Search Results for: 2007

LONDON –  One in 10 albums bought in the United States last year was by a British act, figures from the BPI, which represents the British recorded music business, showed yesterday. The rise to 10 percent from 8.5 percent in 2007 was due to a mixture of established bands like Coldplay which released “VivaLa Vida or Death and All His Friends,” and Radiohead with “In Rainbows” and newer acts like Duffy, Leona Lewis and Estelle. There is one caveat, however. British pop stars are gaining a growing share of a rapidly declining U.S. market. U.S. album sales fell 14 percent… Read more »

LOS ANGELES —  The diagnosis on Dr. Jan Adams’ career: inoperable. The plastic surgeon who operated on Kanye West’s mother the day before she died in 2007 has given up his license to practice medicine in California after the state’s Medical Board brought charges against him over two criminal convictions for driving under the influence. In court documents, Adams admits “the truth of each and every allegation,” thereby resolving the board’s allegations against him. “The mission of the Medical Board is pubic protection, and this action reflects the Board’s ongoing commitment to that mission,” Barb Johnston, the Medical Board’s executive… Read more »

LONDON —  The original Beatles catalog has been digitally remastered for the first time and will go on sale in CD format Sept. 9, the band’s record label and company announced Tuesday. The release will coincide with the launch of “The Beatles : Rock Band” video game, the British quartet’s first major leap into the world of digital music. The catalog will not be available online for the foreseeable future, although the digital remastering is widely seen as bringing that process one step closer. “Discussions regarding the digital distribution of the catalog will continue,” a statement issued on behalf of… Read more »

Over the last few decades, a veteran music act’s best shot at platinum magic usually consisted of pairing up with younger hitmakers (a la Santana) or covering treasured classics (like Rod Stewart. These days, another kind of vehicle has become a path to best-selling success – teaming up with box store chains. Garth Brooks ‘ started the trend in earnest back in 2005, with an exclusive Wal-Mart deal, and the Eagles and AC/DC had multiplatinum-plus success over the last two years by exclusively selling new CDs at Wal-Mart. Guns ‘N Roses sold about a million copies with a special Best… Read more »

Miley Cyrus is attempting to teach an adult the Hoedown Throwdown, the big dance number from “Hannah Montana: The Movie” and it’s not going well. “We did it in one day!” she gasps. “We just all kind of made it up as we went along.” It doesn’t help that Cyrus offers this consolation and advice over the phone to a journalist who’s trying to follow along on YouTube — and untangle herself from the phone cord. “Well,” Cyrus patiently explains, “you have to be semi-coordinated to do it.” This is exactly how Cyrus’ legion of preteen female fans must be… Read more »

Kings of Leon will be among the headliners of this year’s Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits festivals, Billboard Magazine is reporting. Depeche Mode the Beastie Boys and Jane’s Addiction are also playing Lollapalooza, which takes place in Chicago’s Grant Park Aug. 7-9, the Chicago Tribune reports and Billboard’s sources confirm. Both events are produced by Austin, Texas-based C3 Productions. The full Lollapalooza lineup announcement is expected in April. Among the known top headliners for this year’s Lollapalooza, Kings of Leon are the only band that wasn’t around when the event debuted in 1991 as a traveling, multi-city festival. The Nashville-based… Read more »

Last week’s news that Virgin Megastores in New York’s Union Square and San Francisco were closing was evidently the tip of a very sharp iceberg. Billboard reports today that the multi-media chain’s only three remaining stores in Denver, Orlando and Los Angeles will also be shuttered by this summer. In a move that almost predicated the closures of the Virgin chain, Virgin Entertainment Group North America was acquired by a pair of real estate companies in 2007, Vornado and Related Cos., mostly because those companies were interested in Virgin’s prime locations. The music stores were paying well below-market value per-square-foot… 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 »

The lead singer of Australian rock band INXS J.D. Fortune, who was picked to replace the late Michael Hutchence in a contest on a reality TV show, said he has been fired without warning from the band. Fortune, 35, a Canadian rock singer was living out of his car when he won the CBS network’s 2005 reality TV series “Rock Star:INXS.” He became the frontman for the six-man band, taking the place of 37-year-old Hutchence who was found dead in a Sydney hotel room in November 1997 with a coroner ruling he had committed suicide. With Fortune, INXS released the… Read more »

A group that collects royalties for music artists and recording companies has agreed to reduce rates for thousands of commercial radio stations that also play songs over the Internet.   Internet radio station operators had complained that rates originally set by the federal Copyright Royalty Board in 2007 could essentially force them to shut down. The new deal lowers those rates by about 16 percent in 2009 and 2010. The stations will now pay $1.50 for every song heard by 1,000 listeners in 2009, rising to $2.50 per 1,000 listeners in 2015. The agreement between the National Assn. of Broadcasters… Read more »