Norah Jones, whose new album The Fall was released yesterday, is about to become a Web-music guinea pig. EMI has teamed with video-streaming site Hulu — itself a partnership between NBC, ABC and Fox — to establish artist pages for the major label’s roster. Jones is the first to get her very own Hulu page, which will house all of the Grammy winner’s music videos and a selection of live performances, as well as interviews about recording The Fall. As Rolling Stone previously reported, in December 2008 major labels were weighing partnering with Hulu to increase streaming royalties. (more…)

Both Google and Facebook are reportedly planning to beef up their music features by allowing users to find and stream music more easily on their services, the New York Times reports. According to sources who have been invited to a Google event next week at Los Angeles’ Capitol Building, the search engine giant is expected to reveal “a more efficient way” of finding, streaming and learning about music, which will reportedly involve Google linking up with music sites like Lala, iLike and Imeem.

Google has not aligned itself with any of the major labels as of yet, the NYT reports, but will respond to searches for songs by presenting a 30-second stream — or in some cases, a full track — powered by its partners. Essentially, it’s a shortcut for users who may go directly to YouTube or the iTunes music store to be able to search and listen to music without paying for it. (more…)

Warner Music Group and YouTube have reportedly agreed on a new deal that will bring the major label’s videos — including work by artists like Madonna and Green Day — back to the video streaming Website. According to AdAge.com, while the two sides haven’t officially announced the new contract, WMG is also moving on to negotiations to possibly join Vevo, a video stream venture between YouTube, Sony and Universal.

As Rolling Stone reported in December 2008, Warner Music began pulling down or muting music videos that appeared on YouTube after negotiations between the two companies broke down. The result infuriated users, many of whom had used Warner Music as background for carefully constructed video projects. WMG was seeking $25-40 per every 1,000-plus views, instead of the $5-8 they were receiving under their previous agreement. According to AdAge, talks between the two parties reignited earlier this summer, and WMG is already in the process of reuploading all of the music videos back into the system. The Warner Music Group YouTube page, which was inactive since talks broke down in December 2008, was signed into last month. (more…)

YouTube and Warner Music are reportedly still at work on a new contract that will bring the major label’s catalog back onto the video service, Reuters reports. As Rock Daily wrote in January, YouTube hit the mute button on videos featuring music by Warner artists like Madonna and Green Day after WMG and YouTube failed to come to terms on a new deal. At the heart of the battle is WMG’s desire for higher licensing fees: The company is getting roughly $3-$8 of ad revenues per every 1,000-plus views of their videos, way below the $25-$40 they want.

As Rock Daily previously reported, YouTube and Universal Music recently re-upped their agreement while also announcing plans to create a new video service called Vevo, which will feature music videos from the UMG catalog. Reuters reports that YouTube has already negotiated new deals with major labels Sony Music and EMI, leaving Warner Music as the lone holdout. While many videos by Warner-affiliated artists have been taken down and deleted off the site, some have managed to leak through onto YouTube. (more…)

According to an official press release, the boards of Live Nation and Ticketmaster have agreed to terms to merge the two companies into one massive live-music giant called Live Nation Entertainment. Although Live Nation recently launched its own ticketing service and signed artists like Madonna and Jay-Z to huge contracts, and Ticketmaster joined forces with Irving Azoff’s Front Line Management (which oversees the careers of superstars like Guns n’ Roses and Christina Aguilera), both companies have seen their stock shares plummet and relationships with consumers sour in recent weeks. Rolling Stone reported on the possible merger last week; the two companies hope to complete it by the second half of 2009.

According to the press release, Live Nation and Ticketmaster will combine their ticketing, marketing, data centers and back-offices. “The companies will be combined in a tax-free, all-stock merger of equals with a combined enterprise value of approximately $2.5 billion,” it reads. “Under the agreement, Ticketmaster shareholders will receive 1.384 shares of Live Nation common stock for each share of Ticketmaster they own, subject to certain adjustments defined within the agreement. Live Nation and Ticketmaster shareholders will each own approximately 50 percent of the combined company.”

So how will this affect consumers? (more…)

Are new competitors Live Nation and Ticketmaster already looking to merge? That’s the story according to the Wall Street Journal, which is reporting that the two concert giants are already deep in talks to consolidate into one company that would easily be the world’s biggest concert promoter, ticketing service and artist-management company. While the new company would be called Live Nation Ticketmaster, it’s unclear which company would be acquiring the other. Since the companies are dealing in an all-stock merger, it’s on the fast track toward actually happening. While the boards of both companies have yet to approve the merger, it could be final as early as next week — distressing news for Phish and Bruce Springsteen fans, who both experienced major troubles with the two ticketing services in the past seven days.

