Search Results for: Download Fest

Los Angeles – Nearly 45 years after Stevie Wonder’s live harmonica workout “Fingertips, Pt. 2” topped the charts, the soul visionary’s musical charm still enthralls. From preteen wunderkind to adult visionary, his musical evolution embodies a “What’s next?” curiosity that still burns brightly as fans anticipate his first new Motown album in 10 years, which he hopes will come out in April. “Hopefully, that little boy will always stay in me,” Wonder said in a recent interview with Billboard. “The part of me that’s still eager to discover; who welcomes new, unbroken ground. When that ground is being broken, there’s… Read more »

San Diego – Entriq Technology Enabled NPG Music Club to Build Online Community and Promote New Prince Album, Resulting in Highly Successful Album Release Entriq(TM), Inc., an innovative company that provides pay media services to leading content providers, ISPs, and cable operators worldwide and a subsidiary of the multinational media group Naspers and (JSE:NPN), today announced that its technology helped enable the successful launch of NPG Music Club’s Prince Musicology album, resulting in the artist receiving the “Best Use of Technology by an Artist” award at the Billboard Digital Entertainment Conference. The award acknowledges the band or individual artist who… Read more »

Right about now, we’re thinking 50 Cent would have rather been in da club than on da stage. The chart-topping hip-hopster cut short his set at Britain’s Reading Festival over the weekend after getting booed and pelted with plastic bottles by a hostile audience just minutes after he began performing. Accompanied by his G-Unit crew, 50 Cent hadn’t even taken the stage at the legendary U.K. music bash on Sunday evening when the cranky crowd of 55,000 began yelling insults at the former crack peddler and hurling plastic cups. Things got even worse when the lights came up on 50… Read more »

The hundreds of Phish fans who were turned away from the band’s farewell concerts earlier this month have been given an apology and the promise of a free gift. “The last thing any of us wanted in the band’s final hour was to leave some of our most dedicated fans feeling angry and disillusioned,” Phish manager John Paluska says in a statement on the band’s Web site. An estimated 65,000 fans attended the Aug. 14-15 festival. Many others were turned away because of muddy conditions. Heavy rains turned the farm fields in Coventry and grounds of the Newport State Airport… Read more »

Prince is taking that little red Corvette out of the garage again. On the heels of his blistering Grammy “Purple Rain” performance, the ’80s funk legend has announced he will hit the road with the New Power Generation for his first major arena tour in six years in support of his new CD, Musicology. To help hype the tour, Prince says the upcoming gigs may be the last time fans get to see him jam out some of the best-known hits live. That presumably means that tunes like “Little Red Corvette,” “1999” “Purple Rain,” When Doves Cry” and “Let’s Go… Read more »

Just as sound bites get reworked into tunes that multiply over the Internet – Remember all the songs based on Howard Dean’s yelp? – a widely seen TV ad is getting the hack-and-slash treatment. The target is Pepsi’s current promotion giving away 100 million free song downloads from Apple’s iTunes Music Store. The company promises one in three bottlecaps on certain Pepsi products carries a code for a free iTunes download. Pepsi is airing a 45-second spot featuring 16 crestfallen music downloaders who have been sued by – and settled lawsuits with – the record industry for illegally snagging songs… Read more »

On Jan. 6, San Francisco’s Moscone convention center pulses with all the energy of a rock concert. A crowd sprinkled with hip-hop teenagers, digerati, and aging hippies streams in to hear the annual state-of-the-Mac keynote from Apple Computer Inc. Chief Executive Steven P. Jobs. Every facet of the event bears the fingerprints of the obsessive Jobs – right down to the music that fills the air. This year, it’s the King himself, Elvis Presley. Later, Jobs rolls the tape of Apple’s famous “1984” ad that ran on Super Bowl Sunday that year – and hasn’t been broadcast since. Only this… Read more »

The great digital music giveaway is about to begin. In the new year, some of the world’s biggest brands will promote their products and services by doling out millions of free downloads through alliances with digital music services. “You’re going to see lots of free music given out via third-party companies,” buymusic.com founder Scott Blum says. “It’s not going to be Apple and iTunes driving the business. It’s going to be companies like Pepsi and other third parties that are promoting digital music on bottle caps and on labels.” Indeed, Apple Computer has inked a deal with Pepsi to give… Read more »

In their 13 years together, the members of P.O.D. have never denied their faith. And frontman Sonny Sandoval says the group never will. “It’s going to come out, whether I build houses or collect garbage,” he says. Spirituality and positivity have saturated the band’s material to date and have helped turn P.O.D. into a multiplatinum-selling act in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. With the new Atlantic effort, “Payable on Death,” both band and label hope that the faith of the 2.7 million U.S. fans who bought P.O.D.’s previous album also remains intact, as the new set – the group’s… Read more »

When the record industry announced in June that it would begin filing individual lawsuits against hundreds of illegal file-swappers, it was not just a bad PR move, it was a signal that the music business is more desperate than ever. Halfway through 2003, sales continue to slump, down eight percent from the first six months of last year. Three of the ten best-selling albums so far this year were actually released in 2002, and only three artists – 50 Cent, Norah Jones and Linkin Park – managed to sell more than 2 million copies between January and June. 50 Cent,… Read more »