Search Results for: MAX

Indie heavyweights Nettwerk, INgrooves, IRIS Distribution, RoyaltyShare and Wind-up have all signed deals to have their music featured and sold on MySpace Music. Indie aggregators The Orchard and IODA signed on several months ago. Today’s announcement leaves Merlin and its supporters including Koch and Beggars as the last large indie holdouts. When MySpace Music launched late last year, the indie community cried foul because they had not been offered the same equity position that the social networker gave the four major label groups. “Without an equitable participation by independents, that creates a situation that is both unhealthy and dangerous,” Merlin… Read more »

These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort… Read more »

Among the most notorious on-screen gaffes ever, Janet Jackson’s breast-baring “wardrobe malfunction” on CBS during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show drew a $550,000 indecency fine from the Federal Communications Commission. Now a federal appeals court has thrown it out. A panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that the FCC “acted arbitrarily and capriciously” in issuing the fine for the fleeting image of nudity, which it noted lasted just over half a second. An estimated 90 million people watching the Super Bowl heard Justin Timberlake sing, “Gonna have you naked by the end of this… Read more »

Tapping on fake instruments and screeching into microphones connected to video game consoles has become lucrative for both the music and gaming industries. Downloadable tunes for music-based games “Guitar Hero,” “Rock Band” and “SingStar” have become as vital as iTunes itself – and one of the last ways to expose youngsters to classic rock. The genre will evolve again later this month when game publisher Activision and developer Neversoft release “Guitar Hero: Aerosmith,” the first such play-along rhythm game pegged to one music group, instead of featuring a multi-artist compilation more akin to one of those “Now That’s What I… Read more »

My Chemical Romance’s tour in support of its 2006 album “The Black Parade” forms the basis of “The Black Parade Is Dead!,” a CD/DVD package due June 24. The project was filmed October 7, 2007, at Mexico City’s Palacio de los Deportes, and October 24, 2007, at the tiny Maxwell’s in Hoboken, New Jersey. The CD portion of the Warner Bros. release sports 13 tracks, a track list it shares with disc one of the DVD, taped in Mexico City. The second DVD disc boasts 18 songs from the Hoboken show. In addition, “The Black Parade Is Dead!” can be… Read more »

Who said you can never go home again? For Dublin-born singer-guitarist Dave King of Irish-American punk rockers Flogging Molly, all it took was a little help from his eventual wife and bandmate, violinist Bridget Regan. “When I heard Bridget playing the fiddle it brought out a lot of feelings in me,” King said through a bright and friendly Irish brogue during a recent phone interview with “I wanted to take that feeling and go back home – not physically of course. It just seemed to all fall together for me.” A lilting mix of traditional Celtic sounds – fiddle, banjo,… Read more »

Lou Pearlman, the music mogul who launched the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync, has agreed to plead guilty and make restitution to victims swindled out of an estimated $300 million in phony bank and investment schemes, U.S. prosecutors said on Tuesday. Pearlman admitted in a plea agreement that for 20 years he enticed people and banks to invest millions of dollars in two companies that existed only on paper: Transcontinental Airlines Travel Services Inc. and Transcontinental Airlines Inc. Pearlman is scheduled to enter his plea on Thursday in a U.S. court in Orlando. The charges carry a maximum of 25… Read more »

The bands on this tour could have held an open casting call, but they wouldn’t have found a better set of screeching, adoring fans than the sold-out, 98-percent female ’tweens at tonight’s show.Sure, the performers are making a silly poke at the 2001 Ben Stiller-starring comedy Zoolander with their tour title, and they even incorporated Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax” before playing, but from the crowd’s reaction, this tour might as well have been a serious male model showcase. Young girls nearly broke out into cat fights, storming the stage, shoving their peers (aka competition) just to make eye contact… Read more »

“SIMPLE PLAN,” the long-awaited new album from Lava/Atlantic recording group Simple Plan, has made a triumphant chart debut, both here and around the world. The Montreal-based band’s third studio effort — which features the singles “When I’m Gone” and “Your Love Is A Lie” — was the Billboard 200’s highest-charting debut of the week at #14, while also placing high on a variety of additional tallies, including #3 on “Top Rock Albums,” #4 on “Top Modern Rock/Alternative Albums,” and #7 on “Top Digital Albums.” In addition, the album reached the #1 spot on the iTunes Store’s “Top Pop Albums” ranking.… Read more »

Dave Grohl has been leading the Foo Fighters for 13 years and was part of another rather consequential band before that, but he acted like a thrilled newcomer at the group’s debut Garden performance Tuesday. “Goddamn, we’re playing Madison Square fucking Garden!” he exclaimed at the beginning of the evening. Grohl and company, touring to support their Grammy-winning “Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace,” clearly are giving it all they have. “This is gonna be a long night, this is no In-N-Out Burger,” he promised before taking mock bids on the length of the show. “Do I hear one hour?” he… Read more »