Music Companies Sue China's Baidu, Sohu

Music companies have started a new fight with China's Internet industry over piracy, filing lawsuits accusing popular Web sites Baidu.com and Sohu.com of aiding illicit online copying, the IFPI said Wednesday. (AP)

Amazon buys into Lovefilm

Amazon Europe has agreed to cough the cash to acquire the largest stake in DVD-by-post outfit Lovefilm. It'll sell its own UK and German DVD rental businesses to Lovefilm as part of the deal. (The Register)

IPFI chief says it's time to hose down the networks

In an interview from the music business annual Midem, we speak to John Kennedy, chairman and CEO of the IPFI, the international trade group representing record labels. Here he talks about the new ISP strategy, and the future of the big label. (The Register)

MPAA admits mistake on downloading study

In a 2005 study it commissioned, the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that 44 percent of the industry's domestic losses came from illegal downloading of movies by college students, who often have access to high-bandwidth networks on campus. But now the MPAA, which represents the U.S. motion picture industry, has told education groups a "human error" in that survey caused it to get the number wrong. It now blames college students for about 15 percent of revenue loss. (AP)

How much for digital?

The movie studios are starting to get excited about renting movies digitally (via Apple and others). The pricing seems to be modeled on Blockbuster (+). Figure $3 a rental, another buck or so for HD. That seems 'fair', because it's in the same range as we're used to. But wait. Blockbuster buys DVDs for $15 or $20. then rents them out 30 or 40 or more times each, meaning each rental costs Blockbuster fifty cents. Not to mention rent, surly clerks, cost of capital, advertising, etc. Or, in the case of Netflix, stamps. In the case of online rentals, all of these intermediate costs immediately disappear. Gone. So, why try to mimic the current model when it comes to pricing if the costs are mostly gone? (Seth Godin's Blog)

Digital delivery breaks out of periphery

In the great hierarchy that rules Hollywood, studio executives working in digital distribution used to be marginal figures, their obsession with new technology keeping them on the periphery of industry decision-making. But after the video-on-demand deal struck last week between Apple and the film industry’s biggest players, the executives running digital distribution have moved to centre stage. (Financial Times)

Amazon's Internet Movie Database to Acquire Indie Film Website Withoutabox

The Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), a comprehensive and authoritative source of information on movies, TV, and celebrities and a subsidiary of Amazon.com, announced it has agreed to acquire Without A Box, a worldwide media company dedicated to advancing independent film and connecting artists with audiences. Withoutabox offers a fully integrated service to independent filmmakers for submitting films to festivals worldwide and promoting these films directly to fans everywhere, and tools to manage and promote film festivals online for film festival organizers. (PR, Variety)

Warner Bros in marketing shake-up

Warner Brothers has shaken up its marketing department in a bid to capitalise on the growth of the international box office, consolidating its domestic and international theatrical marketing divisions into one unit. The studio, which recently scored with I Am Legend , has appointed Sue Kroll to the new position of president, worldwide marketing. Alan Horn, president and chief operating officer of Warner Bros, which is part of Time Warner, said the move reflected the "globalisation" of the film industry, with more titles released "day and date", or simultaneously in multiple markets. (Financial Times)

Rock stars try new tune as Hollywood composers

For the typically rowdy rock band on the road, "scoring" might not necessarily have anything to do with film music. Yet over the last couple of decades of making music, a number of rock talents have made the career leap from arenas to scoring stages, and the ranks of today's A-list composers include many with rock 'n' roll pedigrees. Film and television work still have strong attractions for a newer generation of rock songwriters and musicians. Technology has made it possible for almost any musician to develop composing chops in a home studio, and the prevalence of nontraditional scoring approaches in Hollywood projects would seem to open the composer door to a wider range of talents than ever before. But writing for a record and writing to picture are still very different skills, and the transition from rocker to composer can be a tricky one. (Hollywood Reporter)

Apple May Need to Play Better with Others

For Apple to make the most of its peerless products, experts say it will need to improve relations with the folks who create the content to run on them, especially after the series of spats that marked 2007. Recall the refusal by Universal Music Group, the world's largest record label, to re-up its long-term contract to supply music to Apple's iTunes Store, or the move by General Electric's (GE) NBC Universal to pull its TV shows from iTunes. An inability to play well with the entertainment industry could hurt Apple in the long term. (Business Week)

Sony, DivX pact for online downloads

After years of knocking on Hollywood's door, DivX finally got an answer from Sony Pictures. Although DivX is generally considered to be the highest quality way to encode video online, is broadly used online and has been installed on over 100 million electronics devices, like DVD players and computers? most studios have thus far resisted partnering because its software is very widely used for piracy; Sony Pictures is the first to change course, signing a deal that lets online retailers offer downloads of the studio's films and skeins using DivX encoding and digital rights management. (Variety)

Analysis: Blockbuster & Netflix Data to Add Context To Apple Rumor

It is rumored that Steve Jobs will announce a video rental service for iTunes in his much-anticipated MacWorld keynote today. Adding fuel to the fire of speculation, Netflix has preempted Apple's announcement saying it will offer unlimited access to its streaming video library to most customers. To lend context to the announcements, I wanted to profile Netflix and Blockbuster, the two biggest players in online movie rental. (Digital Media Wire)

MusicGiants Launches VideoGiants with Films from Paramount Pictures

MusicGiants announced that they have entered into a distribution deal with Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment to distribute motion picture films from the Paramount library through their new VideoGiants home theater digital content delivery platform. The MusicGiants Download Media store is already being built into most of the media servers for the high-end home theater industry. (PR)

Apple Closes In on Hollywood

It has been Hollywood's worst-kept secret: Steve Jobsis starting to win over the film industry. the buzz is heavy that Jobs and most of the big studios are nearing compromise on key sticking points that have prevented iTunes from offering most of the new and old movie titles consumers see at Blockbuster, Netflix, and Wal-Mart Stores. Studio executives, forced into silence by Apple's ultra-uptight nondisclosure agreements, aren't talking, and neither is Apple. (Business Week)