Search Results for: GERMANY

Al Gore announced Friday a surprise Live Earth concert in Washington, foiling Senate Republicans who blocked Gore’s attempt to bring his global warming extravaganza to the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. The former vice president said the all-day “Mother Earth” concert would be held on the National Mall at the National Museum of the American Indian – about two blocks from the Capitol – as part of Saturday’s concert series focused on climate change. The headliners are Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood. “Global warming naysayers in the political world have not been able to have their way, because this will… Read more »

The Spice Girls wannabe stars again. Following a calculated publicity buildup, the original Girl Power group of the 1990s announced Thursday that they have agreed to reunite for 11 concerts around the world in December and January. The shows will be their first concerts since breaking up in 2001, and the first with all five of the original group since Geri “Ginger Spice” Halliwell quit to pursue a solo career in 1998. The group said shows would be in Los Angeles on Dec. 7; Las Vegas on Dec. 8; New York on Dec. 11; London on Dec. 15; Cologne, Germany,… Read more »

Avril Lavigne was the best damn thing on the charts this week. Literally. The Canadian pop-punker debuted atop the Billboard 200 for a second consecutive time as her latest, The Best Damn Thing, sold 286,000 copies for the week ended Sunday, according to newly released Nielsen SoundScan numbers. The singer previously topped the charts with 2004’s Under My Skin, which followed the number two opening for her 2002 debut, Let Go. Powered by the hit single “Girlfriend,” The Best Damn Thing sold more than 1.5 million copies worldwide, opening at number one in 11 countries, including the U.K., Japan, Germany,… Read more »

With the release of their fourth album Good Morning Revival, Good Charlotte have achieved Top 10 chart debuts in eleven countries including the U.S., marking their highest international chart positions ever. The rankings are: #1 in Japan, #2 in Canada and New Zealand, #4 in Hong Kong, #5 in Australia, #6 in Mexico, #7 in the U.S. and Switzerland, #8 in Thailand and #10 in Germany and Austria. The band is set to make multiple U.S. and international TV appearances in support of the album. First, Good Charlotte will appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Monday, April… Read more »

You figure there’s got to be a great story – or a great fictitious one, at least – behind a song titled “The Boardwalk Body,” right? Well, there is, but fans of “Jackass”-affiliated alternative-metallers CKY will have to wait until the fall to learn all about the inspiration behind frontman Deron Miller’s cryptic lyricism. Without giving too much of the macabre story away, drummer Jess Margera revealed that the track is about a childhood trip Miller took with his family to Wildwood, New Jersey, where he “full-on found some dead body under the boardwalk.” Thankfully, CKY’s forthcoming yet-untitled fifth LP… Read more »

The Smashing Pumpkins have christened their reunion album “Zeitgeist” and announced an unusual release date of July 7, a Saturday, for the project, which willl be issued by Reprise. The news was broken this morning to fans that had been added by the band as a “friend” on MySpace.com. However, a Reprise spokesperson tells Billboard.com the label has yet to settle on a specific release date for the album beyond “summer.” Frontman Billy Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin are the lone original members in this new incarnation of the group. The pair has been working in the studio with producers… Read more »

Warner Music Group has signed a deal to allow its entire catalog to be played over the fast-growing social networking music service Last.fm, the innovative site that links music fans to new and old hits. With more than 15 million active users per month, Last.fm has earned glowing praise for its system which recommends songs by tracking a listener’s music-playing habits and automatically linking them to fans with similar tastes. The deal with Warner, the world’s fourth-largest music company, is the first with one of the major labels and the network’s co-founder Martin Stiksel said they were in talks with… Read more »

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Tuesday that Sony BMG agreed to settle charges that it secretly embedded potentially damaging anti-piracy software in some of its CDs. The settlement requires Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Germany’s Bertelsmann AG, to make further disclosures, to allow consumers to exchange the CDs at issue and reimburse consumers for up to $150 to repair any damage to their computers, the FTC said. “Consumers’ computers belong to them, and companies must adequately disclose unexpected limitations on the customary use of their products so consumers can make informed decisions regarding whether… Read more »

NUREMBERG, Germany–Coding Technologies today announced an upgraded release of its MPEG-4 aacPlus Audio Encoder engine. The company’s aacPlus audio codec is the audio compression format of choice across a variety of industry standards, systems and applications, including, MPEG, DVB, DMB, 3GPP. Coding Technologies’ aacPlus implementations are used by the world’s most demanding professional equipment manufacturers, broadcasters, and content aggregators to deliver high quality music via terrestrial, satellite, the Internet, and mobile networks.Coding Technologies’ enhanced encoder achieves significant improvements in audio fidelity and listening experience without any associated increase in bandwidth consumption. This allows content service providers to “dial-down” transmission bandwidth… Read more »