Search Results for: 2003

We know Metallica and Limp Bizkit will headline the Summer Sanitarium Tour, but what we don’t know is who will be in those bands. Or do we? “We got Yngwie Malmsteen,” Fred Durst deadpanned Wednesday at a press conference to announce the tour, which also features Linkin Park, the Deftones and Mudvayne. “Oh man, he was next on my list,” Lars Ulrich said of the Swedish metal guitar virtuoso. “I’ll take Steve Vai and give you him,” Durst shot back. Of course, Durst and Ulrich were joking. Metallica’s bassist slot and Limp Bizkit’s guitarist slot remain vacant. The latter band… Read more »

Fourth-quarter losses skyrocketed at AOL Time Warner Inc. after a staggering $45.5 billion charge to account for the struggling media conglomerate’s plunging value. The company also announced Wednesday that former cable TV mogul Ted Turner is stepping down as vice chairman. In the three months ending Dec. 31, AOL lost $44.9 billion, or $10.04 per share, compared with a loss of $1.8 billion, or 41 cents per share, in the fourth quarter of 2001. Revenue rose 8 percent to $11.4 billion, and AOL said its results without the one-time accounting markdown would actually have beaten Wall Street estimates – at… Read more »

Could 2003 be the year that EMI finally finds a mate? Frenzied gossip among executives at this year’s Midem music industry conference on the French Riviera would suggest so. As a new group of suitors eyes the EMI dowry, which includes the Beatles back catalog, bets among the glitterati at Cannes are that the world’s third biggest music company will pair up with one of its old flames: BMG or Warner Music. Yet some still hold out hope for a more dramatic swoop by private equity houses led by an industry guru – cash-rich Clive Calder being one contender after… Read more »

A top music executive said on Saturday that telecommunications companies and Internet service providers (ISPs) will be asked to pay up for giving their customers access to free song-swapping sites. The music industry is in a tailspin with global sales of CDs expected to fall six percent in 2003, its fourth consecutive annual decline. A major culprit, industry watchers say, is online piracy. Now, the industry wants to hit the problem at its source – Internet service providers. “We will hold ISPs more accountable,” said Hillary Rosen, chairman and CEO the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), in her keynote… Read more »

Instead of visiting a bounty on any single artist, the nominations announced Tuesday for the 45th Annual Grammy Awards were sprinkled around in an unusually equitable manner-eight musicians tied for the most nominations with sounds as diverse the elegiac rock of Bruce Springsteen, the gossamer, jazzy blends of newcomer Norah Jones and the whipsaw rhymes of Eminem. In year’s past, a glut of nominations would push as single artist such as Lauryn Hill or Carlos Santana above the fold, but this year the flattened field presented more subtle story lines amid the sprawl of 104 categories. Among those themes: The… Read more »

‘NSYNC and Britney Spears took a distant back seat to dinosaur rockers Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones and Cher this year when it came to concert ticket sales. As alarming as that might seem to Timberlake groupies, it probably has a lot more to do with the limited number of shows the young stars played than with any sort of pop backlash or classic rock revolution. Touring for the first time in almost a decade, McCartney netted $126.1 million, according to data from Billboard Boxscores. The former Beatle landed $98.8 million from U.S. shows and an additional $27.5 million from… Read more »

The soft drink’s slogan may be the “Joy of Pepsi,” but there’s no joy for Britney Spears, whose contract has not been renewed by the cola giant. Pepsi has now signed on Destiny’s Child star Beyonce Knowles for commercials. Pepsi announced it signed Knowles for her star power in both music and movies. This summer, she made her film debut in Austin Powers In Goldmember and will appear in the upcoming movie The Fighting Temptations. The Destiny’s Child frontwoman will appear in two TV commercials for the cola company as part of a new campaign that also will include radio… Read more »

Tower Records, the storied 1960s music chain that launched the music megastore and became a cultural retailing icon, strolls into its 43rd holiday shopping season this weekend struggling with debt and on the ropes. The West Sacramento, Calif.-based Tower hopes four weeks of strong sales will reverse a new image as the tottering giant inside a stumbling music industry. Among the chain’s troubles: deep-discounting rivals, changing consumer habits, lack of hits and its own missteps in the 1990s as the music business began a dramatic shift. Tower exemplifies the even deeper woes in a recording industry beset by piracy, computer… Read more »

“The Osbournes” becomes a reality show in the bleakest sense this season, as Ozzy and the kids cope with matriarch Sharon Osbourne’s colon cancer. Yet as the second batch of episodes begins Tuesday, MTV also is trying to maintain the wackiness that made the series the network’s biggest hit. The heavy-metal rocker, his wife and two of their three children are very different people than they were when they opened their home to us a year ago – and opened the floodgates to a slew of copycats. They still spew plenty of profanities for the censors to bleep out. And… Read more »

Pearl Jam’s new effort, Riot Act, debuts at Number Six and 3 Doors Down’s new album, Away From The Sun, enters at Number Eight on this week’s Billboard 200. 3 Doors Down’s Brad Arnold revealed that the huge success of the band’s debut, The Better Life, gave the band freedom with the new album. “With your music, when it succeeds you just gradually can pull people, I guess, more to the things that you want them to hear. Or maybe you can get them to accept things that maybe they wouldn’t accept off a first record or something. I don’t… Read more »