Samsung has purchased 1 million copies of Jay-Z’s coming album, entitled “Magna Carta Holy Grail,” slated for release July 4, and plans to give them to Samsung Galaxy smartphone users for free – 72 hours ahead of the release. The users are to receive the music through an app they’ll receive later this month. (Recipients won’t be able to share it until the official release date.)

Samsung paid $5 apiece for the albums, according to a person familiar with the matter. It wasn’t immediately clear if Nielsen SoundScan will count Samsung’s purchases in its sales tallies.

For Jay-Z, the deal is a precious advertising opportunity and gives him $5 million in sales before the album is even released. The agreement signals the increasing importance of corporate sponsors to the music industry, which has seen sales tank over the past decade.

BMI wants Pandora to pay the piper. Or at least pay the piper a little more.

Music licensing company BMI filed suit against internet music streaming service Pandora on Thursday, demanding higher licensing fees and accusing Pandora of trying to do an end-run around BMI’s licensing rate structure.

In the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in southern New York, BMI contends that, despite Pandora and other streaming services’ growing share of the music-listening marketplace — and accompanying increase in advertising revenues — Pandora has been paying an unreasonably low licensing rate, and in fact has been lobbying Congress to lower its fees even further. Read more

Steven Spielberg on Wednesday predicted an “implosion” in the film industry is inevitable, whereby a half dozen or so $250 million movies flop at the box office and alter the industry forever. What comes next — or even before then — will be price variances at movie theaters, where “you’re gonna have to pay $25 for the next Iron Man, you’re probably only going to have to pay $7 to see Lincoln.” He also said that Lincoln came “this close” to being an HBO movie instead of a theatrical release.

George Lucas agreed that massive changes are afoot, including film exhibition morphing somewhat into a Broadway play model, whereby fewer movies are released, they stay in theaters for a year and ticket prices are much higher. His prediction prompted Spielberg to recall that his 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial stayed in theaters for a year and four months. Read more

There’s never a good time to find out that you are being sued, but there are some really bad times – like in the middle of your own concert, for example.

A process server undoubtedly earned his place in legal lore for reportedly handing R&B singer Ciara a subpoena in the middle of her performance at a L.A. event on Saturday. The singer was headlining the event when a “fan” handed her some papers while she was on stage. Ciara managed to continue singing, while seeming to quickly scan them. Perhaps after realizing that she hadn’t been handed fan letters, the singer tossed the papers aside. You can hear an audience member say, “She got served,” in a TMZ video.

Ciara is being sued by a club for allegedly not showing up to a performance scheduled for June 7th. Read more

Buzz Track: Dreamers

Vismets is an indie rock band from Brussels that emerged in 2007.During the first two years the band toured all over Belgium and rapidly gained the reputation of being one of the best local acts. In 2010 Vismets released its first LP ‘Gürü Voodoo’ (Pias/Universal) in several european countries. The band just finished the recording of its second album which will be released in autumn 2013 and just released their first song “Dreamers” along with a video.
Contact: Chris christophe@granvia.be