EMI receives "preliminary approach"

UK label giant EMI Group, which spent the better part of 2006 making takeover bids for Warner Music Group, is on the receiving end of a "preliminary approach" from private equity firms, the company confirmed today. In a statement, EMI said the approach could lead to the firms making an offer for the company, whose artists include the Beatles, Coldplay, Robbie Williams, and Gorillaz. The confirmation came in response to several media reports today that Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and the private equity arm of Goldman Sachs are exploring a deal for EMI. The reports said that the firms would pay as much as 2.5 billion pounds ($4.85 billion) or more for the company. The news sent shares in EMI rising more than 10 percent on the London Stock Exchange today.

YouTube, Verizon ink mobile video deal

Verizon Wireless subscribers who can't get enough of YouTube are in luck--sort of. The wireless giant and video-sharing site said today that they have signed a deal that will let Verizon customers watch select YouTube video on their phone. Subscribers will have to subscribe to Verizon's VCast multimedia service for $15 a month to access the videos, and the content available for cell-phone playback will be chosen by a team of YouTube editors from the massive quantity of videos featured on the site. The deal marks YouTube's first move into the wireless space, one the company promised won't be the last. "This marquee partnership is the first of many," YouTube's Kelly Liang told the New York Times. Verizon and YouTube said the service would be available early next month. The companies did not release financial terms of the deal. YouTube was acquired last month by Google for $1.65 billion in stock.

Report: Zune sales off to slow start

In the run-up to the launch of the Zune portable media player and companion digital store, Microsoft executives stressed that they viewed the battle with Apple's iPod-iTunes combo for digital music supremacy as a marathon that will take years to wage. The early results of that race aren't looking too good for Zune, according to a report today in the Wall Street Journal. The paper reports that on Amazon.com's Top 10 selling list for electronics yesterday, Zune was nowhere to be found, while six versions of the iPod player were. "That's a pretty good indicator of consumer interest," Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg told the paper. Analysts say the Zune is more likely to snag market share from other digital media players instead of Apple this holiday season. Sales estimates from a number of industry analysts for Zune ranged from 300,000 units to a high of about 500,000 units for the 2006 holiday season. Apple's iPod currently commands more than 75 percent of the market share among portable music players.

MSN Radio turns keys over to Pandora

Pandora just landed in front of a bounty of new eyes and, more importantly, ears. The online music recommendation engine recently began powering Microsoft's MSN Radio, which relaunched in the past week. Pandora lets users create custom radio stations by naming a popular artist from which the service will derive like-sounding music. Started out of the Music Genome Project, Pandora came on the scene last November and has already attracted more than 1.1 million monthly visitors, according to research firm ComScore. In contrast, MSN Radio's monthly visitors dropped 9 percent to 2.5 million from October 2005 to October 2006.