Search Results for: against the current

AJ McLean remembers the conversation well. Kevin Richardson was having doubts about his future in the Backstreet Boys, and one night in the dressing room after a 2005 show, he told his friends in the mega-selling boy band how he was feeling. “There’s some things I need to do first, for me,” McLean recalled Richardson saying. The group had been discussing “when we wanted to start recording again,” McLean said. “Everyone was ready, but that was the first time Kevin put it out in the atmosphere that he wasn’t.” The Boys needed some time to digest Richardson’s news. In June… Read more »

The world was treated to “Gimme More” this summer. But Perez Hilton may have given his readers too much, too soon. Zomba Recording LLC, which is owned by Sony BMG, filed a federal copyright-infringement lawsuit Thursday against the online gossip purveyor, saying that over the past three months he illegally posted at least 10 new Britney Spears tracks, both completed cuts and unfinished demos, on perezhilton.com. “The unauthorized dissemination of recordings is a serious violation of copyright law,” said a Zomba spokesperson. “In addition, posting demos and unfinished songs as if they were final versions is grossly unfair to the… Read more »

Sumner Redstone, the billionaire businessman who grew up in Boston’s former West End and went on to build a career at the forefront of the entertainment industry, delivered a message to a standing-room-only crowd at Boston University yesterday: content is still king, but in the digital age, copyright is what matters. Redstone, 84, the majority owner of National Amusements and the chairman of the boards of Viacom, the CBS Corporation, and the MTVi Group, spoke at the School of Law Auditorium about the challenges of keeping a media company profitable in the digital age and answered questions from Bill Schwartz,… Read more »

LOS ANGELES, CA –NEW FOUND GLORY will cover classics hits such as “Kiss Me,” “Iris” and “Don’t You Forget About Me” on their upcoming release, From The Screen To Your Stereo 2 out on September 18th. The album consists of the band’s own take on soundtrack songs from popular movies from the 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s. The album also features guest vocalists from friends of the band including Adam Lazarra from Taking Back Sunday, Chris Carraba from Dashboard Confessional,Will Pugh from Cartel, Patrick Stump from Fall Out Boy.  Lisa Loeb sings on her own number one single, “Stay.”  Complete track… Read more »

There wasn’t a Thursday fan alive who wasn’t floored by last month’s announcement that the New Jersey emo innovators will be working with Victory Records on a retrospective CD/DVD package that, as a press release noted, will “tell Thursday’s 10-year-career story from the beginning to the present.” After all, Thursday’s 2002 split from Victory – which issued the band’s landmark 2001 LP, Full Collapse – was the very definition of cantankerous. Mud was flung from both sides when the band joined Island Records, and lawyers were eventually called in to clean up the mess.At the time of the band’s break… Read more »

Michael Jackson is (a) bedridden; (b) convinced his brother Randy has been stealing from him; (c) getting evicted from his Las Vegas residence; (d) readying a European tour, or (e) none of the above. The answer, according to the reclusive entertainer’s hardworking spokeswoman, is “e.” Raymone Bain issued a statement Thursday in response to a spate of recent published reports about Jackson that she called “untrue, defamatory and malicious in nature.” Among the assertions denied by Bain was that Jackson was confined to his bed, or relying on any sort of medication, “including painkillers.” “In fact, Mr. Jackson is doing… Read more »

Recently, Maureen Callahan wrote a piece for the New York Post about Crush Management, the NYC cadre that shepherds the careers of Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, the Academy Is … , Boys Like Girls and Armor for Sleep (or, as Callahan puts it, “basically any band that a 13-year-old girl with a blog and a Hot Topic habit obsesses over”). Aside from providing readers with some genuinely bananas quotes from songwriter/ rock-and-roll vampire Butch Walker about credibility (especially considering this is on his résumé), the article is excellent primarily because it floats the hypothesis that the artists… Read more »

Net radio stations got a boost Thursday with the introduction of a new Senate bill that would block an aggressive increase in the copyright royalties webcasters pay to record labels. The new Senate bill–called the Internet Radio Equality Act of 2007–is sponsored by Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Rep. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas). It’s a companion bill to another piece of legislation of the same name introduced in the House last month by Reps. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Donald Manzullo (R-Ill.). The new higher rates were adopted in early March by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) at the federal copyright office.… Read more »

It’s beyond obvious that the guys in My Chemical Romance have come a long way since the days when they were compared to the likes of Thursday and other bands in New Jersey’s emo/post-hardcore scene, if their concert at the Anaheim Convention Center on Sunday night was any indicator. Lead singer/songwriter/MCR mastermind Gerard Way and company entertained a sold-out crowd with an energetic and polished show that made clear their desire to be arena rock gods. However, the band members’ decision to not only play their latest album “The Black Parade” in its entirety but also perform the set in… Read more »

AUSTIN, Texas – Every March, the music industry throws on a pair of shorts, slathers on the SPF 45 and heads on down to Austin for South by Southwest, a weeklong celebration of bands, BBQ and (sometimes free!) beer. It’s a brutal bacchanal and music marathon powered by thousands of acts playing in hundreds of venues – at all hours – plus an unreal number of open-bar tabs and fancy private parties. Sleep is not exactly a top priority, so MTV News has dispatched three of its most tireless reporters into the fray. They’ll be filing reports a few times… Read more »