fall, while engineers were already busy at work on the devices employed in the video. "'I remember getting on a call with them and expecting to hear this really conservative marketer-speak, and my opening volley was basically like, 'We need to make rock videos, and if it's not a rock video, it'll backfire for everyone. If it looks like shilling, people know it. Our fans are as media-savvy as we are, everybody knows what they're looking at. Let's focus on what you're actually doing here -- you're supporting the arts, and that's awesome, and our fans will love you for that, but they will not love you for trying to insert yourself into our art.'"

State Farm not only went for the pitch, it gave the band clearance to realize its vision, with only small nods to the company's sponsorship. "I was so pleased in the end, because I think the branding is very tasteful, and they didn't weigh on us in any creative way whatsoever," Kulash says. "They came to the set for about 20 minutes."

State Farm is equally thrilled with the collaboration. "The guys really had the idea for the video ahead of time, but they were partners in the truest sense of the word," says Todd Fischer, State Farm's manager of national sponsorships. "They were leading the brainstorming themselves, in terms of how we could best integrate State Farm....Both of us really put our heads together as to what would be most credible and most natural."

The video was released on March 1 and was streamed 6 million times within six days.



A Capitol Offense

Shortly after the video's release, OK Go got into a conflict with Capitol over whether the version streaming on YouTube would be embeddable on external Web sites. EMI's policy with its music videos is to keep them so they can be viewed only within the confines of YouTube, so as to maximize the revenue brought in by banner ads. Last month, Kulash wrote a New York Times op-ed bemoaning the policy's nickel-and-dime nature and noted that six months of views for "Here It Goes Again" video, after it was rendered unembeddable by EMI, had netted the band a total of $27.77.

But the label's attempts to control aspects of a band's music-video output is nothing new, Kulash says. "An interesting thing about videos that's often overlooked is that in general, they're not made by the bands," he says. "For most of the history of what we think of as muusic videos, they have been, very boldly, just advertisements. A band makes music with the financial support of a label, then the label goes out and pays for which commericals are being made. The band has input as far as commerical and director, and the band is in the video in a similar way that a Toyota is in a Toyota ad."

After the flare-up, State Farm reportedly paid an undisclosed sum of money to sponsor an embeddable video on other sites.

A Break-Up...and State Farm is There

This week, OK Go announced it's parting ways with EMI to start a company called Paracadute on April 1. The band will also take over promotional duties for its new album, Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky, whch Capitol released in January. Blue Colour has sold 25,000 copies.

Kulash is speaking at this weekend's SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, about viral-video techniques, and the band will embark on a U.S. tour nexst month that will include stops at the Bonnaroo and Sasquatch festivals.

"We're a band," Kulash says. "We make music. We write songs. But the boundaries of what it is to be a rock band or a creative prson or an artist in general are always shifting and changing, and we're lucky to be here at a time when all these boundiares just fell down."

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]]>Maura JohnstonSat, 13 Mar 2010 12:00:00 ESTWas the WiseGuys Ticket-Buying Scheme Really a Scam?http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/03/03/was-the-wiseguys-ticket-buying-scheme-really-a-scam/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/03/03/was-the-wiseguys-ticket-buying-scheme-really-a-scam/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/03/03/was-the-wiseguys-ticket-buying-scheme-really-a-scam/#commentsFiled under: , ,

Three proprietors of WiseGuys Tickets, a California ticketing company, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to a slew of charges including conspiracy, wire fraud, and computer fraud. A day earlier, the men had been brought up on charges that they used their tech savvy to sidestep security systems for online ticketing outlets and snap up mass quantities of premium tickets for concerts and sporting events, then resold them at a profit.

The 43-count federal indictment, unsealed in New Jersey on Monday, accuses the defendants employing a large network of computers and programmers to outsmart the security measures of online ticket sellers like Ticketmaster and Tickets.com, and engaging in computer fraud to mimc a nationwide network of ticket buyers.

Kenneth Lowson, Kristofer Kirsch, and Joel Stevenson worked for WiseGuys; a fourth employee named in the indictment, Faisal Nahdi, is expected to surrender, according to authorities.

WiseGuys' proprietors apparently enlisted programmers from Bulgaria to circumvent ticket sites' CAPTCHA systems, used by many sites to prevent consumer abuse, usually as an image of warped text that humans can read and interpret but that computers cannot.

The Boss and His Fans Cry Foul

The indictment cites Bruce Springsteen's nationwide tour, for which WiseGuys purchased 11,728 tickets, including 1,497 seats for four shows last July at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., last July. The indictment charges that for one show, WiseGuys, assisted by a stable of bots and phony e-mail addresses, snapped up every seat in 20 rows of the stadium's most desirable general-admission section.

