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Michael Jackson’s Back Catalog Said To Be Among 50,000 Stolen Sony Music Files

By NANCY TARTAGLIONE, International Editor | Monday March 5, 2012 @ 5:13am PSTTags: Michael Jackson, Sony Music, Sony Pictures

Nearly a year after Sony Pictures and the PlayStation Network faced targeted hacking attacks, it has emerged that Sony Music had its own breach in the US in 2011. Two British men appeared in a UK court on Friday over charges they illegally downloaded more than 50,000 Sony Music files – most of them by the late Michael Jackson. The duo was arrested last May, just a month after Sony faced a massive breach to its PlayStation Network and a month before website Lulz Security claimed it had broken into SonyPictures.com. The alleged British hackers are said to have stolen the Jackson music, including many unreleased songs, and works by other artists. In 2010, Sony and the Jackson estate signed the biggest recording deal in history giving the company the rights to sell the singer’s entire back catalog along with previously unreleased tracks. Sony is said to have realized the songs had been compromised during routine monitoring of Jackson fansites and hacking forums. The Britsh men have denied the allegations and are due to stand trial next January.

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Sony America CFO Defends Combo Of Technology And Entertainment: UBS Confab

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Tuesday December 6, 2011 @ 4:43pm PSTTags: 30 Minutes Or Less, America's Got Talent, Bad Teacher, EMI, Sony, Sony Music, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, The X Factor

With 350M Sony networked devices including  TV sets and PlayStation game consoles expected to be in the market over the next two years “right now that integration has never made more sense,” Sony Corp Of America CFO Rob Wiesenthal told … Read More »

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Apple And Google Prepare To Take Digital Music War To The Cloud

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Tuesday November 15, 2011 @ 8:04am PSTTags: Apple, EMI, Google, iCloud, iTunes, Music, Sony Music, Warner Music Group

Apple made a major improvement to its digital music service today as it introduced iTunes Match. For $24.99 a year, iTunes will scan a user’s mobile gadget or hard drive, identify its recordings — including those copied from a … Read More »

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Sony Pictures Sales +9.3% In June Quarter As Parent Co Reels From Earthquake Expenses

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Thursday July 28, 2011 @ 3:12am PDTTags: Battle:Los Angeles, Glee, Just Go With It, Sony Music, Sony Pictures, The Green Hornet 3D

Sony Pictures’ strong performance in the quarter that ended in June stood out as the corporation reported a net loss of $191M on revenues of $18.5B, down 10% vs. the same period last year. Sony attributed the decline to the … Read More »

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‘How Do You Know’ Depresses Sony’s Earnings In A Dreary Quarter

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Thursday May 26, 2011 @ 5:08am PDTTags: How Do You Know, Sony, Sony Entertainment Television, Sony Music

Based on the company’s generally disappointing financial report this morning, it looks like Sony CEO Howard Stringer will have to keep waiting to see a big payoff from the strategy to meld entertainment hardware and software. For the quarter that ended in March, Sony says the industrywide decline in DVD revenues and the lousy results for its Jim Brooks film How Do You Know partly accounted for the 11% drop in movie and TV sales, which came in at $2.1 billion. But operating profits at the segment were up 8%, to $433 million, due largely to belt tightening and a one-time $325 million gain from its revaluation of its 40% stake in the Game Show Network. That will come back to bite Sony next year: The company projects that movie and TV revenues will improve in 2012, but profits will be down without the one-time benefit.

At Sony Music, the company says the continuing slide in CD sales mean that revenues will fall once again in 2012 after dropping 13% to $1.3 billion in the first quarter of 2011. But the operation’s cost-cutting efforts enabled it to report a $46 million operating profit, up from a $7.4 million loss last year.

Sony warned this week that a $4.4 billion charge to account for costs from this year’s tsunami and earthquake, as well as the recent cyber-attack on its PlayStation Network, would trash earnings for the the fiscal year that ended in March. The company says it wound up with a $3.1 billion loss on revenues of $86.5 billion, down about half a percent. Read More »

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Ryan Seacrest’s Huge Salary Contributes To ‘American Idol’ Profit Swoon At CKX

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Monday May 9, 2011 @ 4:15pm PDTTags: American Idol, American Idol Finance, CKX, CKX American Idol, CKX Finance, Ryan Seacrest, Simon Cowell, Simon Cowell The X Factor, Simon Fuller, Sony Music, Universal Music American idol, Universal Music Idol Deal

American Idol host Ryan Seacrest’s fat contract with CKX — the quirky company that owns the rights to the show — seems to have done a number on Idol’s profits. Despite all the upbeat talk about Idol’s ratings resurgence so far this year, the show’s 1Q operating profit for CKX of $13.6 million was down 17% vs. the same period last year on revenues of $28.4 million, down 2%. Publicly traded CKX breaks out results for Idol because it accounts for about 53% of the company’s revenues, which also include licensing income for Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali. The report is as good a barometer as you’ll find for Idol‘s economic performance: CKX collects a license fee from Fox, as well as revenue for Idol-related syndication, sponsorship deals, merchandise and its concert tours. But CKX’s 48% operating profit margin for Idol in the three months that ended in March was the lowest 1Q result for the show since 2006, when CKX began reporting the show’s finances. CKX says that its Idol-related expenses came to $14.8 million. That’s up 17% from last year — and 260% from two years ago. The biggest change appears to be the $45 million employment contract that CKX struck with Seacrest in 2009 that locks him in through 2012. CKX has already paid Seacrest $33.5 million; Fox, in turn, pays CKX $5 million a year for Seacrest. Read More »

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Doug Morris New Sony Music CEO

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Wednesday March 2, 2011 @ 11:30am PSTTags: Doug Morris, Sony Corp, Sony Music
Mike Fleming

As expected, Sony Corp announced that Doug Morris is the new chairman of Sony Music, replacing Rolf Schmidt-Holtz.

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NBC Slots ‘Sing-Off’ For December Run

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Thursday October 21, 2010 @ 11:23am PDTTags: NBC, Nicole Scherzinger, Reality TV, Sony Music, The Sing-Off, The Sing-Off Ratings, TV, Unscripted TV
Nellie Andreeva

NBC’s a cappella singing competition series The Sing-Off will return for a five-night second cycle in December with Nick Lachey back as host. The Sing-Off will premiere Monday, December 6  from 8-10 PM. Four 2-hour episodes will follow from 8-10 … Read More »

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