Search Results for: System of a Down

Not much rattles Apple. Disciplined and focused, the company lavishes attention on its own elegant products and rarely deigns to discuss rivals. Yet here was Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer and designated stand-in for ailing CEO Steve Jobs, erupting during an earnings call in late January at the mere mention of a pip-squeak competitor. The pest in question was Palm, the fallen pioneer of handheld digital organizers, which two weeks earlier had unveiled a new smartphone, the Palm Pre, to rave reviews. Not only did the Pre have features the iPhone couldn’t match – snazzy multitasking, universal search, a… Read more »

The 2006 suicide of Megan Meier, which came after the girl was harassed online, spurred a flurry of new state laws aimed at cracking down on “cyber-bullying.” Now some members of Congress are pushing for a federal law against the practice. The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act was first introduced last year. But it died in committee. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., introduced the measure again last month and says she believes she has enough support to make the bill law. “Schoolyard bullies – at least when you went home for the day, you could escape that,” Sanchez… Read more »

Despite the success of online retailers, explosion of Internet downloads and high-profile closings of Virgin Megastores and Tower Records stores, bricks-and-mortar record stores are not all spinning toward oblivion. Although hundreds of independent music retailers have gone out of business in recent years, about 2,000 are still around, and many are thriving. The survivors will celebrate Saturday, as acts such as Erykah Badu and Franz Ferdinand gather to pay homage to the hometown record store. Record Store Day was the idea of Chris Brown, a music guru from Bull Moose, a chain of 10 record stores in Maine and New… Read more »

Bruce Springsteen’s “Working On A Dream” topped the weekly album charts with 224,000 first week sales according to Nielson Soundscan. But his concert fans were at the center of a controversy sparked by a Ticketmaster campaign pointing buyers to higher priced seats at their own resales broker TicketsNow even while regular seats were still available. The fans and Springsteen camp cried fowl. “Some artists or managers may not perceive there to be a conflict between having the distributor of their tickets in effect ‘scalping’ those same tickets through a secondary company like TicketsNow – we do,” the boss and his… Read more »

At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke. Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment. She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by. “I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort… Read more »

These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort… Read more »

Barack Obama partied with Hollywood celebrities Tuesday night and with the help of Oscar-winning singer and actress Barbra Streisand raised an eye-popping $9 million for his presidential campaign and the Democratic Party. The night was split into two glitzy events, a reception and dinner costing $28,500 each at the Greystone Mansion, followed by entertainment by Streisand at the nearby Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel. About 250-300 people were expected at the dinner and about 800 at the entertainment, which cost $2,500 a ticket. Dinner guests seen by reporters, or noted by waiters, included Will Ferrell, Jodie Foster, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Lee… Read more »

Backstage notes from the 25th annual MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday. 1. After winning three Moonmen, including video of the year, Britney Spears got cold feet before she met the press. She peeked into the media room with personal assistants and camera crew in tow, then promptly turned around and left. A few moments later, Chris Brown hurried in to take her place — prompting a round of disappointed “Awwwww!” from disappointed Britney-wannabe paparazzi (a reaction that seemed to miff Brown, who maybe didn’t understand that he wasn’t being booed personally.) Never fear, Britney returned after Brown; she said… Read more »

The biggest metalcore band in the land happens to be a Christian sextet that, for a second time, is primed to crash into the upper echelons of the Billboard  200. Underoath will on Tuesday release its fourth album, “Lost in the Sound of Separation.” It’s the follow-up to 2006’s  “Define the Great Line,” which debuted at No. 2 without any significant radio play or mainstream push; it has sold 366,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Instead of the typical avenues of exposure, the Florida band has relied on a fierce, two-pronged model of touring and  Internet… Read more »

A stark truth facing any aspiring digital music service these days is that working with record labels is going to carry a hefty price. The last 18 months have seen the major music labels accept new technological and business models — such as dropping digital rights management and allowing ad-supported free music — that have given rise to a new generation of digital music services. But the flip side of this willingness to experiment is a demand for higher upfront advances for licensing music and in some cases a substantial equity stake in the company. Ad-supported download service SpiralFrog, for… Read more »