UNIVERSAL LOOKS TO SANCTUARY 18/06/07
Vivendi Universal looks to be about to buy up troubled media indie Sanctuary valuing the multi-media group at about £100 million.

UK POLITICIANS CALL FOR REVIEW OF LICENSING LAWS 13/06/07
The UK's Liberal Democrat party is calling for a review of the  2003 Licensing Act which, some argue, have had a detrimental effect on the grass roots live music community by discouraging pubs and small venues from staging live music events because of the costs and bureaucracy now involved. The Lib Dems issued a statement after 79,000 people added their name to a petition against the rules on the Downing Street website. The party's Culture, Media And Sport spokesman, Don Foster, said "The sheer scale of this petition shows the depth of public concern on the impact that these regulations are having on live music. Live music in a pub is an essential part of Britain's musical heritage so why something as innocuous as providing a piano in a bar should be deemed an offence is beyond me". The Lib Dem move follows reports back in March that a sub-group of the Live Music Forum had concluded the new regulations had had a negative impact on grass roots live music - an opinion that contradicted official government research.

ISLE OF WIGHT FORGERIES LEAD TO THREE ARRESTS 13/06/07
Organisers of the Isle Of Wight festival have said that up to one in five of tickets presented at the event's gates were fake. Security checks as the festival were stepped up after opening when it became clear how many counterfeit tickets were in circulation, leading to delays on gaining access to the site, and hundreds of 'ticket' holders being turned away. Three people have been arrested in connection with the forgeries.

THE BIG APPLE IS WATCHING YOU 02/06/07
You might of thought online music retailers would have learnt from the Sony 'Rootklit' fiasco which cost SonyBMG millons of dollars in damages after the Rootkit DRM software was found to open up user's computers to attack and allegations of invasion of privacy. Now it appears that Apple has embedded personal details into tracks brought from iTunes. The buyer's name and email address will be logged onto the track - although the online consumer group the Electronic Frontiers Foundation said it had indentified a 'large amount' of unidentified and unaccounted for information on iTunes files. It appears the data may be a 'watermark' so an original buyer could be identified if the track escapes onto illegal peer-2-peer networking sites. However this seems at odds with Apple CEO Steve Job's recent calls for record labels to make online music DRM free and Apple has yet to commengt in the situation. 

FULLER AND SILLERMAN LOOK TO TAKE CKX PRIVATE 02/06/07
CKX Boss Robert Sillerman and Simon Fuller, the man behind the Spice Girls, 19 Management and American Idol who sold his business to CKX in 2005, are looking to take the company proivate in a $1.3 billion buyout. Other CKX| assets include the Graceland mansion and Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali's image rights. Last year 19 Entertainment contributed 72% of CKX's revenue and $28 million in operating profit.   

GLASTO SUPPORTS I COUNT 02/06/07
The 170,000 visitors to this year's Glastonbury Festival will be asked to reduce their carbon footprint too by signing up to the I Count campaign. The green campaign aims to show people 16 steps that can reduce their environmental impact and hopes to sign up 100,000 over three days. Festival organiser Michael Eavis explained: "We've put a lot of effort into focusing Glastonbury on the environment and climate change this year. We hope to see at least 100,000 new supporters sign up to the I Count campaign - and I'll be the first to put my name down." The campaign is supported by the Stop Climate Chaos coalition of more than 50 organisations, as well as the three main causes supported by Glastonbury - Oxfam, Greenpeace and WaterAid.

BPI WIN RECORD DAMAGES 02/06/07
The BPI, representing the UK record labels, has won record damages for copyright infringement from CD Wow, the online Etailer who were importing CDs from outside of the The European Community in breach of copyright laws. The BPI also say they have a freezing order against CD Wow's Hong Kong bank accounts. Some news reports put the damages awarded in the High Court a high as £41 million. ($80 million).

GCAP REVENUES DOWN 9% AS SANCTUARY SELLS AIR EDEL 02/06/07
UK Radio Group GCap saw its annual revenues drop by 9% to £200.1M. Profits fell from £22.2M last year to £14.4M. Due to cost-cutting, the company claims to have made savings of £29.5M in the past two years and plans to make savings of £5.5M in the next two years but the company's Commercial Director, Duncan George, who has been with the company since 2005, has quit his role. And struggling British music group Sanctuary has sold off its Air Edel arm for £0.5M. Air Edel Associates Limited and Air Edel Recording Studios Limited has been bought up by Cutting Edge Music.

