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Business News Week In Five
CMU Digest – 24 May 2013
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 24 May 2013
The five biggest stories in the music business this week…
01: Global Radio was told to sell stations in seven regions as part of its Real Smooth acquisition. The demands by the UK competition regulator regarding the radio giant’s purchase of what was the Guardian Media Group’s radio business were pretty severe, and mean that Global will likely have to sell on more of the Real and Smooth Radio networks than it’ll be allowed to keep. This means Global could lose out significantly from the whole deal. It remains to be seen if the radio giant will appeal the Commission’s ruling. CMU report | Guardian report
02: Eminem’s publisher Eight Mile Style sued Facebook and its ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, alleging that the social network used music from one of Slim Shady’s tracks, ‘Under The Influence’, without permission for a promotional film shown during a webcast by the firm’s top man Mark Zuckerberg. The publisher also hit out at a letter from W+K’s lawyer accusing Eminem collaborator Dr Dre of himself lifting music from a Michael Jackson song without permission when recording ‘Under The Influence’, with Eight Mile Style’s reps saying that was a ridiculous allegation, not least because Dre didn’t work on that track. CMU report | Courthouse News report
03: Five one time Grooveshark employees were taken off one of the major labels’ lawsuits against the often controversial streaming service, after they signed agreements pledging to never infringe a music copyright again. The lawsuit, led by Universal, accuses Grooveshark of having its staff upload unlicensed content to its own servers. Legal papers listed a number of said employees, but Benjamin Westermann-Clark, Paul Geller, John Ashenden, Chanel Munezero and Nikola Arabadjiev have now all been removed after signing the never-infringe-again agreement. The Grooveshark company and co-founders Sam Tarantino and Josh Greenberg are still named. CMU report | DNM report
04: Sony was considering a proposal to sell off some of its entertainment business. The proposal was made earlier this month by Daniel Loeb, whose hedge fund Third Point now owns 5.6% of Sony Corp. He suggested the Tokyo-based entertainment and electronics firm sell off a slice of its US-headquartered music, movie and TV business to free up funds to speed up the recovery of its flagging electronics division. Although Sony top guard have in the past denied reports that they were considering any such sale, Japanese newspaper Nikkei said this week that they had now begun to give Loeb’s proposals some thought. CMU report | Billboard report
05: It was confirmed 93 Feet East had its licence back. The East London venue was shut following a police raid in January and amidst allegations management had not done enough to combat the trade and consumption on drugs on their premises. But following an appeal hearing at Thames Magistrates Court last week, bosses of the venue have won their licence back and are now free to reopen the club. CMU report | Metro report
On CMU this week, we had a very interesting chat with Emika and got a marvellous playlist from Club 8’s Johan Angergård. Dan Le Sac reported on The Great Escape and wondered why more artists don’t take advantage of such events to ensure they are part of the conversation on the future of the music business, while we approved of Lubomyr Melnyk, Liars, Eye Emma Jedi and Julia Holter.
