Search Results for: The Maine

It’s 30 Seconds to Mars. And about half that to file a lawsuit. Jared Leto and his bandmate brother, Shannon, were sued Friday by Virgin Records America for failing to come through on a five-album deal the eyelinered duo and the now-defunct indie label, Immortal Records, inked with the plaintiff nine years ago. While Leto used a couple of those years to appear in movies like Girl, Interrupted and American Psycho, his band eventually got the ball rolling with its 2002 self-titled debut. The alt-rockers followed that up with 2005’s A Beautiful Lie. But since their sophomore effort, according to… Read more »

A tentative deal has been reached by a majority of commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission to approve the merger of Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., a FCC source close to the review said Wednesday. Republican commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate is the only FCC member left to vote on the deal and she is expected to do so shortly, two FCC officials close to the negotiations said. She is expected to sign off on the deal in exchange for a consent decree that resolves several enforcement issues involving the satellite radio companies and a combined… Read more »

The red carpet swiftly turned into a red river, but we knew it would take more than a soggy strip of flooring material to put a damper on the MuchMusic Video Awards. An early-evening deluge timed perfectly to truncate the annual, big pre-show build-up to last night’s MMVAs ceremony at Much headquarters on Queen West nevertheless added a new urgency to the usual hysteria that splays around Queen and John at this time of year. There was a real sense of brewing terror in the air on the carpet while everyone who’d gathered outside the old CHUM-City building — the… Read more »

“PRETTY. ODD.,” the eagerly awaited sophomore album from Decaydance/Fueled By Ramen recording group Panic At The Disco, has made a stellar debut on this week’s SoundScan/Billboard 200 album chart. The critically acclaimed collection enters in the #2 spot with sales of 139,000. “PRETTY. ODD.” — which follows the Las Vegas-based band’s RIAA platinum-certified 2005 debut, “A FEVER YOU CAN’T SWEAT OUT” — debuted at #1 on SoundScan’s “Current Alternative Albums” chart and #2 on the “Digital Albums” chart. In addition, “PRETTY. ODD.” debuted at #2 in the UK, Canada, and Mexico, with top 10 debuts in New Zealand, Austria, and… Read more »

In a slow week for new releases, mellow crooner Jack Johnson remained No. 1 on the U.S. pop album charts Wednesday, while newly minted Grammy winners Amy Winehouse and Herbie Hancock surged into the top five. Johnson’s “Sleep Through the Static” sold 179,545 copies in the week ended February 17, according to Nielsen SoundScan, enough to lead the field for a second week. Canadian rock band Simple Plan’s self-titled album started at No. 14 with 39,000 copies — 100,000 copies short of the No. 3 debut for its previous release, 2004’s “Still Not Getting Any…” Overall sales were down 11.6… 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 »

Wal-Mart has lost the head of its digital media department. Kevin Swint, once the champion of the retail giant’s music and video services, has left one large empire to join another, according to a report by Rafat Ali of PaidContent.org. Swint is starting the first full week of February as the international head of movies and television at Apple, Inc, where he will be tasked with managing the company’s burgeoning digital video channels. Apple has made clear its intentions to build the reach of its visual content offerings in line with the scope of its successful music distribution efforts. Swint’s… Read more »

Universal Music’s publishing division has overtaken EMI as the world’s leading major music publisher, according to market research on Monday. Music & Copyright (M&C), which is published by Informa said Universal’s market share among major music groups rose to 24 percent in 2007 from 11.9 percent a year earlier. Over the same period, EMI’s music publishing share remained steady at 17 percent. Independent publishers account for around one third of the global market. EMI was bought by private equity firm Terra Firma, which earlier this month announced plans to cut up to 2,000 jobs at the music company as part… Read more »

Heath Ledger, the Australian-born actor whose breakthrough role as a gay cowboy in the 2005 movie “Brokeback Mountain” earned him a nomination for an Academy Award and comparisons to the likes of Marlon Brando, was found dead Tuesday in an apartment in Manhattan with sleeping pills near his body, the police said. The police said Mr. Ledger, 28, was found naked on the floor near the bed in an apartment in SoHo that he had been renting. The chief police spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said the police did not suspect foul play. “There was no indication of a disturbance,” he… Read more »