Search Results for: Pride Month

Incubus filed suit against Sony Music on Thursday seeking to be released from their recording contract with Sony subsidiary Epic Records. The suit – filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in Santa Monica on behalf of singer Brandon Boyd, guitarist Mike Einziger, drummer Jose Pasillas and bassist Alex Katunich – asks a judge to allow them to set aside their original deal, which they claim they have satisfied. “This isn’t Courtney Love or some other artists where we’re walking away from a deal,” said the band’s manager, Steve Rennie, referring to a suit settled last year in which Love sought… Read more »

Backstreet Boy Howie Dorough’s third annual Lupus Cruise to benefit his Dorough Lupus Foundation sets sail from Miami on Sunday (December 15) for a seven-day adventure aboard the Carnival Victory. Dorough, his sister Pollyanna, and the rest of his family will be on board as the Victory visits ports in the Eastern Caribbean, including San Juan, St. Maarten, and St. Thomas. The Dorough Lupus Foundation is an independent, nonprofit organization founded by Dorough and his family shortly after his sister Caroline Cochran died from the disease in 1998. Dorough explained to LAUNCH, “I unfortunately lost one of my sisters, Caroline… Read more »

Music CDs equipped with copy protection will, if Rick Boucher gets his wish, soon be as obsolete as eight-track cassettes. The feisty Democratic congressman from Virginia says he plans to introduce legislation banning, or at least regulating, compact discs outfitted with anti-copying technology. Few discs sold in America currently feature the controversial scheme – but the recording industry expects that as worries over digital piracy grow, the technique will become widespread. “Suffice to say, there probably will be a legislative response to ensure that consumer rights will be protected,” Boucher said in an interview. Boucher’s complaints are twofold: Americans may… Read more »

The manufactured pop group Hear’Say is seeking a replacement for Kym Marsh – and the winner will have to look good, dance great and sing a capella. The band, formed last January after an exhaustive search that was carried live on television, has since sold 1.2 million albums and 1.5 million singles. Now, after Marsh’s abrupt departure for new pastures, remaining members Danny Foster, Myleene Klass, Suzanne Shaw and Noel Sullivan hope they can re-create the right mix. Hear’Say manager Chris Herbert, giving details of the February 3 auditions in Brixton, said: “We will be doing a visual selection as… Read more »

The world’s largest record company will be the first of the major labels to release a copy-protected CD in the United States, signaling a new chapter in the industry’s efforts to stem music piracy. When Universal Music Group on Tuesday releases the soundtrack, “Fast & Furious – More Music,” consumers won’t be able to copy the music onto another CD or use their PCs to “rip” tracks in digital MP3 format. The copy-protection technology will also render the disc unplayable on Macintosh computers, DVD players and game consoles, such as Sony’s PlayStation 2. It might not even play in some… Read more »

Edgar Bronfman Jr. has often been derided as the spoiled rich kid who blew his family’s liquor fortune on Hollywood, but in reality he nearly tripled it. Now, capping six years of intense dealmaking which culminated in folding the Bronfman family-controlled concern Seagram Co. Ltd. into the world’s second largest media company, Vivendi Universal, the soft-spoken mogul plans to walk away, possibly to start a new company. Save for the timing, it was no surprise that on Thursday, Bronfman, 46, said he would step down as executive vice chairman of Vivendi in 2002. The announcement came one day after another… Read more »

For certain punks, there was no Bad Religion from 1996 through 2001. During that dark period, co-songwriter Brett Gurewitz split the seminal act he co-created with his pals in high school. He was disenchanted with the band’s major-label deal (at Atlantic), overwhelmed by the sudden hugeness of Epitaph – the label he founded to release Bad Religion records and eventually home to Rancid and the Offspring – and increasingly strung out on smack. The band would release two albums in his absence, both guided solely by the vision of Gurewitz’s estranged collaborator, Greg Graffin. Both records – 1996’s Gray Race… Read more »

BMG Entertainment said Monday it will work with security technology provider SunnComm to create copy-protected CDs, one of a growing number of efforts by the record labels to combat alleged Internet piracy at the source. Under the deal, SunnComm said BMG will use its technology, dubbed MediaCloQ, which prevents people from being able to “rip” songs directly from a CD onto a computer. BMG said it is testing SunnComm’s technology and is starting to implement it on promotional CDs. BMG said it will decide later whether to use SunnComm’s technology for commercial releases. The announcement comes as major record labels… Read more »

Back in 1983, Sting sang about being the “King of Pain.” These days, he’s pain-free, not to mention prosperous. His most recent album, 1999’s “Brand New Day,” is one of the most successful of his career, with more than 7 million copies sold. It won two Grammy Awards and netted him a spot in the pre-game show at this year’s Super Bowl, while his contributions to the soundtrack for Disney’s animated feature “The Emperor’s New Groove” earned him an Oscar nomination. And on Saturday in Washington, D.C., the British musician – who co-founded the Police in 1977 and dissolved the… Read more »