Search Results for: You Me At Six

The embattled record industry got more bad news on Sunday as a study showed online sales of music dropped 25 percent in the first nine months of 2002. The survey by research firm ComScore Networks Inc, which monitored more than 1.5 million Web users, showed online sales of music – in the form of physical singles, albums, CDs and tapes – fell to $545 million from $730 million in the same period a year earlier. Sales of digital downloads were also included in the survey but accounted for a tiny portion of the total, ComScore said. As the music industry… Read more »

The Foo Fighters will embark on an eight-city U.S. tour later this month, with each date scheduled to be announced as tickets go on sale. The Brandtidos trek, sponsored by Sirius Satellite Radio, comes in support of the group’s fourth album, “One by One,” due Oct. 22 from RCA. The only date confirmed so far is Oct. 22 in Los Angeles, but an Oct. 31 show in New York, dubbed the “Foos-Ball & Halloween Costume Party,” will be announced today (Oct. 7) by local radio station K-ROCK. Sirius subscribers can get a jump on tickets before they go on sale… Read more »

A year after Michael Jackson gathered Britney Spears, ‘NSYNC, Destiny’s Child and dozens of other superstars to record “What More Can I Give,” the September 11 benefit single is finally being heard. New York radio station WKTU-FM debuted the song on Friday at 6 p.m. and has been playing it about six times a day since, albeit without permission. Program Director Frankie Blue, a longtime friend of Jackson’s, won’t say how he got the song, but he insists the King of Pop had nothing to do with it. Marc Schaffel, the executive producer of the single, said at least 200… Read more »

Britney Spears, the U.S. pop idol who is taking a six-month sabbatical at the tender age of 20, said on Tuesday she planned to return to the recording studio after a break hosted by Italian designer Donatella Versace. “I think I may just go to Los Angeles and record a little bit. But other than that I just plan to hang out,” Spears told Reuters before taking her seat in the front row of Versace’s spring/summer 2003 fashion show. “It’s like a dream come true being here right now,” said Spears, who in August decided to take six months off… Read more »

In a fight to win back fans from the “gray zone” of online song-swapping services, the music industry is borrowing a trick from its nemeses: free music downloads. For one week beginning Thursday, music fans in Europe will be able to download, stream or burn onto their hard drives a selection of tracks from 6,000 artists including ColdPlay, Dido and Elvis Presley. It is part of a marketing ploy called “Digital Download Day” devised by British firm OD2, a technology company specializing in digital music distribution and co-founded by recording artist Peter Gabriel. Backed by record labels and music retailers,… Read more »

Yoko Ono and Frederic Seaman, a former personal assistant to John Lennon, privately reached agreement early today in a U.S. District Court in Manhattan, foregoing closing arguments and jury deliberation after four days at trial. The lawsuit, filed by Ono over three years ago, charged Seaman – who worked with the Lennon family between 1979 and 1982 – with failing to return several documents and hundreds of photos after he was found guilty of grand larceny in 1982. Seaman had stolen and subsequently returned Lennon’s personal diaries as well as letters, drawings, contracts, demo tapes, and stereo equipment. However, Ono’s… Read more »

Some popular online services are using a new kind of software to divert sales commissions that would otherwise be paid to small online merchants by big sites like Amazon and eToys. Critics call the software parasite-ware and stealware. But the sites that use the software, which is made by nearly 20 companies and used by dozens, say that it is perfectly legal, because their users agree to the diversion. The amounts involved are estimated by those in the industry to have mounted into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and are likely to continue to grow – in part because… Read more »

W. Axl Rose will exhibit his appetite for reconstruction when Guns N’ Roses re-emerge for their first U.S. tour in nine years with many new band members and a batch of new material. The first date of the group’s trek will be November 7 in Vancouver at General Motors Place. An additional 25 dates have been announced, the last of which will be December 21 in Dallas at the American Airlines Center. More shows will be booked in the coming weeks. Guns N’ Roses, who have been out of the U.S. spotlight for the past decade, performed on television for… Read more »

While Joey resurrects Broadway and Lance threatens to blast into space, Justin will have to be content with trying to change the face of pop music – again. Justin Timberlake’s debut solo record, Justified (November 12), is a broad, ambitious step from the clean, blissful pop of ‘NSYNC. Timberlake’s vocals still soar, but there’s a lot more funk in his step and a number of R&B artists influencing his sound, including Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Prince, Aaliyah and Missy Elliott. “I wanted to do something new that was just completely me,” he said. “I had been so personally drained from… Read more »

The Epic Records Group, a unit of Sony Music, is approaching the sticky problem of prerelease music’s being traded online with an even stickier solution. Writers receiving review copies of two soon-to-be-released albums – Tori Amos’s “Scarlet’s Walk” and Pearl Jam’s “Riot Act” – are finding the CD’s already inside Sony Walkman players that have been glued shut. Headphones are also glued into the players, to prevent connecting the Walkman to a recording device. By locking up the discs, Epic hopes to keep writers from converting the music to MP3’s that can then be traded over the Net. But even… Read more »