Latest in 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 CD — and then make them available on iCloud for streaming to any Web-enabled device running…

What were the folks at Access Industries looking for in a candidate to replace Edgar Bronfman Jr as CEO of Warner Music? Someone who knows the music industry inside out — or who can hob-nob with Warner’s money-makers such as Red Hot Chili Peppers, Missy Elliot, Randy Travis, and Aretha Franklin? Apparently not. The…

Google has agreed to pay royalties to songwriters repped by the National Music Publishers Assocation when their songs appear in videos on YouTube. The deal, which covers roughly 3,000 mainly indie songwriters, resolves a copyright lawsuit brought by the organization in 2007 and sets up the two sides to share ad…

Warner Music is a step closer to becoming a division of Access Industries, the privately held chemical, natural resource, and real estate company controlled by Russian-born industrialist Len Blavatnik. Shareholders in the music company this morning overwhelmingly approved Blavatnik’s $3.3 billion takeover offer. The…

Citigroup hung a “for sale” sign on EMI Group today, saying that it has “initiated a process to explore and evaluate potential strategic alternatives” that could include a sale, recapitalization or a public offering. The home of hitmakers including Katy Perry, Lady Antebellum, Nora Jones and Coldplay is in better…

Even though Warner Music Group’s net losses grew in the quarter that ended in March, CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. could take comfort from the fact that Wall Street analysts expected worse. The company reported a net loss of $38 million, up from a $25 million loss in the same period last year, on revenues of $682 million, up…

Ukrainian-born billionaire industrialist Len Blavatnik has kicked the tires of many movie companies in recent years. His privately held U.S.-based Access Industries was the backer of Stewart Till’s 2009 purchase of Icon UK film and entertainment business from then owners Mel Gibson and Bruce Davey. You also may recall…

EXCLUSIVE: This is exactly the kind of information that shareholders of Big Media need to know but rarely see. It’s considered a red flag when any public company pays one of its bigwigs — usually the CEO — three times more than the average for the four other top executives which the SEC requires them to list. So I’ve…