Microsoft will acquire Luxembourg-based Skype, with 170 million active users, from an investor group led by Silver Lake, the companies said in a statement today. The agreement was approved by the boards of directors of both companies.
On June 21, 2011, Less Than Jake are unleashing a whole lot of energy by way of a four DVD digipack called Anthology on the band’s own label, Sleep It Off Records. With over eight hours of music spanning six records, Anthology is a collection of live performances of each of the band’s albums in sequence.
After announcing the end of their “indefinite hiatus”, Yellowcard have been busy. Since the announcement, the pop-rock 5 quintet have released the critically praised When You’re Through Thinking, Say Yes, been halfway across America with All Time Low and seem poised for even greater success as they prepare for a co-headlining run with Good Charlotte. Mike Skehan of idobi had a chance to chat with guitarist Ryan Mendez about getting back together, touring, the Detroit Red Wings and more.
The Foo Fighters finally got their first No. 1 album in the United States on Wednesday as their eighth studio release led a field that also included strong debuts from Alison Krauss and Paul Simon.
The band sold 235,000 copies of “Wasting Light” during the week ended Sunday, according to tracking firm Nielsen SoundScan. It ranks as their second-largest sales week, trumped only by the No. 2 launch of “In Your Honor” in 2005, which began with 311,000. Their last studio album, “Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace,” debuted at No. 3 in 2007 with 168,000.
A new Amazon.com Inc service that lets customers store songs and play them on a variety of phones and computers is facing a backlash from the music industry that could ignite a legal battle. Amazon’s Cloud Drive, announced on Tuesday, allows customers to store about 1,000 songs on the company’s Web servers for free instead of their own hard drives and play them over an Internet connection directly from Web browsers and on phones running Google Inc’s Android software. Sony Music, home to artists such as Shakira and Kings of Leon, was upset by Amazon’s decision to launch the service… Read more »
Peer-to-peer music sharing, the type of service which helped create the digital music industry, is at an all time low. According to research group NPD Group, the shuttering of Limewire’s music file sharing service has led to a similar decline in the usage of such services throughout the U.S. The number has gone from a high of 16 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 to just nine percent in the fourth quarter of 2010, right after Limewire shut down its file-sharing services due to a court order, when a federal judge sided with the Recording Industry Association of America… Read more »
Terra Firma has begun telling investors to brace themselves for a takeover of British music label EMI by Citigroup.
It may have come as a surprise to the die-hard fans when Yellowcard announced that the band were re-forming in August, with plans to record a brand-new album, to be released on a brand-new label, Hopeless Records, in March.
If it’s still cool to like Good Charlotte, allow yourself to fall in love with this band all over again.
Many times switching labels involves a jump to what many call a ‘major’ and the re-release of an album to a much larger audience, this is not the case with The Wonder Years.
