Search Results for: RCA Records

Kings of Leon may be from  Tennessee, but the rock band’s music has resonated in a bigger way overseas than it has in its own backyard. The family foursome hopes that will change with its fourth album, “Only by the Night,” due September 23 via RCA. Kings of Leon’s previous records have sold a combined total of 620,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen  SoundScan, topped by second album “Aha Shake Heartbreak” in  2005 at 232,000. But overseas, the numbers are more robust on a per capita basis. RCA says the band’s albums have sold nearly 600,000 copies… Read more »

Think of it as mixtapes made by famous people. The North Carolina-based indie record label Merge is launching a limited-edition series of CDs curated by famous folks like Saturday Night Live’s Amy Poehler, David Byrne, R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, novelist Jonathan Lethem and others. The 14 discs of SCORE! Merge Records: The First 20 Years will feature music from the label’s catalog and begin rolling out through 2009. The subscription-only series will also benefit causes chosen by the celebs. The label has released music from Bright Eye’s Conor Oberst, Arcade FIre, the Magnetic Fields, Superchunk, Zooey Deschanel’s duo She & Him… Read more »

Amazon today launched a public beta of “Amazon MP3”, a new digital music download store with a huge selection of a la carte DRM-free MP3 music downloads. Amazon MP3 has over 2 million songs from more than 180,000 artists represented by over 20,000 major and independent labels. Every song and album on Amazon MP3 is available exclusively in the MP3 format without DRM software. This means that Amazon MP3 customers are free to enjoy their music downloads using any hardware device, including PCs, Macs, iPods, Zunes, Zens, iPhones, RAZRs and BlackBerrys; organize their music using any music management application such… Read more »

The official story goes like this: On the last night of Jim Morrison’s life, the rocker went to a movie in Paris, listened to records, fell ill and died of heart failure in his bathtub at the age of 27. But rumors have always swirled around the death of The Doors frontman and, 36 years later, a former Paris nightclub manager is telling a different story. In a new book, Sam Bernett says that Morrison died in a toilet stall of his club after what he believes was a heroin overdose. He writes of his shock on finding Morrison’s body:… Read more »

If the Click Five had sold more copies of its debut album, the Boston pop band might be in an even trickier position than it is now. Modest sales, an executive at the group’s Atlantic Records label says, are precisely what enabled the Click Five to survive the departure of original lead singer Eric Dill, who quit last year during preproduction for the follow-up to 2005’s “Greetings From Imrie House.” “The band had achieved a good deal of success,” says Andy Karp, head of A&R at Atlantic, pointing to “Imrie House” sales of 333,000 copies. “But they hadn’t really become… Read more »

From the creative well of Kris Anaya comes An Angle’s third offering, The Truth Is That You Are Alive, out June 12th on Drive-Thru Records. An Angle has two previous full-lengths on Drive-Thru, We Can Breathe Under Alcohol (2005) and …And Take It With A Grain of Salt (2004). Anaya and An Angle have gone through several sonic transformations and the journey continues with The Truth, a rock album with pop influxes like the catchy bounce of “I’m Alright” and the lead single and forthcoming video, “Oh! Oh! Oh! Trouble!” Anaya gets gritty in the sexy blues bump of “C’mon… Read more »

Now that the three young women in Candy Hill, a glossy rap and R&B trio, have signed a record contract, they are hoping for stardom. On the schedule: shooting a music video and visiting radio stations to talk up their music. But the women do not have a CD to promote. Universal/Republic Records, their label, signed Candy Hill to record two songs, not a complete album. “If we get two songs out, we get a shot,” said Vatana Shaw, 20, who formed the trio four years ago, “Only true fans are buying full albums. Most people don’t really do that… Read more »

Kings of Leon singer/guitarist Caleb Followill says the band had one rule while it recorded its third album, “Because of the Times,” due out April 3. “It was just us against the world and so we pretty much threw everything out the window that people warned us about,” Followill says. “We have 13 songs, which is an unlucky number and I hate stuff like that. I was kind of like, ‘F— it man, if we’re going to have a seven-minute song, let’s put it at the beginning. If we want to try stuff, let’s try it.’ “And at the end… Read more »

Every day, the roughly one million people who visit the iTunes Store home page are presented with several dozen albums, TV shows and movie downloads to consider buying — out of the four million such goods the Apple site offers. This prime promotion is analogous to a CD being displayed at the checkout stands of all 940 Best Buy stores or featured on the front page of Target’s ad circular. How do bands get these boosts? Who decides whether Arcade Fire is plugged at the top of the iTunes site — or whether Nickelback gets no mention? Apple has jettisoned… Read more »