If the record industry wants music subscription services to become mainstream products, it should pay close attention to the factors behind growth at Netflix. In the first quarter of 2011, the online video rental service added 3.6 million subscribers, to finish with 23.6 million. To put it another way, the company’s subscriber numbers increased 69% […]

A major new report from a consortium of academic researchers concludes that media piracy can’t be stopped through “three strikes” Internet disconnections, Web censorship, more police powers, higher statutory damages, or tougher criminal penalties. That’s because the piracy of movies, music, video games, and software is “better described as a global pricing problem.” And the […]

AOL Music lost half its editorial staff going from 11 to 6 full-timers. This is meaningful, as AOL Music has been the largest content-oriented music network online for years now. (They lose in traffic to app-oriented brands like Pandora and social networks.) Apparently they’ve also been told they still must comply with The AOL Way […]

News Corp has kicked off the process to explore the sale or spin-off of its troubled social entertainment site, Myspace, a person familiar with the talks said on Thursday. The media conglomerate has received early interest from around 20 parties so far and expects to receive more inquiries as the process develops in coming weeks. […]

Over the past few years, some of music’s biggest names, including Mariah Carey, Usher and Beyoncé, have taken as much as a million dollars to play private shows for the family of Libya’s brutal dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi – a man who this week ordered security forces to open fire on citizens protesting his rule, […]