Video games are shining brighter as the jewel in Vivendi’s crown. The French conglomerate is expecting Activision (NSDQ: ATVI) Blizzard to contribute a boat-load more to this year’s group profit, when two key titles trickle farther down. Its 2009 earnings, out today, show… —Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 shifted…

Universal Music Group’s ever-honest international digital SVP Rob Wells gave a video interview to TheMusicVoid. The highlights…

Music labels’ YouTube-powered music video site Vevo may have had a glitzy launch in New York on Tuesday - but on Wednesday many who hit the site for the first time found it crashing under traffic weight, and everyone outside the U.S. and Canada who hits Vevo.com is getting the…

How much money do artists really make from Spotify? According to Swedish paper Expressen, 2009’s standout breakthrough artist Lady Gaga and her songwriter Redone made just SEK1150 (£100.76; $166.56) in songwriting royalties from one million Spotify plays of her hit Poker Face in Sweden in the first five months after…

Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 grossed more than $300 million in sales in its first 24 hours just in the US and the UK, making it not just the biggest video game launch of the year, but the biggest entertainment launch, in any medium, ever. That most hyperbolic…

Fast growing digital music sales and the ongoing popularity of online multiplayer video games helped Vivendi (EPA: VIV) to a recession-beating 15 percent year-on-year revenue growth in the first half of 2009. —*Activision* Blizzard: The games division continued to power on - revenues up 300 percent from last year to…

“Don’t it always seem to go you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” ... Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) didn’t pave paradise but it helped kill off albums and now it wants the magic—and the higher profit margins—back. The FT reports via multiple unidentified sources that Apple, EMI, Warner Music…

—Five Cricket VOD: Five’s highlights from this summer’s Ashes Test series will be shown online via its Demand Five VOD platform—and the Publicis-owned Zenith Optimedia agency has bought up all the ad inventory surrounding it and a new cricket mini-site. Each 45-minute highlights show will go online from 10pm each…

Early results from Nokia’s Comes With Music service are showing that one of the more surprising demographics that are adopting the service are mothers, said Trevor Madigan, Nokia’s manger of entertainment and communities Americas for software and services. “Madigan told me at CES that it’s an “agitated” mother who’s bothered…

At the London Calling music conference on Thursday, there was little doubt among the panel assembled to discuss the value of music on mobiles that cell phones would one day be the sole device that consumers used to access and listen to music. But what was in question was how…

Something I missed while I was at the conference last week: 3UK has signed a deal with Groove Mobile to sell music videos via a dual-download service. “The video downloads will cost GBP 1.49 (US$2.95), with audio tracks still at GBP 1.29 (US$2.56) for existing 3UK customers. In the event…

We covered this a few days ago, but it has now happened…British company Omniphone has launched a mobile music service dubbed MusicStation in Sweden on Telenor, with plans to launch in the UK by the end of the year. The subscription service charges 1.99 pounds (US$3.91) per week to download…

Norway’s Telenor ASA and South Africa’s Vodacom will launch among the first fat-rate mobile music all-you-can-eat download services….the two have signed up with British company Omnifone, which is launching its new MusicStation white-label service that will let phone service users download songs for a weekly cost starting at 1.99 pounds,…

Universal Music U.K. has sealed a deal with mobile music technology provider Groove Mobile to build and operate an off-portal mobile music shop allowing users – regardless of their mobile operator – to purchase and download full tracks by texting to an SMS short code. Users will receive links to…

Jamba is promoting its music service at the radio show Internationalen Funkausstellung in Berlin (IFA), where it will have a “bluetooth column” and give away Jamba content, such as ringtones, games and (I think) some full-track songs, and also allow people to interact in “mad” ways. This is all translated…

Universal Music Group has launched a mobile music service in Holland called AnySong which “gives Dutch mobile subscribers access to over 250,000 songs, clips and ringtones”. Revenues from the service will be divided between the mobile operators, the content providers (UMG being the main one, I’m guessing) and the technology…

I’ve poorly translated the following from German, so if any German speakers notice any mistakes please let me know… The Jamba (German arm of Jamster) full track music service, which is due for launch in August, has launched in beta mode. It will apparently require people to download Jamba software…