Search Results for: Record Store Day

Maybe you can blame it on some indie-minded guilt. On March 1, Death Cab for Cutie – longtime independent stalwarts recently inked to Atlantic Records – will drop The John Byrd EP, the final release for them on tiny Seattle label Barsuk Records. The EP will only be available in two places: on Barsuk’s Web site or in record stores who are members of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores. It could be the result of a guilty conscience. But it’s more than likely not. “We just wanted to have a properly recorded live record out there, because bootlegs show… Read more »

The Apple iTunes store has been selling a million tracks a day, it was announced recently. And no, that is not a misprint: a million a day. This will come as no surprise to readers of this column. Quite why the music industry didn’t spot the opportunity will be the subject of innumerable MBA dissertations in the years to come. But for now the significant thing to note is that it was a computer manufacturer and not a record company that cracked the problem of providing legal music downloads. On a global scale, you might say that the inadequacies of… Read more »

Classic-rock fan George Petersen doesn’t need another copy of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” or Cream’s “Disraeli Gears.” He has spent the past four decades buying and re-buying his favorite music in a succession of new formats: vinyl, 8-track, cassette, compact disc, Super Audio CD, DVD-Audio. Enough is enough. The basement is full. “We as consumers have been trained by the music industry to go out and buy a new piece of plastic every few years,” said the 51-year-old Petersen, editorial director of Mix, a San Francisco-based magazine that covers professional sound recording. “Why do we keep buying… Read more »

Washington – Eleven years after the demise of his million-selling rock band Nirvana, Krist Novoselic is back on the road, but this time he’s getting out of bed before noon. Novoselic, whose bass guitar anchored one of the most popular and influential bands of the 1990s, now spends his time pushing for voting reforms that he thinks could change the cynicism many people feel about U.S. politics. It’s a gig that requires him to wear a suit and tie and speak to audiences that measure in the dozens, rather than the thousands. But Novoselic, 39, sees parallels with the heady… Read more »

CANNES, France – The theme song isn’t quite “Happy Days are Here Again,” but almost. Music industry veterans, after several years of worrying about how illegal Internet downloads could threaten their business, are humming a decidedly upbeat tune these days. While questions remain about how to best deliver hits by U2 or arias by Luciano Pavarotti to music fans, one of the industry’s top conferences opened Saturday in this Riviera resort amid new signs that online downloads could become a moneymaker after all. The optimism at the Midem conference is a sharp turnaround from a year earlier, before music publishers… Read more »

Las Vegas – Satellite radio providers XM and Sirius used the 2005 International Consumer Electronics Show here to outline a bold agenda for market expansion. Both introduced new products and programming for the new year. XM unveiled a major push into the home audio market via its Connect and Play initiative, which consists of an XM-ready chip and data port. More than 10 major home entertainment equipment providers have agreed to incorporate XM’s technology and logo into such appliances as DVD players, stereos and boomboxes. Customers will have to connect a $50 XM home antenna to their devices to play… Read more »

Los Angeles – Evanescence singer Amy Lee hopes to have a follow up to the goth-rock group’s two-year-old mega-hit “Fallen” in stores by the end of the year. “I knew it was going to take a while, and it is. We’re obviously taking longer than the average band,” she told Billboard recently. “Fallen,” released in March 2003, has sold 6 million copies in the United States alone, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Last February, the band won two Grammys, for best new artist and hard rock performance. In addition to writing individually, the members have done a little collaborating, Lee said.… Read more »

New York – Christmas sales came in the nick of time, saving the holiday selling season for most merchants at the last minute. After watching sales waver on an almost daily basis in the first half of December, most retailers say that because the weeks before and after Christmas were strong, stores could top last year’s numbers. “Christmas was late coming, but once it did, it came crushing in,” says Geoffrey Caruso, manager of the Amoeba store in Berkeley, Calif. “In the first part of December, it vacillated from day to day.” Indeed, Nielsen SoundScan numbers confirm that for the… Read more »

There were two obsessions that fueled the recording process of 3 Doors Down’s new album, Seventeen Days : the band’s obsession with hard work and Bob Seger’s obsession with hot coffee. “We finished our tour on July 31, and we wanted to get this new album out by the beginning of 2005. So we just got to it, crammed, and wrote 13 songs in 17 days. Hence the name,” bassist Todd Harrell said. “By the middle of August, we had written the album. We all get stagnant when we’re sitting at home, so why waste a lot of time?” OK,… Read more »

New York – A guitar played by George Harrison of the Beatles was sold for $567,500 on Friday, topping the bill at what auction house Christie’s said was its biggest ever sale of show business memorabilia. The Gibson SG electric guitar, played by Harrison from 1966-1969, was the star attraction among over 400 lots, ranging from guitars and clothing to scraps of paper signed by stars. The guitar, which had a pre-sale estimate of $500,000, was used while recording the Beatles’ “Revolver” album. John Lennon also played it on what is commonly known as “The White Album.” The Beatles guitar… Read more »