Springsteen's concerts in his home state of New Jersey have encountered ticketing-related controversies in the past. Last year, when tickets to his shows appeared on Ticketmaster's resale site TicketNow, which allows consumers to sell tickets at a profit, the New Jersey Attorney General's office reported 2,000 complaints from frustrated fans. Ticketmaster ultimately let fans who felt shut out organize a lottery for tickets to future Springsteen shows.

WiseGuys's defense argues that circumventing the safeguarding of ticket sites isn't necessarily illegal. "Congress has not yet legislated that ticket brokering is illegal," Lowson's attorney, Mark Rush, told reporters. Lowson has compared his company's business model to paying someone to wait outside a ticketing office for a prime spot in line. That sounds fine, if not for the speed and scope that Wiseguys' bots snap up any venue's best tickets.

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]]>bruce springsteenticketmasterwiseguysMaura JohnstonWed, 03 Mar 2010 10:19:00 ESTSony Label Dumps Jennifer Lopez: End of the Superstar Era?http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/02/23/sony-label-dumps-jennifer-lopez-end-of-the-superstar-era/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/02/23/sony-label-dumps-jennifer-lopez-end-of-the-superstar-era/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/02/23/sony-label-dumps-jennifer-lopez-end-of-the-superstar-era/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

Sony (SNE) Music Entertainment subsidiary Epic on Monday parted ways with Jennifer Lopez, just days before she was slated to serve double duty as the host and musical guest on Saturday Night Live, and shortly before the release of her album Love? Confirming the split, Lopez's manager, Benny Medina, told Nikki Finke, "Jennifer had a wonderful relationship with the Sony Music Group, and they have shared many successes together, but the time was right to make a change that best serves the direction her career as an actress and recording artist."

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]]>epicjennifer lopezsony music entertainmentMaura JohnstonTue, 23 Feb 2010 14:02:00 ESTGrammys Boost Sales of Albums That Don't Need the Helphttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/02/01/grammys-boost-sales-of-albums-that-dont-need-the-help/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/02/01/grammys-boost-sales-of-albums-that-dont-need-the-help/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/02/01/grammys-boost-sales-of-albums-that-dont-need-the-help/#commentsFiled under: ,

On Sunday night, the Grammy Awards saw a shift in philosophy for the Grammy voting bloc. Unlike the two previous years, none of this year's Album Of The Year nominees had cumulative sales below the sales threshold of 1 million copies. The Black Eyed Peas' The E.N.D., Beyoncé's I Am... Sasha Fierce, the Dave Matthews Band's Big Whisky And The GrooGrux King, Lady Gaga's The Fame, and the winner, Fearless by Taylor Swift (pictured), were all top-selling albums by big brand-name artists.

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]]>beyonce knowlesBeyonceKnowlesblack eyed peasBlackEyedPeasDave Matthews BandDaveMatthewsBandlady antebellumLady GagaLadyAntebellumMaura JohnstonMon, 01 Feb 2010 13:52:00 ESTTicketmaster, Live Nation Merger: On Day After, More Fallouthttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/26/ticketmaster-live-nation-merger-on-day-after-more-fallout/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/26/ticketmaster-live-nation-merger-on-day-after-more-fallout/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/26/ticketmaster-live-nation-merger-on-day-after-more-fallout/#commentsFiled under:

In the wake of the merger between concert-promotion behemoth Live Nation (LYV) and ticketing/artist-management titan Ticketmaster (TKTM), approved on Monday by the Justice Department, U.S. antitrust officials ordered the partnership to divest a few assets. Ticketmaster must license its primary ticketing software to Anschutz Entertainment Group, its largest rival in concert promotion. AEG, which owns and operates such venues as the Staples Center in Los Angeles and London's O2 Arena, has the option to purchase the software, create a competing product, or partner with another competitor within five years.

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]]>comcastcomcast spectacorliberty medialive nationlive nation ticketmasterticketmasterMaura JohnstonTue, 26 Jan 2010 15:35:00 ESTTicketmaster, Live Nation's Monster Merger Approved by U.S.http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/25/ticketmaster-live-nations-monster-merger-approved-by-u-s/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/25/ticketmaster-live-nations-monster-merger-approved-by-u-s/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/25/ticketmaster-live-nations-monster-merger-approved-by-u-s/#commentsFiled under: ,

Live Nation (LYV) and Ticketmaster Entertainment (TKTM) on Monday reportedly received approval for their merger from the Justice Department. The move paves the way for Live Nation Ticketmaster, a titanic entertainment company that would handle ticketing, artist management, and live music. LNT would have managing interests in about 350 artists and exclusive booking and promotional deals with more than 125 venues around the country, and it would handle ticketing for events outside of music, like baseball games. Shares of both companies surged almost 10% on news of the merger's approval.

