Sony BMG, EMI in Tune on Telephone Tone Deal
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The products, especially the cell phone offerings, are already widely available in Europe and Asia, which have more sophisticated wireless networks.
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Warner Music Group has approached Britain's EMI about a possible bid despite uncertainty over whether it would win regulatory approval, in the latest twist in a seven-year tit-for-tat takeover battle.
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LONDON, November 19  âThe share price of the global music company, EMI (EMI.ETR), appreciated nearly 10% to 228.5p on the London Stock Exchange today, after the company guided to improved full year results, despite posting ay/y decline
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Music group EMI says it has received an approach from US rival Warner Music that could lead to a takeover bid.
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Bertelsmann AG plans to retain ownership  of Sony BMG after determining it can afford to pay 4.5 billion  euros (&#36;5.8 billion) to buy back a stake in the German media  conglomerate without selling its half of the world&#039;s second  biggest music company.
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EMI Group PLC and Warner Music Group Corp., locked in a tug of war after each rejected a takeover bid from the other, are still discussing a merger, EMI said Wednesday.
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The string of digital music pacts continued Tuesday as Universal and SendMe Mobile announced a pact that will bring the label's music to the mobile content provider's service.
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Verizon Wireless resumed selling mobile phone ringtones Friday based on Bob Marley songs, despite objections from the estate of the late reggae music star to a licensing deal struck between the wireless carrier and recording company Universal Music Group.
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Sony BMG Music Entertainment will crack open the door to its music vaults on Jan. 15, taking the DRM copy-prevention wrapper off a limited selection of downloadable tracks.The tracks will be offered in MP3 format, without DRM (digital rights management), from Jan. 15 in the U.S. and from late January in Canada.The move is far from the all-digital service offered by its rivals, though. To obtain the Sony-BMG tracks, would-be listeners will first have to go to a retail store to buy a Platinum MusicPass, a card containing a secret code, for a suggested retail price of $12.99. Once they have scratched off the card&#39;s covering to expose the code, they will be able to download one of just 37 albums available through the service, including Britney Spears&#39; &quot;Blackout&quot; and Barry Manilow&#39;s &quot;The Greatest Songs of the Seventies.&quot;In contrast, online retailer&#160;Amazon.com offers 2.9 million DRM-free tracks&#160;in MP3 format from the catalogs of EMI Group, Warner Music Group, Universal Music and a host of independent record labels. Apple&#39;s&#160;iTunes Store has around 2 million DRM-free tracks&#160;in the AAC format supported by its iPod and many mobile phones. No store visit is necessary to download those tracks, and an album typically sells for $9.99 or less.About 4,500 retail outlets in the U.S. will sell the Platinum MusicPass cards by the end of the month, including Best Buy, Target, Trans World, Fred&#39;s, and Winn-Dixie, according to Sony-BMG. In Canada, the cards will sell through Best Buy, CD Plus, and Wal-Mart, and later through record store HMV.Online sales will &quot;ultimately be part of the game plan&quot; for at least one of those retail outlets, said a source familiar with the offering.With Valentine&#39;s Day approaching, Sony-BMG is counting on demand for gift cards to boost sales of the downloads, as well as the collectible nature of the cards themselves, which feature images of the artists and information about the albums.Sony-BMG will offer &quot;expanded&quot; versions of two of the initial offerings -- Celine Dion&#39;s &quot;Taking Chances&quot; and Kenny Chesney&#39;s &quot;Just Who I Am: Poets &amp; Pirates.&quot; These will retail for around $19.99 and in addition to the Platinum version will also include an additional album from the artist&#39;s back catalog.When they first considered online music sales, major record labels initially insisted that download services such as Apple&#39;s iTunes Store encrypt their tracks with DRM technology to prevent copying.Smaller labels sold unprotected MP3 files through sites like eMusic.com, gambling that the increased sales and notoriety that would come with easier access to their music would outweigh sales lost through unauthorized copying.That argument eventually won favor with Apple, which last May began offering tracks from EMI without DRM for a small premium, later bringing the price down to the same $0.99 it charges for other tracks with DRM.Amazon followed suit in September, selling unprotected MP3 files from EMI and Universal. Warner joined them on Dec. 28.The record companies all say they hope the move will lead to greater online music sales.Sony-BMG said it hopes its combined model, selling a download pass through a physical store, will lead to greater sales of physical and digital music.Albums need a boost, as the number sold in the U.S. dropped again last year, even as the number of music purchases rose, market watcher Nielsen SoundScan reported last week.U.S. music buyers made 1.4 billion music purchases in 2007, up from 1.2 billion a year earlier, Nielsen said.Nielsen counts a purchase as an album, single, CD or online download. Within that figure, digital track sales rose from 582 million to 844 million as buyers cherry-picked the tracks they liked from albums available online, while physical album sales (whether sold in-store or over the Internet, but excluding downloads) fell to 451 million in 2007, from 556 million in 2006, it said.But if U.S. consumers are making more music purchases, they may be spending less: Nielsen also counts something it calls track-equivalent album sales, in which it counts 10 track downloads as the equivalent of an album. By that measure, track-equivalent album sales fell 9.5 percent to 585 million in 2007, from 646 million in 2007.&#160;
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The U.S. Department of Justice has requested information from Sony BMG and Universal Music Group about their talks to launch an online music subscription service, said a record company executive on Thursday.
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NEW YORK -- Music company EMI Group PLC _ home of The Rolling Stones and Coldplay _ has been talking with online retailers about possibly selling its entire digital music catalog in MP3 format without copy protection, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing numerous people familiar with the...
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EMI Group PLC, the world&#39;s third-largest music company, confirmed on Friday it faced a New York probe into how music companies influence what songs are played on the radio.
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LONDON - Warner Music Group Corp., Viacom Inc. and Universal Music Group are among those to have bid for BMG Music Publishing, people familiar with the situation told Dow Jones Newswires on Friday.  German media giant Bertelsmann A.G.
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EMI, the world&#39;s third largest music group, admitted yesterday it was facing an investigation into how music companies influence the songs played on the radio.
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CANNES/HELSINKI  - The world's largest mobile  phone maker, Nokia, and software giant Microsoft struck a deal  on Monday to make it easier for consumers to buy digital music  online and play it back on their handsets.
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Independent record companies said Wednesday they have decided to file a court challenge to the merger of Sony Music and BMG, the music unit of Germany&#39;s Bertelsmann.
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The family of Bob Marley is challenging a deal announced on Tuesday between Verizon and the Universal Music Group to sell ring tones based on the catalog of Marleyâs music.