SoundCloud music service said to near deals with record labels
The largest record labels are closing in on a deal for a stake in buzzy digital-music service SoundCloud Ltd., in exchange for an agreement not to sue the startup for copyright violations, according to people with knowledge of the plans. SoundCloud, a Berlin-based company with ...
Download law yet to bite after a year
It has been a year since Japan introduced penalties for downloading pirated music and video files. So far no one has been arrested — let alone punished with the maximum two years in prison and/or fine of up to ¥2 million that the revision to ...
Tower Japan boss says biggest challenge facing record stores is attracting young customers
A few weeks ago I was preparing to do a guest slot on InterFM’s “The Selector” program, which features music mavens sharing their favorite tracks. While I had a few tunes from the not-so-recent past in mind, I needed some newer stuff to round out ...
Been down so long, it looks like up
I've been to a lot of music-industry conferences over the years, and for the past decade I've listened to the same old song: How can the recording industry fight online piracy, which it blames for plunging music sales? So at this year's Music Matters (MM) ...
Remembering the day Napster set music free
In the first weeks of 2000 the founders of Napster were in their office above a bank in San Mateo, California, considering dizzying numbers. Figures scrawled on a whiteboard told how many people around the world had installed their file-sharing application and were using ...