FAMOUS MUSIC TO BE SOLD 02/06/07
Famous Music Publishing whose catalogue that includes works by Eminem and Shakira is on the brink of being sold to to Sony/ATV for $370M. The sale is part of a prerequisite put in place by the European Commission over Universal Music Group's $2.19B acquisition of BMG Music Publishing. Sony ATV - part owned by Michael Jackson - adds an impressive list of copyrights to its 400,000 strong roster with the acquisition.

Talking of Shakira, the latin star has set a new record in Mexico for the largest free concert gathering. Some 210,000 spectators turned up to see her perform at Mexico City's main square Zocalo.

UNIVERSAL GIVEN GREEN LIGHT TO BUY BMG MUSIC PUBLISHING 02/06/07
Vivendi/Universal and BMG Music Publishing have finally had their merger given the green light by the European Commission. Vivendi beat rivals EMI Group and Warner Music Group to the punch, but the acquisition had been marred by concerns over unfair competition. The E1.63B merger sealed its fate via concessions demanded by the antitrust probe.

Excluding Rondor UK, Zomba UK, BBC Music, 19 Songs, 19 Music (as well as a European licence for the Zomba US catalogue) were all pivotal in securing the Commission's approval. Immediately after the announcement, Impala was quick to point out that it reserves the right to seek a reversal of the decision, and said it will follow the merger with great interest.

The EC said in a statement yesterday: "The proposed merger, as initially notified, raised serious doubts as regards adverse effects on competition in the market for music publishing rights for online applications. However, the Commission's investigation found that these concerns would be removed by the remedies package proposed by the parties concerning the divestiture of a number of publishing catalogues".

SOUNDEXCHANGE OFFER ROYALTY DEAL TO SMALLER WEBCASTERS 02/06/07
The body that collects royalties from US webcasters, SoundExchange, has offered a deal to smaller web radio operators as part of the ongoing royalties dispute in the American internet radio sector.
Source: CMU Daily

ELTON CANCELS RED PIANO DATES 02/06/07
Elton John 's management yesterday announced the singer's entire European 'Red Piano Tour has been cancelled because the tour's promoter "could not guarantee to put the shows on". The affected shows were due to take place in Venice, Berlin, Moscow, Paris and Seville.

EMI BOARD ACCEPTS TERRA OFFER 02/06/07
EMI Group has agreed to an offer by private equity firm Terra Firma for £2.4B, subject to approval by the firm's shareholders. The board of directors at EMI intend to recommend unanimously that EMI shareholders should accept the offer. EMI's shares jumped 10% on the news - the offer vaues the company at 265p per share. EMI also announced year end figures for 2006 showing revenues down and a profit of £118.1 million in 2005 turned into a loss of £263.6 for 2006. Revenues were £1.75B in 'challenging' global market place. Despite this EMI's shares jumped to above the Terra Firma bid price to 271p as speculators waited to see if a bidding war started.

NEW UK ACTION AGAINST ALLOFMP3.COM 02/06/07
UK Police have raided and shut down an online voucher system allegedly used by the Russian music download website allofmp3.com to try and sidestep the removal of legitimate payment services in the UK and Europe - Visa and Mastercard withdrew payment facilities for the site some time ago. The action under the Fraud Act 2006 follows a pan-European investigation, conducted by global recording industry body IFPI and UK record companies' association the BPI, which led to the arrest of a 25 year-old male in Bow, London. The individual was allegedly the UK-based European agent for allofmp3.com, facilitating the sale of digital downloads by advertising and selling vouchers through auction sites such as eBay and the website allofmp3vouchers.co.uk.

That website has now been taken down from the internet. The vouchers contained a code that allowed UK and European consumers to access and download music illegally from the allofmp3.com website. Charging £10 per voucher, the suspect was believed to be taking payment from European customers and transferring the cash into various offshore accounts operated by the site's Russian owners. Metropolitan Police officers seized computer equipment and paperwork for further investigation.