Ticketmaster and Live Nation have slugged it out for market dominance in the months since Live Nation revealed the company was starting up its own ticketing service. Live Nation launched their own ticket Website, signed artists like Madonna and Jay-Z and teamed with Blockbuster, while Ticketmaster countered by purchasing Front Line Management and scooping up TicketsNow. The battle hasn’t proven beneficial for either company, as Live Nation has witnessed its stock plunge to under $5 and Ticketmaster has gone from a year-high of $27 per share to a low of $3.33.

Still, if this merger does get approved, it needs to maneuver its way around any anti-trust charges. (more…)

Photo: Beck/AFP/Getty

Circuit City has become the latest victim of the economic downturn wreaking havoc on the electronics and music industries. The company issued a press release today announcing it will seek the approval of the Bankruptcy Court to begin liquidating all its assets.

“We are extremely disappointed by this outcome. The company had been in continuous negotiations regarding a going concern transaction,” Circuit City vice chairman James Marcum said. “Regrettably for the more than 30,000 employees of Circuit City and our loyal customers, we were unable to reach an agreement with our creditors and lenders to structure a going-concern transaction in the limited timeframe available, and so this is the only possible path for our company.”

Circuit City filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November 2008, closing 155 stores before the end of ‘08 while it sought a buyout; an attempt to merge with Blockbuster fell through in July. With the retail giant closing its doors, music fans are left with one less place to buy CDs, as well as stereos and the other audiophile gadgets — just last week, thousands of newly developed electronics debuted at Las Vegas’ Consumer Electronics Show (CES) (click here for our rundown on the best).

As Rolling Stone has reported, the flagship Times Square Virgin Megastore is closing, and Best Buy is devoting less floor space to CDs. Yesterday industry blog Coolfer pointed out a blog post by echo’s Mark Montgomery, who attended Billboard’s Digital Music Conference and heard that “the CD might have two more years in Walmart.” Walmart is currently the nation’s second-largest music vendor, behind iTunes. As of now, the outlook for physical album sales is certainly bleak.

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Labels are continuing to grasp for ways to milk revenue out of their videos that appear for free online. Following Warner Music’s exit from YouTube last week, the majors are not only exploring a partnership with the NBC-owned video site Hulu but considering launching their own stand-alone music-video site.

According to reports, two major labels are considering an additional partnership with Hulu, the News Corp./NBC video venture that’s mostly used to stream NBC shows. While Hulu isn’t a household name like YouTube, the site drew ad revenues in the $70 million range this year, not far behind YouTube’s $100 million, and the two companies are expected to pull in even more ad money in 2009.

The four major labels are also considering their own video site as they seek new avenues to showcase videos that aren’t being played on MTV (the Website MTV Music, however, has emerged as a viable alternative to YouTube for music-video streaming). Even if the majors were to join forces and create their own streaming site, their preexisting deals with YouTube would remain intact. No concrete plans have been released, but there has been talk of a premium service on YouTube, where users would pay a fee in order to access special areas of the site.Of course, all the talk about Hulu and a standalone, major-label ran service could just be posturing by WMG to get better terms in their new contract with YouTube if the two sides were to agree.

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After suing more than 35,000 people for illegally sharing music online since September 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America has canceled its much-publicized lawsuit campaign. The RIAA will instead work with Internet service providers to identify and contact — and sometimes penalize — users who continue to trade copyrighted music.

“We’re faced with the reality of ‘this shit isn’t working.’ And legally the ground is getting shakier in terms of winning these lawsuits. And it’s costing money,” says a major-label source familiar with the lawsuit discussions. “So, time to move on.”

The RIAA, a trade association that represents the world’s biggest record labels, has made headlines for suing 13-year-old Brianna LaHara as well as a multitude of students, flight attendants, engineers and karaoke DJs over five years. But while the RIAA insisted the lawsuits were crucial for educating customers that file-sharing is illegal, they haven’t reduced piracy, according to BigChampagne.com numbers.

