Label:Life

The British recording industry has successfully jumped the first hurdle in its battle to have unauthorised Russian download site AllofMP3.com declared illegal.

Trade association the BPI issued proceedings late on Thursday (June 29) against the operator of the site and was given permission by the UK High Court to serve those proceedings in Russia. This means the court agreed that the case against AllofMP3 can be heard in a UK court despite the fact that the company is based in Russia.

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A law that could force Apple to share its digital download technology with rivals has been passed in France. Currently, songs bought from Apple’s iTunes music store can only be played on Apple-manufactured iPods. The bill would mean any digital song could be played on any player, regardless of its format or source.

But the legislation leaves room for artists to sign deals with Apple and others, enabling them to restrict which systems their music will play on.

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EMI and Warner Music were locked in a two-way $4.6 billion takeover battle on Wednesday, with each trying to acquire the other to create a combined company that would shrink the industry to three dominant players.

London-based EMI Group Plc, home to Coldplay and Robbie Williams, said it had rejected a 2.5 billion pounds ($4.6 billion) cash offer from its smaller U.S. rival, calling the bid “wholly unacceptable”.

At the same time, EMI revealed that it had sweetened its takeover bid for New York-based Warner Music, whose artists include Madonna and Red Hot Chili Peppers, to $31 a share or $4.6 billion in total, from its original May offer of $28.50, although the new bid was also rejected.

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DJ Dave Lee Travis said the BBC’s flagship music show Top of the Pops, which is to be axed after 42 years, had “run its natural course”.

Travis, who hosted the show between 1972 and 1984, said the “world is just too fast moving” for the weekly show.

He said it was a “shame”, adding that the popularity of music downloads had led to the programme’s demise.

The final edition of Top of the Pops, which began in 1964, will be aired on 30 July, the BBC announced on Tuesday.

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ore than 40 years after the Beatles and the Rolling Stones featured on the first edition, the BBC is to scrap Britain’s longest-running music television show, “Top of the Pops.”

From its 1964 launch at the height of Beatlemania, the weekly countdown of Britain’s top-selling singles has tracked the ever-changing musical tastes of the younger generation.

The rise of 24-hour music TV channels such as MTV and Internet downloads sounded the death knell for the show.

At its peak, the program attracted tens of millions of viewers in Britain and nearly 100 other countries.

But the BBC, Britain’s publicly funded broadcaster, said the show could not compete with rivals that enable viewers to “consume music of their choice any time night or day.”

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The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) CEO John Kennedy delivered an address at the recently concluded China International Forum on the Audio Visual Industry, Shanghai.

He said that IFPI was not asking the Chinese government for subsidies or special treatment. “All we want is a fair framework of intellectual property laws properly enforced so that people cannot steal music. I believe that if we can achieve that then we will all benefit: government, industry and ultimately consumers.”

Illegal sales of music are China is valued by IFPI at around $400 million, with around 90 per cent of all recordings being illegal. He warned that no creative or knowledge-based industry can hope to survive in such an environment. There have been misplaced suggestions that record companies should tackle piracy by lowering their prices. It is true that, faced with the dramatic impact on their business, some companies have experimented with lower prices. But this is only a reflection of desperation at such prolific piracy rates and is not he stressed a sustainable strategy.

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Tiscali has been forced to close its Tiscali Juke Box service after just one month of trading – and places the blame squarely with European record labels.

In an open letter explaining its decision, the company accuses Europe’s record industry as being: “Virtually impossible to work with in the promotion of legal music online.”

Tiscali Juke Box launched on April 26 2006 in Italy and the UK. It aimed to become a licensed peer-to-peer service, which let users legally listen to and search through millions of tracks.

More@macworld

Nearly a year after the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling against online music file-sharing services, the CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America says unauthorized song swapping has been “contained.”

“The problem has not been eliminated,” says association CEO Mitch Bainwol. “But we believe digital downloads have emerged into a growing, thriving business, and file-trading is flat.”

That’s an optimistic view from an industry that saw its numbers slide to near oblivion after the launch of the original Napster in 1999. CD sales fell as much as 30%, and the RIAA pressed Congress and the courts for relief against what it said was rampant piracy.

More@usatoday

Pressure on Apple Computer to open its closed system of the iTunes digital music store and the iPod music player is spreading across Europe.

Last week, Norway, Denmark and Sweden said Apple must make music tracks downloaded from iTunes playable on rival devices or get out of their countries. Finland is also looking at intervening.

In France, legislation that is in its final stages in parliament would force all electronic devices to be “inter-operable”. Other large European countries are thought to be considering action of their own.

More@ft

Brussels, 31 May 2006 – Remuneration systems for private copying allow performers and other rightholders to receive remuneration as fair compensation for the reproduction by individuals of their recordings for their private and non-commercial use.

At a time when private copying on CDs, DVDs, computers’ hard disks or digital music players is becoming a soaring and massively used practice, and while this remuneration system has already proven useful and beneficial to all parties, the European Commission recently questioned the system publicly and expressed its will to bring significant changes or even to put an end to it. Any limitation of the existing scheme would harm the sector instead of accompanying its development. (more…)