Label:Life

Two years after emerging from bankruptcy protection, Tower Records is reportedly up for sale again.

The West Sacramento record store chain has hired the Los Angeles investment banking firm of Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin to market the company, according to a report in Billboard magazine.

Tower tried seeking a buyer in 2003 and 2004, but was unable to complete a deal.

The new attempt comes as no surprise. It’s always been anticipated that Tower’s bondholders, who took control of the company during its bankruptcy case, would eventually want to sell.

More@sfgate

MTV and Sprint today announced they’d teamed to bring video and audio content to the latter’s cellular network. Content will be drawn specifically from CMT, MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central.

Under the terms of the arrangement, said the two organizations, select clips from MTV Networks programs as “CMT Insider”, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”, “Laguna Beach” and “Best Week Ever” will be made available for on-demand viewing as part of the Sprint TV line up. In addition, the domestic wireless service will also stream audio from the CMT, MTV and VH1 radio stations and receive original made-for-mobile content.

More@designtechnica

Increasing demand for new digital entertainment features in the car will result in the automotive multimedia systems market reaching 97 million units by 2012, according to predictions contained in a report from Strategy Analytics automotive infotainment report.

The average revenue per system sold will increase rapidly, to US$375 – an increase of over 20% over 2005 figures.

More@just-auto

Eminem could sue the US government for playing his music to inmates at Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay, without permission.

The Road To Guantanamo director, Michael Winterbottom,discovered that prisoners at the notorious detention centre, are blasted with Eminem’s records as a form of punishment. Says it all really doesn’t it Em?

More@entertainmentwise

Indie icons ARCTIC MONKEYS have sensationally declared they will not appear on any more TV shows.

The four-piece, whose album WHATEVER PEOPLE SAY I AM THAT’S WHAT I’M NOT is the fastest-selling debut in UK chart history, stunned the music industry by refusing to perform on long-running British TV show TOP OF THE POPS last month (JAN06).

More@contactmusic

[No TV, No Mobile – I like it, but it leaves lots of room for imposters to make their money, look at how many “cover tones” there are of the Artcic Monkey’s tracks… – ED]

CMPi has reversed its decision to sell Music Week, just weeks after putting it up for sale with nine other titles.

In a memo to staff leaked to Press Gazette, company CEO Gary Hughes said the decision to keep the music industry’s bible was because it had “not realised its full potential”.

He said: “It is a market leader, a strong brand and it generates good subscription revenues — it’s the kind of market and magazine that should be at the core of CMPi’s strategy, and is worth more to us in this respect than any potential acquirer.”

More@pressgazette

Digital Media Wire, the industry’s leading digital entertainment and media news, event and information provider, today announced an impressive list of 50+ speakers and an agenda packed with cutting-edge and timely topics for its 6th Annual Digital Music Forum and Mobile Music Leadership Summit (www.digitalmusicforum.com) to be held at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City on Tuesday, February 28 through Wednesday, March 1, 2006. (more…)

Back in the 1950s, Elvis Presley and other recording artists put out plenty of hit singles like “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Hound Dog,” and consumers clamored for the tunes. By the 1960s, with the success of “The Beatles (The White Album)” and blockbusters from other big groups, the album became the main medium of music sales.

Now, because of digital downloading technology and the Internet Get Linux or Windows Managed Hosting Services with Industry Leading Fanatical Support., the single is making a smashing comeback. For example, a wacky song called “Laffy Taffy” by the Atlanta rap group D4L was first thought to be a novelty song, and nothing more, by music producers.

It turns out, however, that the song has been downloaded—for a fee—more than 700,000 times from iTunes, Yahoo Music and other online music stores, according to Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks online music sales.

More@technewsworld

Swiss and Belgian police have shut down a major component of the eDonkey file-sharing network, used mainly to trade copies of copyrighted movies and music, the Motion Picture Association said on Wednesday.

More@reuters

California, home of the U.S. entertainment industry, has a new law that makes it a crime to sell as few as 100 illegally copied albums. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a measure Wednesday that reduces the threshold for criminal sales of pirated music from 1,000 copies.

More@latimes