Search Results for: 2007

It’s been more than 20 years since Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” topped the Billboard Hot 100, but it is once again infiltrating the public consciousness thanks to the phenomenon known as “RickRolling.” Around March 2007, bloggers and online social networkers started casually linking to the song’s nostalgically ’80s music video via YouTube. RickRolling was a psych-out for readers who would click on tantalizing hyperlinks, only to fall prey to a young Astley’s blonde bouffant and idiosyncratic dance moves. RickRolling has since taken on a life of its own, with YouTube users creating their own lip-synced routines and… Read more »

As I write this, iTunes ranks as the 2nd largest seller of music in the U.S. — only Wal-Mart’s physical stores sell more. Digital revenue is real, and there is a lot of it being earned. Sales from iTunes alone can provide a band enough revenue to achieve true financial success. Don’t take my word for it, just look at some of the sales by the following unsigned artists utilizing the Net for both digital distribution and marketing: Kelly sold over 500,000 songs in five months, Eric Hutchinson sold 120,000 songs in three weeks, The Medic Droid sold over 25,000… Read more »

The Disney Channel has green-lighted a reality series centering on the pop-rock band the Jonas Brothers. The series, which is shooting under the working title “Jonas Brothers: Living the Dream,” will follow the on- and off-stage lives of the platinum-selling trio — Kevin, 20; Joe, 18; and Nick, 15 — on their current Look Me in the Eyes tour. “Dream” will get up close and personal with the brothers as they rehearse, travel on the tour bus and perform. It also will follow them as they interact with their parents and younger brother, go sky-diving and race go-carts. The series… Read more »

Multi-platinum Island Records group Fall Out Boy announced today that they are attempting to set a Guinness World Record, for the first band to play a concert in all seven continents, in a time frame under 9 months.   The band kicked off the record in Johannesburg, South Africa late last summer, then toured through Europe, Asia, Australia and North America last fall.   The South American show will take place in Santiago Chile on March 23, followed up by King George, Island in Antarctica on March 25, where they hope to receive the Guinness World Record. Fall Out Boy… Read more »

Who said you can never go home again? For Dublin-born singer-guitarist Dave King of Irish-American punk rockers Flogging Molly, all it took was a little help from his eventual wife and bandmate, violinist Bridget Regan. “When I heard Bridget playing the fiddle it brought out a lot of feelings in me,” King said through a bright and friendly Irish brogue during a recent phone interview with “I wanted to take that feeling and go back home – not physically of course. It just seemed to all fall together for me.” A lilting mix of traditional Celtic sounds – fiddle, banjo,… Read more »

Multi-platinum Island Records group Fall Out Boy kicks off the new year with “****LIVE IN PHOENIX,” their first long-form CD+DVD two-disc package, set to arrive in stores on April 1st.   The core of the program will be their full-length Honda Civic Tour concert of June 2007 from the Cricket Pavilion in Phoenix, with all 22 songs contained on both the CD and DVD layers. In addition, the DVD layer will include all 8 of Fall Out Boy’s Island Records video clips in chronological order — from their debut single “Sugar, We’re Going Down” (MTV2 Award winner for 2005), “Dance,… Read more »

XM Satellite Radio is partnering with Apple to make XM’s programming available on iPods, according to CEO Nate Davis, who revealed their cooperation while discussing the company’s fourth-quarter results last week. Although Davis said he “wouldn’t call it a strategic relationship,” XM began podcasting content in December, and two XM podcasts are already listed in iTunes’ top 10 podcasts. XM is now working with Apple to make XM content accessible via iTunes. This new distribution plan is part of a broader push to promote XM and recruit subscribers via online channels, at the expense of broadcast and physical retail, which… Read more »

Amid ongoing competitive pressure from Facebook, MySpace is taking its latest shot at entering the music business as other social networking peers, such as Last.fm and imeem, are making big audience gains with ad-supported music offerings. According to sources, MySpace is planning a service that would combine free ad-supported music listening with paid MP3 downloads and music subscriptions. MySpace parent company News Corp. has approached the major labels about forming a joint-venture music site, similar to its partnership with the major Hollywood studios for video site hulu.com. The new service would be operated by MySpace and seemingly be positioned to… Read more »

When rapper Flo Rida set a digital sales record with his single “Low,” which moved 470,000 copies the first week of January despite not being available on an album, it was emblematic of an intriguing trend. Digital hip-hop song sales are at an all-time high, but in terms of digital album commerce, hip-hop is lagging behind other genres. In 2007, of 500.4 million albums sold industry-wide, 10 percent were sold digitally. In comparison, of the 41.7 million rap albums sold, only 7 percent (2.9 million) of those were digital. So far this year (through the week ending February 17), according… Read more »

Mike Smith, the lead singer of the 1960s British band the Dave Clark Five, died on Thursday of pneumonia at an English hospital, his U.S. agent said. Smith, 64, was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday morning with a chest infection resulting from complications of a 2003 spinal cord injury that had left him paralyzed from the waist down, his New York agent, Margo Lewis, said in a statement. His death at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, north of London, came just two weeks before the Dave Clark Five — one of the leading bands of the 1960s “British invasion” — was… Read more »