Tag: LICENSING

As recently as last fall, Yoko Ono said The Beatles' songs would finally be available in the iTunes Store -- only to be quickly shot down by EMI, which licenses the band's material. Now, she is squashing any hopes that we'll ever be able to download recordings by the Fab Four in Apple's store. According to a Reuters report on Yahoo! News, Ono said that you Beatlemaniacs shouldn't "hold your ...

Yesterday, Neil Young fired a shot at YouTube, claiming that the Google-owned purveyor of online video has unfairly treated artists signed to the Warner Music Group. According to Young's blog (cleverly titled 'NY Times'), YouTube has underpaid Warner artists, whose peers on other record labels have been getting larger licensing checks. Young points out that, because Warner Reprise was one of the ...

Yesterday, in California, Eminem's royalty rights lawsuit against conglomerate Universal Music Group went to trial in U.S. District Court, reports the Wrap. Asking for $1.3 million from the parent company of Aftermath Records, to which Eminem is signed, the suit's fundamental claim is that royalties from downloads should be dictated by the artist's licensing contract, not distribution contract. ...

The newest generation of the Kindle, Amazon's digital reading device, can now read text aloud, and authors are not happy about it, USA Today reports. While the original Kindle was able to display the texts of whatever book a user downloaded, the Kindle 2 is additionally capable of reading those downloaded books to the user, albeit it in a robotic monotone. This capability, and the potential to ...