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]]>department of justiceirving azofflive nationlive nation ticketmasterticketmasterMaura JohnstonMon, 25 Jan 2010 13:55:00 ESTVampire Weekend Plants a Flag at No. 1 for Independent Labelshttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/22/vampire-weekend-plants-a-flag-at-no-1-for-independent-labels/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/22/vampire-weekend-plants-a-flag-at-no-1-for-independent-labels/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/22/vampire-weekend-plants-a-flag-at-no-1-for-independent-labels/#commentsFiled under: ,

The jaunty New York City band Vampire Weekend has this week's No. 1 album, with 124,000 copies sold of its new album, Contra, during the week ending January 17. The preppy quartet's Contra, which came out January 12, not only evicted the bad-girl pop star Ke$ha from the top spot, it also fended off viral-video sensation Susan Boyle, whose album I Dreamed A Dream is one of the two contenders for next week's No. 1 spot. More importantly for the industry, it signals more public appetite for an independent artist and label without direct links to giant media corporations.

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]]>alternative distribution alliancechartssonysusan boyleVampire Weekendwarner music groupMaura JohnstonFri, 22 Jan 2010 11:15:00 ESTHit Singles Are Selling, But Will Fans Commit Beyond One Song?http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/11/hit-singles-are-selling-but-will-fans-commit-beyond-one-song/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/11/hit-singles-are-selling-but-will-fans-commit-beyond-one-song/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/11/hit-singles-are-selling-but-will-fans-commit-beyond-one-song/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

Is the hit single back? Consumers, propelled by the ease of buying digital songs piecemeal, have increasingly decided that the single unit of music is their unit of choice, noted music writer Tom Ewing in The Guardian last week -- just as hard-partying pop star Ke$ha broke the one-week record for digital downloads sold by a female artist. Ke$ha's ode to decadence, Tik Tok, now in its third week at Billboard Hot 100's No. 1, sold a whopping 610,000 copies for Sony (SNE) Music Entertainment's RCA imprint during the chart week ending Dec. 27. That's the second-highest single-week sales total for any one song, second only to Flo Rida's Right Round, which sold 636,000 copies last February.

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]]>AmazonMp3flo ridaiTunesitunes storeKeshaMaura JohnstonMon, 11 Jan 2010 15:11:00 ESTTaylor Swift, Susan Boyle Remain Music Industry's Top Winners in 2009http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/06/taylor-swift-susan-boyle-remain-music-industrys-top-winners-in/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/06/taylor-swift-susan-boyle-remain-music-industrys-top-winners-in/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/06/taylor-swift-susan-boyle-remain-music-industrys-top-winners-in/#commentsFiled under: , ,

British belter Susan Boyle's debut album for Sony's (SNE) Sony Music Entertainment, I Dreamed A Dream, is now in its sixth week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Dream moved 137,000 copies during the final sales week of 2009, making Boyle's final album-sales tally for the calendar year 3.1 million copies to become 2009's no. 2 top-selling album. Not too shabby for a woman who nobody had heard of until this spring, when her dowdy appearance was mocked by Simon Cowell and the audience of Britain's Got Talent before she'd even opened her mouth to sing.

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]]>Keshasimon cowellsony musicsusan boyletaylor swiftvivendiMaura JohnstonWed, 06 Jan 2010 17:30:00 ESTSimon Cowell Rages Against Campaign to Top Christmas Pop Chartshttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/12/17/simon-cowell-rages-against-campaign-to-top-christmas-pop-charts/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/12/17/simon-cowell-rages-against-campaign-to-top-christmas-pop-charts/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/12/17/simon-cowell-rages-against-campaign-to-top-christmas-pop-charts/#commentsFiled under:

Christmas in Britain is a time of tradition. There's goose and mincemeat pie, there's Boxing Day -- and there's the race to the top of the pops. Music fans and oddsmakers spend the weeks before the holiday theorizing about what single will take the sales-only U.K. Singles Chart's top spot during Christmas week, an honor that's conferred annually by a frenzy of last-minute holiday shoppers. Past chart-topppers have included Band Aid's 1984 charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (and
%%DynaPub-Enhancement class="enhancement contentType-HTML Content fragmentId-1 payloadId-61603 alignment-right size-small"%% its 1989 and 2004 sequels), TV-spawned girl group Girls Aloud's 2002 "Sound of The Underground," and kiddie cartoon Bob the Builder's "Can We Fix It."

