Search Results for: Thursday

XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. reported a wider net loss for the fourth quarter of 2004 on Thursday as the company bulked up on new subscribers, adding more than 700,000 in the latest quarter to top 3.2 million users. XM, which is based in Washington, D.C., reported a net loss attributable to common shareholders of $190.3 million for the last three months of 2004, more than the loss of $170.2 million reported in the comparable period a year ago. The per-share loss calculations, however, fell to 93 cents in the latest period from $1.12 a year ago, mainly because of… Read more »

Gertrude Walton of Fayette County hated computers, her daughter said. That did not stop the recording industry from accusing the now deceased 83-year-old Mount Hope woman of illegally trading music over the Internet. More than a month after Walton was buried in Beckley, a group of record companies named her as the only defendant in a federal lawsuit. They claimed Walton made more than 700 pop, rock and rap songs available for free on the Internet under the screen name “smittenedkitten.” On Thursday, a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America acknowledged that Walton was probably not the smittenedkitten… Read more »

Honda Civic Tour dates, according to the tour’s organizers: – With Phantom Planet, the Thrills and the Donnas as their co-pilots, Maroon 5 will hit the road for two months on the fifth annual 2005 Honda Civic Tour. Maroon 5 will headline the trek, which begins March 11 in Universal City, California. “This is the first headlining U.S. tour we’ve done in a long time,” bassist Mickey Madden said Thursday at a press conference in West Hollywood, California, announcing the outing. “We’re playing some of the biggest places we’ve ever played, which is very exciting. And we’re taking out some… Read more »

Tokyo – Sony Corp. reported Thursday a 55 percent rise in earnings for the October-December quarter on home entertainment revenue from “Spider-Man 2,” although its core electronics sector was battered by sluggish sales and price declines. The Tokyo-based electronics and entertainment giant said its group net profit for the fiscal third quarter totaled 143.8 billion yen ($1.4 billion), up from 92.6 billion yen a year earlier. Sales for the quarter dipped 7.5 percent to 2.15 trillion yen ($20.9 billion) from 2.32 trillion yen. Sony’s profits got a lift from improved results at Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, its mobile phone unit,… Read more »

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro – Greeting members of the rock band R.E.M. in his Belgrade office, Serbia’s President Boris Tadic said he’s a fan and requested that his favorite song, “Orange Crush,” be played at their concert Friday. Youthful and soft-spoken, Tadic, 46, is at the helm of a democratic leadership striving to open the troubled Balkan republic to the West after years of ostracism and isolation during the rule of Yugoslavia’s ex-President Slobodan Milosevic. Bringing world-famous artists to the country is part of that effort, said Nebojsa Krstic, head of Tadic’s press team. Krstic said Tadic has been a fan of… Read more »

licia Keys will sing “America the Beautiful” prior to this year’s Super Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla. It will be just the third time the song is sung at the Super Bowl – previously performed only by Vicki Carr and Ray Charles. Accompanying Keys will be 150 students from the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, which Charles attended as a youth in 1937. “I’m very excited to be playing at the Super Bowl for the first time especially because I will be singing a song made famous by an artist I admire, miss and respect, Ray Charles, along… Read more »

In the wake of the tsunami disasters in Southeast Asia and Eastern Africa, more celebrities are using their star power to help garner support for the victims and their families. Madonna, Diana Ross, Maroon 5 and Mary J. Blige have joined the NBC Universal benefit special, “Tsunami Aid: A Concert of Hope,” a program that will benefit the American Red Cross, according to Reuters. The telethon will air on Saturday on NBC and its sister cable channels, which include USA, Bravo, Sci-Fi, MSNBC and CNBC. Virgin Megastores has also announced that it will contribute to the relief effort by launching… Read more »

New York – A woman who says she is a former girlfriend of KISS rocker Gene Simmons is suing him for slander, saying the bass guitarist made her sound like a “sex-addicted nymphomaniac” during a “rockumentary” on VH-1 television. Georgeann Walsh Ward, 53, of Chester, N.Y., says in court papers that a photo of her appeared 11 times during the report on KISS, shown on the network several times in July and August, while Simmons claimed to have had sexual encounters with 4,600 women. In the documentary, “When KISS Ruled The World,” Simmons commented that “there wasn’t a girl that… Read more »

Los Angeles – Doors manager Danny Sugerman, who befriended the members of the legendary Los Angeles rock band as a youngster and spent the rest of his life tending to its legacy, has died after a battle with lung cancer, associates said on Thursday. He was 50. Sugerman, who died at his home on Wednesday, was responsible for reigniting interest in the band with the best-selling 1980 Doors memoir “No One Here Gets Out Alive,” which he co-wrote with veteran music journalist Jerry Hopkins. He also served as a technical advisor on Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie “The Doors,” which starred… Read more »

Paris – Hip-hop rhymers, classical orchestras, church choirs, punk bands and creamy-voiced crooners from Paris to Hong Kong are taking up the fund-raising theme for victims of the Asian tsunami, holding money-raising concerts and singing special songs. Ever since the 1980s African famine relief hit “We Are the World” and its Band Aid predecessor “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” support from musicians has been part of charity fund-raising. But the response to the tsunami has been huge. In Norway alone, dozens of benefit concerts are planned. In its oil capital, Stavanger, groups scheduled a free show Thursday, with cash to… Read more »