Search Results for: BTS

When speaking this month to a representative from Soundscan, the company that provides much of the data for the Billboard Top 200 Chart, I learned things that would contradict reported statements by the RIAA. Mainly that US labels have had a significant reduction in sales over the past three years. Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, responded personally, put his rebuttals on the record and in the process exposed intriguing insight into the way the RIAA calculates “losses.” Soundscan is a service owned by Nielsen, the company that computes TV ratings. Soundscan uses the barcodes on CDs to register sales… Read more »

Michael Jackson’s music manager denied a report Thursday that Jackson is in financial trouble and must make a $70 million payment to a lender by Tuesday. Charles Koppelman said no payment was due in that amount to Bank of America or anyone else. The New York Times reported Thursday that Jackson, who is facing child-molestation charges in Santa Barbara County, owed $70 million to the bank under a loan agreement. Koppelman said in a phone interview that Jackson’s assets far exceed his debts but he declined to go into detail about the singer’s money. He said Jackson, like most people… Read more »

Tower Records Inc. is singing a new tune: Chapter 11. The music and entertainment chain on Monday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, burdened by too much debt and hammered by competition from large retailers, and Internet music downloading and piracy. The bankruptcy filings for Tower and its privately held parent, MTS Inc., cap a long period of distress for the money-losing chain of 93 stores, which sources say was unable to find a suitable buyer. MTS, based in West Sacramento, California, said its 3,100 employees, vendors and in-store and online customers will not notice operating changes because of the… Read more »

Mandy Moore will pose on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine, but don’t look for anything much racier than that. Moore says when she was 15 years old she was asked to pose for men’s magazines like FHM or Maxim. She says she doubts they knew she was 15 at the time, but now that she’s legal, she figures they know she’s not interested in that kind of stuff. Her decision means readers of the racy magazines will never get to see her tattoo, not that it’s in anyplace scandalous. Moore says her friend Kelly Osbourne got a heart on her… Read more »

Vivendi Universal and General Electric Co. have agreed to merge the French company’s Hollywood studio and other U.S. entertainment assets with GE’s television network NBC, creating a media giant with an estimated value of $43 billion. The terms of the deal announced Wednesday were largely unchanged from a preliminary agreement reached a month ago, when the two companies entered exclusive talks about a merger and sketched out broad outlines for a combined company to be called NBC Universal. The new company will include the NBC television network and its cable channels CNBC, MSNBC and Bravo and Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo. From… Read more »

U.S. television network NBC won Vivendi Universal’s marathon show-business auction on Tuesday with a proposed merger to create a new entertainment industry giant worth more than $40 billion. NBC, a unit of General Electric Co., clinched exclusive negotiating rights to finalize a deal that would give it a major film studio, more cable channels and theme parks to vault the No. 1 U.S. broadcast network closer to the ranks of such global titans as Walt Disney Co. and Viacom Inc. If the deal is completed, the new company, to be called NBC-Universal, would include Vivendi’s Universal Pictures, the Hollywood studio… Read more »

Michael Jackson, the King of Pop who amassed a half-billion-dollar fortune over the past 20 years, is saddled with debt and teetering near bankruptcy, his former financial advisers say in a lawsuit. The lawsuit, set for trial June 18, claims Jackson’s extravagant spending has created “a ticking financial time bomb waiting to explode at any moment.” Union Finance and Investment Corp. of South Korea filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court, claiming Jackson owes the firm $12 million in fees and expenses, plus interest. Jackson previously paid the firm $3 million, the firm said. The lawsuit also seeks… Read more »

A jury decided Thursday that Michael Jackson owes a concert promoter $5.3 million for backing out of two concerts planned to celebrate the millennium on New Year’s Eve 1999. The verdict came in a $21 million breach-of-contract lawsuit filed against the singer by German concert organizer Marcel Avram. Jackson’s attorneys said it was Avram who canceled the shows over concerns they would not be profitable. The jury deliberated for nearly two weeks. Avram’s attorney, Louis “Skip” Miller, said he was pleased that the jury found Jackson was at fault. “The jury believed Avram, they did not believe Michael Jackson. That’s… Read more »

A modest, 1 1/2-story house in a rough-edged neighborhood of this Detroit suburb is up for sale on eBay for a minimum bid of $120,000, though city records show it’s worth about $47,000. What the records don’t show is that the house is the boyhood home of rap and movie star Eminem. Todd Nelson, Eminem’s uncle, recently sold the house for $45,000 to lawyer Sebastian Lucido and his partner, Macomb County commissioner and real estate developer Roland Fraschetti. Lucido and Fraschetti put it up for sale on the Internet auction site Thursday. Eminem, born Marshall Bruce Mathers III in St.… Read more »

The Blasters’ singer and guitarist Phil Alvin speaks like the band plays: short, fast and furious. “My father was very upset when I quit school,” he said, trying at breakneck speed to make his words catch up with his thoughts. “He took the neck of my guitar and screwed it to the dustpan. Then he scooped the dog crap with it, and left it in the garage. Every time I turned on the light on, I’d have to walk past it.” But Phil ignored his father’s exhortations, and with the help of his younger brother Dave, formed one of the… Read more »