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]]>joe mcelderryrage against the machinesimon cowellsony musicx factorMaura JohnstonThu, 17 Dec 2009 12:20:00 ESTAmazon Leaks Lil Wayne Album Two Months Too Soonhttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/12/16/amazon-leaks-lil-wayne-album-two-months-too-soon/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/12/16/amazon-leaks-lil-wayne-album-two-months-too-soon/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/12/16/amazon-leaks-lil-wayne-album-two-months-too-soon/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

Rapper Lil Wayne's 2008 album Tha Carter III was the last record to sell a million copies in a single week. But even Wayne (born Dwayne Carter) isn't immune to the slings and arrows of music-industry fortune. The release of his upcoming rock album, Rebirth, was pushed back last week to February 1 -- but 500 lucky Amazon (AMZN) customers got the surprise stocking stuffer in the mail this week.

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]]>amazonappleeminemituneskelly clarksonlil wayneu2universal music groupvivendiMaura JohnstonWed, 16 Dec 2009 18:00:00 ESTChris Brown vs. Walmart: Blame Poor CD Sales on Apathy or Sabotage?http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/12/15/chris-brown-v-walmart-blame-poor-cd-sales-on-apathy-or-sabotag/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/12/15/chris-brown-v-walmart-blame-poor-cd-sales-on-apathy-or-sabotag/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/12/15/chris-brown-v-walmart-blame-poor-cd-sales-on-apathy-or-sabotag/#commentsFiled under: , , ,

Last weekend, pop singer Chris Brown spent a lot of time re-Tweeting stories from fans who were claiming that his new album Graffiti, released on Dec. 8 by Sony (SNE) subsidiary Jive, was being held back from store shelves. Brown's domestic-violence incident last February with then-girlfriend Rihanna last February has polarized listeners and lit up message boards over the last few months, and Brown -- and his fans -- implied that his detractors were engaged in retail sabotage to take revenge against him.

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]]>chris brownretailersrihannasonysony musicwal-martwrigleyMaura JohnstonTue, 15 Dec 2009 18:30:00 ESTWill Vevo, the music video joint venture, end the industry's dirge?http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/12/10/music-biz-launches-vevo-will-the-video-joint-venture-end-the-in/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/12/10/music-biz-launches-vevo-will-the-video-joint-venture-end-the-in/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/12/10/music-biz-launches-vevo-will-the-video-joint-venture-end-the-in/#commentsFiled under: , , , ,

A splashy music-industry event in New York City on Tuesday night began, inevitably, with a speech by Bono. American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert and pop artiste Lady GaGa closed the gala out. In between, passionate testimonials from Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt and Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris (pictured, with Bono), extolling the launch of Vevo: the "premium music video and entertainment service" -- so the industry hopes.

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]]>adam lambertbonodoveeric schmidtgooglejohn mayerlady gagaperonisabmillersony musicstolistolichnayaunileveruniversal music groupvevovivendiwilliam grantMaura JohnstonThu, 10 Dec 2009 10:00:00 ESTSusan Boyle dreams another dream week for Sony, cracks 2009's top sellershttp://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/12/09/susan-boyle-dreams-another-dream-week-for-sony-cracks-2009s-to/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/12/09/susan-boyle-dreams-another-dream-week-for-sony-cracks-2009s-to/http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/12/09/susan-boyle-dreams-another-dream-week-for-sony-cracks-2009s-to/#commentsFiled under: , ,

Last week, British sensation Susan Boyle set the record for the highest single-sales week of 2009. This week, Boyle continued to lure consumers where they'd resisted going all year: the music aisle.

I Dreamed A Dream, Boyle's debut for Sony's (SNE) Sony Music Entertainment, sold 527,000 copies in the week ending December 6, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Combined with the 702,000 copies Dream sold in its first week, its cumulative sales of 1.2 million and counting are impressive -- for 2009, at any rate. In fact, it's now officially one of this year's top 10 bestselling albums.

Continue reading Susan Boyle dreams another dream week for Sony, cracks 2009's top sellers


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]]>adam lambertalbum salesandrea bocellibritney spearsfearlessfor your considerationi dreamed a dreammusicsimon cowellsony musicsony music entertainmentsusan boyletaylor swiftuniversal music groupvivendiwarner music groupMaura JohnstonWed, 09 Dec 2009 18:30:00 EST