Search Results for: 2003

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. —  Elton John and Billy Joel’s latest tour kicked off to a packed house on Monday, operating under the simple business model: maximized reward, exceedingly minimized risk. The three-plus-hour event was steeped in hits and nostalgia. The youngest song was the title track from Joel’s last pop album, 1993’s “River of Dreams.” “Speaking of unemployment, we’re just happy you’re keeping us in business. We’re happy to have a job,” Joel said after a timely spin through “Allentown,” Joel’s 1982 ballad of economic gloom. Joel’s words rang true, but there wasn’t much worry about that: They last toured together… Read more »

Season two “American Idol” runner-up Clay Aiken has parted ways with RCA Records. A source told Billboard that the pop singer left the label a couple of months ago, on the heels of his 2008 album, “On My Way Here.” That set sold just 159,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan Aiken’s 2003 debut, “Measure of a Man,” sold 2.78 million. The artist joins a slew of second-place finishers — Katharine McPhee,  Justin Guarini,  Blake Lewis and Bo Bice among them — whose post-“Idol” major-label deals have lapsed. Aiken will make a guest appearance on the April… Read more »

One night in the late 1990s, Conan O’Brien was hanging out in a Detroit bowling alley after shooting a remote segment with Ted Nugent (”I rode around in the woods with him, we had a guitar duel and then fired guns,” he recalls). “I have this vague memory of these really cool kids coming over and hanging out with us,” he says. “I knew nothing about them or what they did.” A few years later, O’Brien learned he had met Jack and Meg White that day when he popped into a Saturday Night Live rehearsal to check out the White… Read more »

It’s early January, and occasional downpours drench thousands of fans as they file into Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium for Sound & Speed, an annual event featuring country stars and NASCAR drivers. Camo-clad devotees and their children, some dressed in miniature racing suits, line up for an autograph and a picture. The event is the perfect mix for those who consider autographs from Dierks Bentley and Dale Earnhardt Jr to be treasured booty. NASCAR fans and country music fans are eager to rub elbows with drivers and artists alike, something both circuits are eager to take advantage of. The 2009 race season… 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 »

Fourteen news organizations, including The brief filed Thursday in the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals argues that allowing webcasting of the Feb. 24 hearing is in the public interest, and is in keeping with camera access already granted in the courts. The Recording Industry Association of America is appealing a Boston judge’s decision to allow the webcast, which it says goes against federal court guidelines on cameras and threatens its ability to get a fair trial. “It is hard to imagine a hearing more deserving of public scrutiny through the same technological medium that is at the heart of… Read more »

In another sign of the music industry’s recently announced retreat from a five-year-old antipiracy strategy, the Recording Industry Association of America has dumped the company it used to help it gather evidence for mass lawsuits it filed against people it claimed were illegally uploading copyrighted music. The RIAA long used a company called MediaSentry to troll the Internet in search of people who uploaded large amounts of music. The information that MediaSentry collected became an integral part of the RIAA’s aggressive litigation campaign. Since 2003, the RIAA — a trade organization representing Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group, Sony Corp.’s Sony… Read more »

LOS ANGELES — The group representing the U.S. recording industry said Friday it has abandoned its policy of suing people for sharing songs protected by copyright and will work with Internet service providers to cut abusers’ access if they ignore repeated warnings. The move ends a controversial program that saw the Recording Industry Association of America sue about 35,000 people since 2003 for swapping songs online. Because of high legal costs for defenders, virtually all of those hit with lawsuits settled, on average for around $3,500. The association’s legal costs, in the meantime, exceeded the settlement money it brought in.… Read more »

Given Fall Out Boy’s penchant for publicity stunts (see this year’s nixed attempt to set a Guinness World Record by playing in Antarctica, followed by successfully setting the record for Most Interviews On Radio In a 24 Hour Period By A Pair of Two after talking to 72 radio stations), it should come as no surprise that the band celebrated yesterday’s release of Folie à Deux with a 36-hour New York promotional blitz that involved a nearly free show, performing on late-night TV and almost getting arrested. Over the weekend, Pete Wentz posted cryptic teasers on his blog for two… Read more »