Entertainment

When I covered the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show for CNN, I wasn't just peeking into the future of technology. I was getting a very personal look at how technology is changing journalism and the consumption of news. For the four days I was in Las Vegas, I was a true multi-platform journalist. Not o...

The future of Internet radio may be in jeopardy. Pandora -- one of the largest online radio services -- is on the verge of shutting down, its founders told the Washington Post. The problem? Royalty hikes put in place last year are costing the company most of its income. And it's not alone. The feder...

These days, when you hear about downloading music for free, it's usually bad news: a lawsuit from a label, a threat from an ISP, or a crackdown from the government. Now, though, a new startup is turning the tables and encouraging fans to grab all they want -- without paying a single dime. TrueAnthem...

Search engine giant Google has launched a new music search service in China that enables users to legally download online music. Music OneBox, which is backed by some of the major global music labels, as well as Chinese basketball star Yao Ming, is available at Chinese music site Top100.cn. Google l...

U.S. television programming is moving toward on-demand status, judging from a federal appeals court ruling Monday in favor of Cablevision's proposed network-centric digital video recorder. Concluding a two-year legal battle, U.S. Circuit Court Judge John M. Walker Jr. found that Cablevision's plans ...

Sony has acquired German media giant Bertelsmann's 50 percent stake in Sony BMG Music for $900 million. Bertelsmann gets another $300 million for its share of the cash on Sony BMG's books. Filings with the SEC show that Sony BMG will buy back part of Bertelsmann's stake for $600 million, with anothe...

I was once in the middle of an anchor dispute. Consultant-led mediation helped, but the best advice came from an older, wiser anchor who told me to keep smiling, be patient and wait for my coanchor to implode. Of course, all this was before the rise of computer hacking, spyware and keylogging device...

For the last few years, it's been easier to sack New England quarterback Tom Brady than to get the National Football League thinking about a more progressive Internet strategy. "They've been very dictatorial about the amount of [video highlight] content you can put on your Web site," Gartner Digital...

Year-over-year profits at Tokyo-based consumer electronics giant Sony fell 47 percent to $326 million during the first quarter, and company officials predict a further decrease in profits later in the year. Several factors contributed to the massive drop in Sony profits: lower-than-expected earnings...

The two giants of satellite radio are about to become one. The FCC has approved the merger of XM and Sirius, ending a year-and-a-half struggle to finalize the deal. The move will give the newly combined company unprecedented power in the world of satellite communications; however, it will come wit...

Although Yahoo Music Unlimited subscribers have known since February that their music service would end in September, they may have been surprised to learn this week they would need to back up any purchased tracks on an audio CD by September 30 if they wanted to keep them. Failure to do so could lea...

British parents who don't know what their kids are downloading on the family computer may want to start paying more attention, thanks to a new antipiracy agreement among the six largest Internet service providers in the United Kingdom. The U.S. music industry will no doubt track developments in the ...

The company that pioneered the concept of skipping past television commercials is now introducing a new kind of TV-based advertising. TiVo has joined forces with Amazon to create an interactive system that will let viewers buy products featured on TV shows -- right from their remotes. TiVo Product P...

During the recent Hollywood writers' strike, Joss Whedon found the cure for all his sudden downtime. The man who gave us "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly" created a genre-busting musical about a mad doctor with a bad case of evil-mastermind-wannabe inferiority complex. And the only place to f...

The Web continues to play a central role in affecting radical, disruptive change in the music industry as musicians latch on to the latest Web 2.0 tools and bypass traditional producers and distributors. High Street music and video chains -- all the rage not that long ago -- seem to be closing outl...