Business News Week In Five

The music business week in five – Friday 30 Jul 2010

By | Published on Friday 30 July 2010

So, I catch a train from Kings Cross station at 6am tomorrow morning and head northwards for the world’s biggest cultural freak out, aka the Edinburgh Festival.

As you may already know, CMU’s sister media ThreeWeeks is the biggest reviewer at the world’s biggest festival, and for the next four weeks we will be reviewing hundreds of comedy, theatre, musical, dance, opera, cabaret and music shows, plus interviewing hundreds of performers and reporting on all the key developments. You will be able to access all this at www.ThreeWeeks.co.uk, or if you’re in Edinburgh via our weekly newspaper and daily reviews sheet, both available to pick up across the Scottish capital.

I’ll still be sending my music business updates in to CMU HQ back in London on a daily basis, though this here week-in-view thing will take a short summer break and re-appear at the top of the Daily on Friday 3 Sep. But, before all the madness begins, let’s do one last end-of-week review of all things music biz, shall we?

01: A US judge commented on the Terra Firma v Citigroup litigation. The equity group are suing the bank in the US over advice it gave them just before they bought EMI in 2007. The music major still owes Citigroup three billion as a result of that deal. In stage one of the legal battle, Citigroup claimed the lawsuit should be fought in the London courts because of a pre-deal agreement. But judge Jed Rakoff this week said that agreement only obligated Citigroup to sue in the UK, not Terra Firma. The equity firm don’t want to fight the case here because boss man Guy Hands has to stay out of the country for tax reasons. We already knew Rakoff had blocked Citi in their efforts to move the lawsuit to London, but this week found out why. CMU reportBloomberg report

02: Univision was fined $1 million for payola. Execs at the record company bit of the US-based Latin American entertainment firm were accused of bribing programmers in the radio station bit of the same company to play their music, contravening American broadcasting rules. Media regulator the FCC conceded Univision management did not know about the payola practices, which were uncovered in 2006, but fined the company a million anyway for not having systems in place to stop them. Univision has actually sold its record company since the scandal broke. CMU report | WSJ report

03: HMV Digital launched. The high street retailer took the ‘beta’ label off its all new digital music service, which has been created by 7Digital, in which HMV have a 50% stake. It’s not HMV’s first attempt at a download service, though does look more user friendly than previous efforts and there’ll also be some price cutting at launch. However, the new service is separate from HMV’s existing mail order website, which does seem like a weakness. Speculation also continued this week regarding Google’s plans to launch a download store; the New York Post reported the web firm was now talking to US digital rights society the Harry Fox Agency. CMU report | Telegraph report

04: Hacking iPhones was deemed to not be copyright infringement, in the US at least. The ruling came from the US Copyright Office, who said that ‘jail-breaking’ your iPhone so that you could use non-Apple approved apps or move to a non-Apple approved phone network did not infringe the IT firm’s copyrights. Though Apple said hacking their smart phones still might stop them working, so you shouldn’t do it, OK? CMU report | Wired report on UK dimension

05: Culture Select Committee to review arts funding. The parliamentary committee will review everything to do with arts and heritage funding as those parts of the cultural industries which receive subsidy brace themselves for expected cuts. All creative sectors will be invited to participate in the review, including the music business. CMU report

And there you have it. Look out for your artist week in view CMU Weekly in your inbox later today. Hurrah.

Chris Cooke,
Business Editor, CMU Daily



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