France saves the music industry
The music business isn't as easy as it once was, and record labels often blame the internet for that. After all, the internet has enabled piracy on a scale never seen before, which is often cited as a major reason CD sales have declined so much.
While the internet did usher in an era of digital piracy, the truth of the matter is that industries change over time, and the strongest players in them find ways to adapt.
Will the RIAA seek a DMCA replacement?
The business model of the recording industry is broken. Just about everyone knows it, including record label executives. But the industry collectively still seems to have a hard time admitting it.
So it's really no surprise that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which has gone so far as to sue grandmothers for illegal music downloads, is singing a new heartbreaker: copyright law is broken.
Spotify looks to make digital music more social
Popular European music streaming startup Spotify has been able to survive and thrive in a tough market that has seen its fair share of startup casualties. In an effort to maintain its growth, it has announced the largest upgrade since it first launched in 2008.
The goal: turn Spotify into a "total music management platform". The means: a hefty dose of social features.
MySpace acquires iLike
After days of chatter, MySpace made its acquisition of social music discovery startup iLike official today. The company, which is best known for its popular Facebook music app, will see its social discovery technology applied in new areas such as gaming, according to MySpace CEO Owen van Natta. To that end, iLike was acquired by MySpace Inc., not MySpace's digital music joint venture.
According to the acquisition announcement, the current iLike experience that users have come to love will be "unaffected by
the acquisition" and iLike will continue to be headquarted in Seattle.
YouTube goes silent in the UK as music videos blocked
Digital music is the future of the recording industry but sometimes you wonder if we'll make it to the future with all of the fighting that takes place over licensing.
The online music market is no stranger to disputes and the latest is resulting in premium music videos on YouTube being turned off for UK users.
US court: digital music sales are like CD sales
You can't fault them for trying, but a federal jury handed Eminem's former production company defeat in its lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG).
The company's lawsuit asked the question: should digital sales of Eminem's music be treated like physical sales or were they part of a licensing agreement?
Were reports of the entertainment industry's death greatly exaggerated?
There has been a lot of talk about the decline of the traditional entertainment industry the past several years.
As a growing and maturing Internet has become a much more powerful medium for the distribution of media, traditional entertainment enterprises, from television networks to record labels, have increasingly faced new challenges that many argued threaten their survival.
