Search Results for: Record Store Day

Over the last few decades, a veteran music act’s best shot at platinum magic usually consisted of pairing up with younger hitmakers (a la Santana) or covering treasured classics (like Rod Stewart. These days, another kind of vehicle has become a path to best-selling success – teaming up with box store chains. Garth Brooks ‘ started the trend in earnest back in 2005, with an exclusive Wal-Mart deal, and the Eagles and AC/DC had multiplatinum-plus success over the last two years by exclusively selling new CDs at Wal-Mart. Guns ‘N Roses sold about a million copies with a special Best… Read more »

Last week’s news that Virgin Megastores in New York’s Union Square and San Francisco were closing was evidently the tip of a very sharp iceberg. Billboard reports today that the multi-media chain’s only three remaining stores in Denver, Orlando and Los Angeles will also be shuttered by this summer. In a move that almost predicated the closures of the Virgin chain, Virgin Entertainment Group North America was acquired by a pair of real estate companies in 2007, Vornado and Related Cos., mostly because those companies were interested in Virgin’s prime locations. The music stores were paying well below-market value per-square-foot… Read more »

When Barack Obama moved into the White House on January 20th, he gained access to five chefs, a private bowling alley – and a killer collection of classic LPs. Stored in the basement of the executive mansion is the official White House Record Library: several hundred LPs that include landmark albums in rock (Led Zeppelin IV, the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed), punk (the Ramones’ Rocket to Russia, the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols), cult classics (Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, the Flying Burrito Brothers’ The Gilded Palace of Sin) and disco. Not to mention… Read more »

Hoping to cater to everyone from the garage guitarist to a recording musician, Best Buy Co. Inc. is announcing a massive new initiative that sets aside store space for an array of musical instruments and gear in dozens of sites nationwide. The nation’s largest consumer electronics retailer will announce Tuesday that it plans to open as many as 85 of the music centers inside its stores by the end of the year and could add even more locations in the future, executives told Each site will use about 2,500 square feet of retail space and include roughly 1,000 different products… Read more »

Back in 2001, Pennywise called their album Land Of The Free? (the question mark pointed out the inequities of modern existence). Now, in 2008, Pennywise–one of punk’s most credible and influential bands, who’ve sold over three million albums worldwide–will be giving away their next album for FREE. Beginning March 25, 2008, fans around the world will be able to obtain a high quality, DRM-free download from MySpace for a period of two weeks. Longtime PENNYWISE fan and seasoned producer Cameron Webb (Social Distortion, Motorhead, Sum 41) has signed on to produce and mix the upcoming CD. This music industry precedent… Read more »

AJ McLean remembers the conversation well. Kevin Richardson was having doubts about his future in the Backstreet Boys, and one night in the dressing room after a 2005 show, he told his friends in the mega-selling boy band how he was feeling. “There’s some things I need to do first, for me,” McLean recalled Richardson saying. The group had been discussing “when we wanted to start recording again,” McLean said. “Everyone was ready, but that was the first time Kevin put it out in the atmosphere that he wasn’t.” The Boys needed some time to digest Richardson’s news. In June… 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 Cure’s 14th studio record has been postponed for a second time and will not hit stores until next spring, the band’s record company said on Thursday. “The album got pushed to 2008, more like an April/May release. Robert is still recording,” a Geffen Records spokeswoman said from New York, referring to the band’s frontman Robert Smith. Smith told Reuters in an interview late last year that he was struggling to come up with lyrics to some of the 33 new songs he and the band had recorded. The new album was originally slated to be released in May this… Read more »

There wasn’t a Thursday fan alive who wasn’t floored by last month’s announcement that the New Jersey emo innovators will be working with Victory Records on a retrospective CD/DVD package that, as a press release noted, will “tell Thursday’s 10-year-career story from the beginning to the present.” After all, Thursday’s 2002 split from Victory – which issued the band’s landmark 2001 LP, Full Collapse – was the very definition of cantankerous. Mud was flung from both sides when the band joined Island Records, and lawyers were eventually called in to clean up the mess.At the time of the band’s break… Read more »

The eagerly awaited new album by Prince is being launched as a free CD with a national Sunday newspaper in a move that has drawn widespread criticism from music retailers. The Mail on Sunday revealed yesterday that the 10-track Planet Earth CD will be available with an “imminent” edition, making it the first place in the world to get the album. Planet Earth will go on sale on July 24. “It’s all about giving music for the masses and he believes in spreading the music he produces to as many people as possible,” said Mail on Sunday managing director Stephen… Read more »