Search Results for: Set It off

While Madonna prepares to bring her “Drowned World Tour” to North America, her record label has reportedly jettisoned a half-dozen staffers. Daily Variety reported in its Friday edition that the president of Maverick Records had resigned while five other staffers were axed. The label, whose top acts include Canadian pop singer Alanis Morissette and hard rock band the Deftones, blamed deteriorating market conditions, the trade paper said. Label president Bill Bennett, who had been with Maverick for only two years, will not be replaced, Daily Variety said. It was not clear how many people are employed at Maverick. Madonna runs… Read more »

Concert promoters say London is a last-minute town when it comes to ticket buying… but not when it’s O-Town fans doing the buying.  It took just 100 minutes for the first of tomorrow’s two Centennial Hall shows by the boy band machine to sell out two months ago. The second show went almost as quickly to fans who had lined up unsuccessfully for that first show. That’s more than 3,000 tickets.  As the late, great Jim Morrison of the Doors used to intone, the men don’t know, but the little girls understand.  The thing that sets this American five-piece group… Read more »

Embattled song-swap service Napster Inc. said Monday it was using new digital encoding technology to power a subscription-based service it hopes to launch this summer. Napster said the technology, licensed from PlayMedia Systems, would enable Napster’s software to encode, recognize and play copyright-protected music files on the membership service. “Napster is at the forefront of using some extremely advanced rights management and security technologies in a file-sharing environment,” Napster’s interim CEO Hank Barry said in a statement. Napster, fighting for its life in a legal battle with the recording industry, went offline this month as engineers sought to fix problems… Read more »

Neil Diamond, one of the most dependable touring acts in the music business, will return to the road in September to promote his first album of new material in four years, a spokeswoman said on Sunday. The 60-year-old singer/songwriter, famed for such tunes as “Cracklin’ Rosie” and “Solitary Man,” will be promoting his new album “Three Chord Opera” which hits U.S. stores on July 24. His arena tour of 31 North American cities will begin on Sept. 28 at Value City Arena in Columbus, Ohio, said Diamond’s publicist, Sherrie Levy. The tour is tentatively set to end on Dec. 21… Read more »

Napster plans to appeal a crushing decision handed down by a federal judge that the company remain off-line until it can perfect its song-swapping system. U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall shot down the notion that Napster could quietly come back online without 100 percent effectiveness in its song-screening technology after an injunction that it remove all copyright music. Napster told Patel in a closed-door meeting Wednesday that it could promise more than 99 percent effectiveness. But Patel demanded 100 percent compliance to keep infringing music out of the hands of music fans used to trading the songs for free. That… Read more »

German media giant Bertelsmann’s shakeup of its flagging music division looks set to continue with U.S.-based subsidiary Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) reportedly looking to lay off hundreds of employees in its efforts to cut costs and raise profits. Rumors followed the appointment last week of former BMG Germany chief Thomas Stein to head BMG’s European division. Stein replaces Richard Griffiths, who is leaving the company by mutual agreement after six months in the job. “We have a new European management team and everything is being reviewed,” said a BMG Europe spokeswoman in Munich, who confirmed that BMG’s top management would… Read more »

Mest has just put the finishing touches on their brand new album, “DESTINATION UNKNOWN,” set for release August 14, with the album’s debut single, “Cadillac,” which features hip-hop legend Young MC, cruising into radio the first week of July. Produced by Goldfinger’s John Feldmann and recorded at his Marina Del Rey studio, “DESTINATION UNKNOWN” is the latest step in the Illinois-based band’s journey across the punk-time continuum. Comprised of singer/guitarist Tony Lovato, bassist Matt Lovato, guitarist Jeremiah Rangel, and drummer Nick Gigler, Mest drew national attention last year with their debut album WASTING TIME. The new album fulfills all the… Read more »

While the music industry responded aggressively to curb the spread of piracy on the Internet, the number of pirated music discs sold worldwide soared last year. A report released today by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said that even as music industry worked to curb the spread of piracy on the Internet, the number of pirated music discs sold worldwide soared by 25 percent last year. The report, dubbed “IFPI Music Piracy Report 2001,” goes on to say that a total of 1.8 billion pirate recordings (CDs and cassettes) were estimated to be sold in 2000, meaning… Read more »

Slipknot have run afoul in a Missouri ballpark, their onstage cussing allegedly despoiling the wholesome name of a Midwest supermarket chain. Ramey/Price Cutter Supermarkets, which owns 29 stores throughout southern Missouri and southeast Kansas, expressed concern following Slipknot’s profanity-laden performance Sunday at Price Cutter Park in Springfield, Missouri. The show apparently offended many neighbors, who filed obscenity complaints with the Ozark Police Department, according to an Associated Press report. A spokesperson for Ramey/Price Cutter president Larry Willis said that the store wishes to meet with concert promoters to decide whether or not it “agrees” with artists booked at the venue,… Read more »

By all accounts, Madonna’s first world tour in eight years kicked off with a roaring success in Barcelona, Spain, on Sunday (June 10). The Material Girl continued the theme of her Scottish Highlands wedding by donning a Jean Paul Gaultier-designed kilt and sleeveless black top for the opening bars of the Drowned World Tour 2001 at the Palau Sant Jordi stadium, according to various media accounts. The 18,000-plus sold-out crowd of Spanish revelers was reportedly so loud throughout the 20-song, two-hour set that the noise drowned out the music itself, clocking in at over 120 decibels at one point, according… Read more »