Search Results for: Record Store Day

You’ll usually find R.E.M. playing arenas and esteemed concert halls. But this week, the rock hall of famers were among the acts trying to catch a break and artists looking to build their audience at the sprawling South by Southwest music festival. The multiplatinum rockers played Stubbs BBQ shortly after midnight Wednesday before an energetic crowd of a couple thousand, marking the first time they’ve played the annual extravaganza in their nearly three-decade career. But it’s hardly a downgrade: Playing a showcase at SXSW has often been a way for a veteran act to make a big splash with a… Read more »

Multi-platinum Island Records group Fall Out Boy kicks off the new year with “****LIVE IN PHOENIX,” their first long-form CD+DVD two-disc package, set to arrive in stores on April 1st.   The core of the program will be their full-length Honda Civic Tour concert of June 2007 from the Cricket Pavilion in Phoenix, with all 22 songs contained on both the CD and DVD layers. In addition, the DVD layer will include all 8 of Fall Out Boy’s Island Records video clips in chronological order — from their debut single “Sugar, We’re Going Down” (MTV2 Award winner for 2005), “Dance,… 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 »

Eminem is about to lose himself with his word processor. The rap megastar, who has chronicled his turbulent life on his albums and the film 8 Mile, is now cranking out an autobiography, his U.K.-based publisher revealed Friday–to the chagrin of the hip-hopster’s camp. Titled Eminem: The Way I Am, the memoir is scheduled to arrive in book stores in Great Britain on Oct. 16, according to a statement from the Orion Publishing Group. “Everyone has their own take on Eminem. Because of where he is from, people think they know where he is at, what kind of person he… Read more »

The night before they were set to play for thousands of people at one of the world’s most famous venues, Linkin Park performed a midnight show for a small group of fans in an unlikely venue – an Apple store. The rock-rap group did a short but energetic set, including hits such as “Bleed It Out,” for about 200 fans early Thursday, just hours before their show that evening at Madison Square Garden. “We’re actually in the middle of our first U.S. arena tour in years,” guitarist Brad Delson told The concert, which ran about 30 minutes, will be available… Read more »

A start-up co-founded by famed Norwegian hacker “DVD Jon” is on Tuesday introducing a service that enables users to copy and use copy-protected Apple Inc iTunes songs on many popular non-Apple devices. The San Francisco-based company, doubleTwist, is releasing a service that makes it easy for consumers to share both user-generated and professionally created audio, photos and video clips via computers, certain mobile phones or PSP game players. Beyond computer-to-computer media-sharing, doubleTwist lets users synchronize media sitting on their computers to mobile devices they or their friends own, simply by “dragging and dropping” media files into a desktop folder that… Read more »

Qtrax, a new legal online file-sharing service that allows fans to download songs for free, said on Sunday it will launch with 25 million to 30 million copyrighted tracks with backing from major labels. The free service will be funded through advertising revenue that Qtrax will share with the music companies. Qtrax executives said the company’s digital rights management technology will count the number of times each song has been played in order to fairly compensate artists and rights’ holders, without restricting consumer use. The company has focused on ensuring that its network is free of spyware or adware such… Read more »

For Simple Plan, the multimillion-selling pop-punk band from Montreal, “The End” was also a new beginning. After a year writing material for the follow-up to 2004’s “Still Not Getting Any…,” the band was struggling to find a way forward, drummer Chuck Comeau says. But last spring in Miami — where Simple Plan had gone to test-drive some songs in the studio with producer Danja (Nelly Furtafo, Justin Timberlake) — it became clear the group could forge a bold new sound. “It really clicked for the first time in Miami when we came up with ‘The End,”‘ Comeau says, referring to… Read more »

British rock band Radiohead scored its second No. 1 album on the U.S. pop charts on Wednesday with a release that was initially sold on the Internet under a revolutionary “name-your-own-price” system. “In Rainbows” also topped the charts in Britain, Canada, France, Japan and Ireland, a representative for the group said. The critically acclaimed album sold a relatively modest 122,000 copies during its first official week in U.S. stores, according to Nielsen SoundScan data for the week ended January 6. It sold an additional 10,000 copies the week before, when some retailers put it on shelves ahead of its January… Read more »

U.S. album sales plunged 9.5 percent last year from 2006, continuing a downward trend for the recording industry, despite a 45 percent surge in the sale of digital tracks, according to figures released Thursday. A total of 500.5 million albums sold as CDs, cassettes, LPs and other formats were purchased last year, down 15 percent from 2006’s unit total, said Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks point-of-purchase sales. The shortfall in album sales drops to 9.5 percent when sales of digital singles are counted as 10-track equivalent albums. About 844.2 million digital tracks sold in 2007, compared to 588.2 million in 2006,… Read more »