Search Results for: Arista Records

List of winners at the 51st Annual Grammy Awards Album of the Year: ” Raising Sand” Robert Plant and Alison Krauss ; T Bone Burnett producer; Mike Piersante, engineer/mixer; Gavin Lurssen, mastering engineer (Rounder) Rap Album: ” Tha Carter III” Lil Wayne (Cash Money/Universal Motown) Male Pop Vocal Performance : “Say,” John Mayer ; track from “Continuum” (Columbia) Record of the Year: “Please Read The Letter,” Robert Plant and Alison Krauss; T Bone Burnett, producer; Mike Piersante, engineer/mixer; track from “Raising Sand” (Rounder) New Artist: Adele Rock Album: “Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends,” Coldplay (Capitol) Pop… Read more »

Faced with a protracted sales slump, record labels are now tapping into the tween scene, after Walt Disney Co. has become the unlikely hitmaker of the year with chart toppers like “Hannah Montana” and “High School Musical.” “A lot of entertainment companies are trying to figure out how to replicate Disney’s formula and crack the tween code since it’s one of the market’s few sweet spots,” said entertainment lawyer Fred Goldring. After mostly ignoring tweens, kids aged 6 to 12, music labels from Sony BMG Music to Warner Music Group and EMI Group Plc are now signing or distributing tween… Read more »

Late in the afternoon of Jan. 16, a SWAT team from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, backed up by officers from the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office and the local police department, along with a few drug-sniffing dogs, burst into a unmarked recording studio on a short, quiet street in an industrial neighborhood near the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The officers entered with their guns drawn; the local police chief said later that they were “prepared for the worst.” They had come to serve a warrant for the arrest of the studio’s owners on the grounds that they had violated the… Read more »

With Ashlee Simpson in the news this week following a disastrous lip-synching appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” Canadian pop singer Avril Lavigne says it’s “pathetic” that some young artists don’t sing on their own record or on stage. While she can relate to the pressures of learning how to play live and work an audience for the first time, Lavigne says she takes exception to the practice of lip-synching. “You know what? There are a lot of people out there today, who have become stars or famous musicians – I wouldn’t really define them as a star – with a… Read more »

Columbia Records will issue Prince’s “Musicology” album April 20 in the United States through a new worldwide manufacturing and distribution deal the artist signed with Sony. The deal allows for future collaborations between Prince and Sony. In 2001, Prince released “The Rainbow Children” through Sony’s RED Distribution. Prince’s last liaison with a major label was 1999’s “Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic,” released by Arista. In other Prince news, Regal Entertainment Theaters will broadcast the artist’s March 29 Los Angeles concert in 43 U.S. markets. Fans attending the screenings and the Staples Center show will receive “Musicology” as part of the… Read more »

For the first time since the chart’s rollout in July, the No. 1-selling song on Hot Digital Tracks bests the weekly total of the No. 1 title on Hot 100 Singles. With the rollout of Napster 2.0, sales data of digital tracks takes another step north, resulting in OutKast’s “Hey Ya! (Radio Mix)” selling 8,500 downloads compared with 7,500 physical singles scanned of MercyMe’s “I Can Only Imagine.” This occurrence, if not the speed with which it was accomplished, was predicted in most music quarters once the business model of digital distribution was in place. While it appears that the… Read more »

Tapping a hunger for positive messages in difficult times, Christian artists are appealing to a growing number of people outside of their traditional audience. The trend is reflected in an important barometer, mainstream radio, which closely follows the tastes of its listeners. “The events of the last couple of years have made people more open to spiritual things and trying to find answers,” says Stacie Orrico, a Christian artist who has made inroads on the pop charts. “After, people were just flocking to churches, which was amazing to watch,” she says. Orrico, MercyMe, Natalie Grant, Relient K and even the… Read more »

With his lawsuits threatening to outnumber his album releases, Boston leader Tom Scholz has revved up the litigation machine again and is suing his label, Artemis Records, for more than $4 million. Scholz filed suit in New York on Tuesday, claiming that the band’s first album in eight years, 2002’s Corporate America, failed to take off because the label didn’t promote it properly, despite promises that Boston’s fifth album would be a priority. The suit claims Scholz signed with Danny Goldberg’s Artemis because of Goldberg’s “repeated promises that his label would give the highest priority to promoting [Corporate America]; that… Read more »

Rap mogul Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, one of contemporary music’s most successful entrepreneurs, has signed a distribution deal with Vivendi Universal’s Universal Records rather than sell the Bad Boy label he says is worth $100 million, the partners said on Thursday. The three-year deal leaves Universal paying marketing and promotion costs and giving Combs an undisclosed upfront fee, which analysts saw as a way for the producer of such hit acts as Faith Evans and the late Notorious B.I.G. to get the backing of the biggest record maker without selling his own company in a down market. Terms of the… Read more »

Bertelsmann Music Group has completed its Jive lessons. The major label group said Tuesday it has closed its acquisition of Zomba Music Group, home to teen-pop label Jive Records, paying more than $2.74 billion to acquire the stakes in the closely held group it didn’t already own. BMG already held 20% of Zomba’s record labels and 25% of its music-publishing portfolio. The deal, which got rolling in June after Zomba owner Clive Calder triggered a long-standing “put” option to sell his interest, gives BMG full access to Jive’s roster of pop megastars, including ‘N Sync, Britney Spears and the Backstreet… Read more »