Some at labels have recently been vocal about stopping the lawsuits, notably Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. Album sales have dropped from 636 million in 2003 to 585 million last year — and another 14 percent in 2008, according to Nielsen Soundscan. Eventually, the major-label source says, it became obvious even to the most aggressive lawsuit supporters that the lawsuits weren’t worth pursuing. (more…)

Photo: Getty

As is becoming an annual winter tradition, CD sales are having yet another icy December, with sales down 21.7 percent compared to the first week of December 2007. It’s hard to blame this year’s slate of releases, as the Top 10 albums are selling better than their counterparts last year. So what’s to blame? Most likely the recession: iPods and Wiis aren’t selling out like in previous years, either.

While by all accounts the big retailers are being battered on the CD sales front, the season has been slightly better for indie stores, as they’ve seen only a 8.6 percent decrease in album sales. And there was good news for places like Starbucks and online music stores: sales are actually up 8.7 percent. In fact, the number of digital songs sold this year will top 1 billion. So what does the future hold? Stores are already starting to cut down on the floor space they dedicate to CDs. “DVD, Blu-ray are doing great. The CD, no,” said one wholesale exec. “I expect next year that we will be cutting back on our CD buying… we will be buying less of each title.”

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Live Nation has inked a three-year deal with Blockbuster that’ll see the video rental chain become the official and exclusive outlet for the Nation’s impending ticket service. Under the deal, 500 Blockbusters across the nation will add Live Nation ticketing booths by the start of the 2009 concert season. Besides the option to buy tickets with cash, the Blockbusters will also allow select stores to sell “exclusive blocks of tickets” four hours prior to the tickets’ normal online sale time. “This deal with Blockbuster represents the next step in the rollout of our new ticketing system,” said Nathan Hubbard, Chief Executive Officer of Live Nation Ticketing. “Our research definitively shows that the vast majority of music fans who prefer to buy their concert tickets at a retail location find Blockbuster to be the most convenient choice.”

While a company that specializes in music and concerts merging with a company that rents out DVDs might seem like a strange match on paper, the deal makes sense for both companies: (more…)

Photo: Getty

When Live Nation announced they would be launching their own ticketing initiative, many in the industry thought that would mean the end of Ticketmaster. Instead, Ticketmaster struck back by buying an interest in Front Line Management, essentially putting them in competition with Live Nation not just for concert ticketing but also for album sales, downloads and merchandising opportunities. “It’s a seismic shift, in terms of what’s occurring with the retail of tickets,” says Jim Guerinot, manager of Nine Inch Nails and Gwen Stefani. “But it’s far bigger than that. It’s going to develop into a seismic shift in the selling of music.” Click below for more on the war in the industry that will likely determine the future of how fans get to hear and see their favorite bands.

• Ticket Battle Shakes Music Biz

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Though AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, the Killers and Fall Out Boy are all releasing big-ticket rock albums this season, retailers are still pessimistic about holiday sales and the state of the industry as a whole. Click below for more in-depth analyis of the current state of sales, including which big retailer is scaling back music shelf space and what the outlook is for next year.

• Rock Albums Lead Fall Season But Record Biz Still Struggles

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The judge who presided over the original Napster-killing trial seven years ago proposed a plan yesterday to reform copyright and establish both private and public organizations to license and enforce the law in this digital age. “There needs to be a comprehensive revision of the provisions that relate to the administration of copyright licensing, royalties and enforcement,” Judge Miriam Hall Patel said. “I propose that a joint public/private administrative body made up of representatives of all competing interest, including the public, be established and authorized to, among other powers, issue licenses; negotiate, set and administer royalties; and adopt rules and regulations to carry out these purposes.” Patel also recommends that “manufacturers and developers would need approval from this body before introducing an application or device capable of recording, distributing or copying music to consumers,” described by Patel as “sort of like the FDA, but much faster.” (more…)

Photo: Blumenfeld/Getty
Ticketmaster will eliminate the convenience fees on Eagles tickets for the band’s upcoming January 2009 shows. The move signifies “a collaborative effort by both the Eagles and Ticketmaster to provide the best consumer value and streamline the ticket buying process.” “The Eagles have long been committed to giving their loyal fans the best concert going experience,” says the band’s long-time manager and new Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff. “The Eagles use of ‘all-in ticketing’ is the first step in Ticketmaster’s transformation to an all-encompassing entertainment company to allow artists to connect to their fans in both new and innovative ways.” Possible other motives: (more…)