Search Results for: The Aces

It’s early January, and occasional downpours drench thousands of fans as they file into Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium for Sound & Speed, an annual event featuring country stars and NASCAR drivers. Camo-clad devotees and their children, some dressed in miniature racing suits, line up for an autograph and a picture. The event is the perfect mix for those who consider autographs from Dierks Bentley and Dale Earnhardt Jr to be treasured booty. NASCAR fans and country music fans are eager to rub elbows with drivers and artists alike, something both circuits are eager to take advantage of. The 2009 race season… Read more »

Amazon.com Inc., pushing further into the digital distribution of books, unveiled a thinner and faster version of its Kindle electronic-book reader but raised controversy among publishers and others with a new text-reading feature. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos displays the Kindle 2 e-book reader at an event Monday. “Our vision is every book ever printed in any language all available in 60 seconds,” said Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos at a Monday press conference in a New York library. The Seattle company also said it has a new work by best-selling novelist Stephen King, called “Ur,” which will be available exclusively… Read more »

Sirius XM faces an incredibly difficult road to survival in 2009, multiple media sources report. Almost a billion dollars of debt will mature by the end of the year; should the satcaster not be able to cover that debt, it faces bankruptcy. The bills coming due include almost $200 million in February, $350 million in May and another $400 million in December. The Motley Fool’s Rick Aristotle Munarriz predicts that, “Between its present liquidity and its authorization to have as many as 8 billion shares outstanding, Sirius XM has enough ammo to get through February. Now it needs to clear… Read more »

LOS ANGELES — The group representing the U.S. recording industry said Friday it has abandoned its policy of suing people for sharing songs protected by copyright and will work with Internet service providers to cut abusers’ access if they ignore repeated warnings. The move ends a controversial program that saw the Recording Industry Association of America sue about 35,000 people since 2003 for swapping songs online. Because of high legal costs for defenders, virtually all of those hit with lawsuits settled, on average for around $3,500. The association’s legal costs, in the meantime, exceeded the settlement money it brought in.… Read more »

MTV marks the 10th anniversary of its AIDS awareness campaign this year with an hour-long documentary by U.S. singer and Destiny’s Child founding member Kelly Rowland. The music channel launched “MTV Staying Alive ” in 1998, and has produced films, competitions and celebrity tie-ins to educate young people about the risks of HIV and AIDS and encourage them to talk about it. The latest initiative is a video diary featuring Rowland, who along with Beyonce Knowles helped launch the successful girl band Destiny’s Child in 1990. The group split in 2005. In “The Diary of Kelly Rowland,” the 27-year-old travels… Read more »

MySpace, the popular social networking website owned by News Corp, said on Tuesday former MTV executive Courtney Holt will become president of its MySpace Music joint venture with the four major record companies. Holt’s name has been circulating on blogs for several weeks as a likely appointee. He will take on the delicate balancing act of managing expectations for MySpace executive team and the management teams at Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music, Warner Music Group and EMI Music. MySpace said Holt will work with MySpace co-founder and Chief Executive Chris DeWolfe to oversee the growth and development of… Read more »

R. Kelly’s 16-year-old nephew Brayel Kelly has been charged as an adult with attempted murder, according to authorities, after an incident in the Chicago area earlier this month in which the teen was shot. Calumet City police told MTV News that on November 6, Brayel Kelly – the son of R. Kelly’s estranged brother Carey Kelly – went into a barbershop and allegedly tried to rob the owner by producing a gun and demanding that the owner place his money and jewelry in a plastic bag. Though the owner complied, he also took out a weapon. Police said Kelly fired,… Read more »

BALTIMORE–Quick, what means the opposite of prima donnas? Whatever it is, that’s how you’d summarize Relient K, a Christian rock group that has just put out one of the sleeper holiday albums of the year, “Let it Snow Baby… Let It Reindeer.” “We actually had a lot of the songs done several years ago, but we didn’t release them,” said guitarist Matt Hoopes. “We just wanted to have fun doing some songs.” The album is a mix of holiday classics and songs written by frontman Matt Thiessen. It does for music what the films “Home for the Holidays” and more… Read more »

These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort… Read more »