Sony Music

Sony Music Entertainment, whose artist roster includes such acts as Bruce Springsteen and Shakira, is terminating about 100 employees across several divisions. The move follows Sony's announcement last week that its music division had a quarterly loss of $86 million for the three months ended June 30, down from a $37-million profit a year earlier. The cuts affect about 2% of Sony Music's U.S. work force.

Declining home entertainment revenue and the box-office failure of the costly comedy "How Do You Know" drove Sony Pictures' revenue down 8% in the recently ended fiscal year. However, improvements in the studio's television business kept operating income roughly flat. Mixed news for Sony Pictures came amid other bad news for Japanese parent company Sony Corp., which had to take a huge charge tied to the Japan earthquake in the fiscal year that ended March 31 and will be hurt in its current year by the hacking-induced shutdown of its online networks.

In a move to cut costs, New York-based Sony Music will dismiss an estimated three dozen employees this week from its Epic and Columbia record labels and its Sony Music distribution sector. The firings are part of a realignment that began last week with the replacement of Epic Records President Richard Griffiths with Sony's 550 Music chief Polly Anthony.

Doug Morris has been named the new chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment, an appointment that was widely expected when Morris last year said he would step down as head of Universal Music Group at the end of 2010. Morris, 72, will succeed Rolf Schmidt-Holz on July 1, and Schmidt-Holz will exit Sony at the end of the month, when his contract expires. In the interim, Sony Corp. Chairman Howard Stringer will helm the music company. In a high-level corporate talent swap, a number of Sony executives are expected to move to Universal over the next few months, including Barry Weiss, the chairman of Sony's RCA/Jive Label Group, who is expected to lead Universal's operations in New York.

Sony Music is expected to announce shortly a shake-up at two of its largest labels that will include the departure of the head of its Columbia Records unit. The changes were confirmed by three company executives. They said Will Botwin would be replaced at Columbia by Steve Barnett, who would move over from Sony's Epic Records label. Charlie Walk, executive vice president of creative marketing and promotion at Columbia, would head Epic.

Sony Music Entertainment President Thomas D. Mottola announced a batch of appointments Monday aimed at rewarding his team of senior executives with bigger titles and responsibilities as well as accelerating the development of Sony's worldwide music companies. Key among the changes will be elevating three Sony presidents to chairmen of their respective units.

Sony Music has filed a lawsuit against country stars the Dixie Chicks, accusing the Grammy-winning act of making a "sham" attempt to escape from its record contract. According to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, the act still owes Sony four albums. If the group doesn't fulfill its obligations, the complaint says, Sony will suffer damages of at least $100 million.

Longtime music industry figure Peter Asher, whose career has ranged from pop star to managing such artists as Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor, is expected to be named a senior vice president with Sony Music Entertainment as early as this week. Asher will report to Sony Music President Thomas D. Mottola, and will be based in New York.

Sony Music Entertainment on Monday rewarded Thomas D. Mottola, head of its domestic music operation, with a promotion to president and chief operating officer, a move that gives him added responsibility for the company's international music operations. The promotion is a vindication of sorts for Mottola, 43, who had to convince industry skeptics that he was capable of running the huge company after working as an artist manager.

Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment unit, which ranked fourth in U.S. album sales last year, bought a minority stake in Internet music service rival MusicNet. Sony Music, co-owner of the Pressplay online subscription-music service with Vivendi Universal, bought a MusicNet note that is convertible into a 4% stake in the venture.

Bob Mercer, a music industry executive who was managing director of EMI Music in Britain in the 1970s and most recently was chief executive of the "Now That's What I Call Music!" venture that releases a bestselling series of hit-single compilation albums, has died. He was 65. Mercer died of lung cancer May 5 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said his wife, Margie. As chief executive of "Now That's What I Call Music!," Mercer presided over an enterprise that has sold 77 million albums in the United States since its debut in 1998.

If it seems that every new TV series for young people is about pop music or pop stardom, two shows that begin tonight will do nothing to dispel the impression. In Nickelodeon's "Big Time Rush," four friends from Minnesota travel to Los Angeles to be molded into a boy band. "I'm in the Band," on the boy-centric Disney XD -- "hyper-marketing to boys" is the phrase the network actually uses -- is about a guitar-shredding teenager who talks his way into an aging metal band. Like most screen stories of show-biz kids -- going back to "Babes in Arms" and "Fame" (the series)

The two-disc souvenir to the behind-the-scenes concert film "Michael Jackson's This Is It" bowed at No. 1 on the U.S. pop chart Wednesday. The album sold 373,000 copies for Sony Music, according to Nielsen SoundScan, leading a charge of 12 new albums on the U.S. pop 200. Meanwhile, Jackson's "Number Ones" sold an additional 32,000 copies during the last week. That album had sold more than 440,000 copies in the 10 days after his death last June, and may well end up as 2009's top-selling album.

So this is "It." Sony Music announced Wednesday that on Oct. 12 it will issue a new Michael Jackson single called "This Is It" -- the first previously unreleased recording to be put on sale since the superstar's death. The song's debut will be followed by a blitz of posthumous releases from the man remembered as the King of Pop, including a traveling exhibition of Jackson memorabilia and a two-disc album also titled "This Is It" (which hits retail internationally Oct. 26 and in North America on Oct. 27)

Weekly roundup of the top five in each category: TELEVISION Top prime-time shows, viewers 18 to 49 For the week that ended June 21 So You Think You Can Dance (Wed.): Fox, 4.1 million viewers So You Think You Can Dance (Thur.): Fox, 3.9 million Two and a Half Men: CBS, 3.7 million Wipeout: ABC, 3.6 million The Big Bang Theory: CBS, 3.5 million Prime-time viewership For season through June 21: CBS: 11.3 million viewers Fox: 9.3 million ABC: 8.6 million NBC: 7.6 million Univision: 3.9 million Source: Nielsen Media Research -- MUSIC Albums Lines, Vines and Trying Times: Jonas Brothers (Hollywood)

Today: Music for the week ended Sunday Albums Top albums: 1 Lines, Vines and Trying Times Jonas Brothers (Hollywood) 2 The E.N.D. Black Eyed Peas (Interscope/IGA) 3 Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King Dave Matthews Band (RCA) 4 Relapse Eminem (Shady/Aftermath/ Interscope) 5 Monuments and Melodies Incubus (Immortal/Epic/Sony Music) Source: Nielsen SoundScan -- ITunes downloads Top songs: 1 I Gotta Feeling Black Eyed Peas 2 Boom Boom Pow Black Eyed Peas 3 Best I Ever Had Drake 4 Fire Burning Sean Kingston 5 LoveGame Lady GaGa Source: Apple Inc. -- Radio Most-played songs: 1 Boom Boom Pow Black Eyed Peas 2 Knock You Down Keri Hilson featuring Kanye West and Ne-Yo 3 Birthday Sex Jeremih 4 I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)

Sony Corp.'s music and film businesses posted $95.2 million in operating income in the quarter ended Sept. 30, even though revenue was largely stagnant. Sony's results benefited from strong television performance, cost-cutting, such films as "The Net" and "Desperado," as well as the effects of a year-earlier cleaning up of its balance sheet with a huge write-off.

Hot rock band Incubus is about to give new Sony Corp. music chief Andrew Lack his first taste of a conflict that has long bedeviled the music industry. The Calabasas band, which has sold an estimated 7 million albums worldwide and emerged as a darling of the Sony roster, filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking free agency. The case ultimately could threaten to rip apart the basic contract structure underpinning the music business.