Search Results for: EUROPE

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 »

Los Angeles/New York – Columbia Records has moved up by one day the North American release of the new Destiny Child’s album, just as the R&B trio confirmed the first dates for its 2005 world tour. “Destiny Fulfilled” will be issued off-cycle from a traditional Tuesday stateside release on Nov. 15, the same date that the disc will be available internationally. The company says the change is due to the “potential for Internet leaks and ‘burned’ CD counterfeits” that could “lead consumers to experience inferior and incomplete versions of the album.” The move by follows Wednesday’s (Nov. 3) announcement that… Read more »

London – The decision by a group of European labels to legally challenge the European Commission’s approval of the Sony/BMG merger could raise questions for future deals. Impala, the Brussels-based association of European independent labels, announced Nov. 3 that it would appeal the EC’s decision to authorize Sony BMG’s union before the court of First Instance in Luxembourg. The legal process is expected to last 12-24 months. Legal experts believe that during that period, it will be difficult for the EC to clear any other proposed merger in the music industry without knowing the outcome of the court case. Sources… Read more »

For those involved in the indie punk and emo scenes, My Chemical Romance shouldn’t be an unfamiliar name. While the group have only been around for two years, they’ve received much attention for their debut album I Brought You My Bullets in 2002. They’ve toured extensively across North America and Europe with bands such as The Used and Taking Back Sunday, creating a major buzz for themselves. Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge, the band’s new major-label debut on Arista/Warner is just as dark, yet positively uplifting, and is getting a lot of play in stereos of emotionally-distraught teens, especially across… Read more »

To hear No Doubt frontwoman Gwen Stefani tell it, she’s just a girl from Orange County following a dream. “I’m just like you, except I write songs,” Stefani says. “I feel like I’m doing something right. And right now, I feel like I’m in a good place in my life.” Indeed. Stefani – rock star, pop culture icon, fashion entrepreneur (clothing line L.A.M.B.), actress (Martin Scorsese’s “The Aviator,” due in December), wife of Bush vocalist/guitarist Gavin Rossdale – is gearing up for the next chapter in a prolific career. Her solo debut album – or as she prefers to call… Read more »

Since Simple Plan’s new album Still Not Getting Any… showed up in stores last week a single question has been plaguing the collective hearts and sad poetry of teenage girls across the country: what exactly isn’t this Montreal-based, pop-punk five-piece getting? Respect? Rock credibility? Happiness? Special friends of the vaginal persuasion? It’s hard to tell since you’d think they’d be on cloud nine after their debut album was certified platinum and shot them into the realm of disenchanted youth superstars. Well, it’s no secret that the band’s unrelenting flow of bouncing, pop melodies, which include just enough angst to pass… Read more »

More than a year after its release, Howie Day’s STOP ALL THE WORLD NOW is blowing up, thanks to relentless touring and the recent success of surprise hit “Collide.” The breakthrough smash rocketed all the way to No. 20 on the Adult Top 40 Airplay Chart and was recently highlighted in its entirety on the hit WB series “One Tree Hill.” After the show aired, Day’s album sales erupted, rising more than 73%. In addition, “Collide” is garnering extensive airplay on stations such as WPLJ/New York, WTMX/Chicago, WWZZ/Washington, KHMX/Houston, KRSK/Portland, KAMX/Austin, KQMB/Albuquerque and many more. A video for the song… Read more »

Sony Corp.’s music unit is abandoning its CDs that use built-in technology that limits copying them, after pushing the program for two years. Such CDs let users copy their music once for free onto a personal computer, but use the Internet to charge a fee for subsequent copying of the same disk. However, Sony Music Entertainment has announced it will stop publishing them, mainly because its message against illegally copying CDs for uses such as in file-sharing over the Internet has widely sunk in, the company said. Sony Music has learned that only a small part of the population illegally… Read more »

Microsoft Corp. launched a new online store for music downloads on Wednesday, taking direct aim at Apple Computer Inc.’s popular iTunes music service. MSN Music, which is aimed at luring more users to the world’s largest software maker’s online service, launched in beta, or test mode, offering songs for download at 99 cents each, the same price as Apple’s online store. Users can access MSN Music from a browser as well as a brand new version of the Windows Media Player that also was unveiled. “We believe we’ve built a better service than the Apple service,” Yusuf Mehdi, MSN vice… Read more »

Apple Computer says it has sold five million songs in the first 10 weeks after opening three European iTunes Music Stores on the Internet in Germany, France and Britain. It made the announcement in a presentation on the fringes of the annual Apple Expo on Tuesday. Worldwide, Apple has sold more than four million of its market leading iPod digital music players and sold more than 100 million tracks on its iTunes online music store in the United States since it was launched in April last year.