Search Results for: between you & me

The Backstreet Boys were congregating backstage at Saturday’s Wango Tango On-Air festival when a herd of security guards nearly tumbled them. “They were like, ‘Move out of the way, get up against the wall,’” Nick Carter recalled later, smiling and likely embellishing a bit. “And then William Hung came through.” “Who?” Kevin Richardson asked. “Well Hung?” Joke or not, on a bill that included Janet Jackson, Lenny Kravitz, Jessica Simpson and a dozen other acts, William Hung was the headliner. After 14 hours of pop, rock, hip-hop, R&B and everything in between, the “American Idol” reject, dressed in a paisley… Read more »

MTV will take its irreverent Video Music Awards to Miami this year. The live event, in its 21st year, will be held Aug. 29 at the AmericanAirlines Arena, the cable television network announced Friday. It will be the first time the show is held outside Los Angeles or New York, which has hosted the awards in recent years. But because the Republican National Convention is scheduled for Aug. 30 to Sept. 2, having the VMAs in New York would have been difficult, said the VMA’s executive producer, Salli Frattini. “There were very, very limited venue possibilities in New York because… Read more »

“At the end of every show we’d grab handfuls of these stickers we made at Kinko’s with our name and website,” says Steriogram frontman Brad Carter. “We’d toss ’em to our fans from the stage, 300 or 400 stickers every night.” Carter laughs at the band’s ultra-humble approach to building fan loyalty. But it’s working. Steriogram’s homemade stickers, website and music videos, together with its enthusiastic courting of street teams and high school kids, helped launch the rock-hiphop group from obscurity in Auckland, NZ, to a major deal with Capitol Records. “Our goal was to play in America because our… Read more »

On Jan. 6, San Francisco’s Moscone convention center pulses with all the energy of a rock concert. A crowd sprinkled with hip-hop teenagers, digerati, and aging hippies streams in to hear the annual state-of-the-Mac keynote from Apple Computer Inc. Chief Executive Steven P. Jobs. Every facet of the event bears the fingerprints of the obsessive Jobs – right down to the music that fills the air. This year, it’s the King himself, Elvis Presley. Later, Jobs rolls the tape of Apple’s famous “1984” ad that ran on Super Bowl Sunday that year – and hasn’t been broadcast since. Only this… Read more »

Although industry-wide album sales were down from the same weeks of last year in the two stanzas prior to Christmas, an extra gift-shopping day during the holiday frame closed 2003 on an up note. With the holiday shifting back a day, from Wednesday in 2002 to Thursday, album sales are up a whopping 20.6% over the same week of the prior year. The final week’s splurge more than compensates for the 5.8% deficit seen the week before the Christmas frame or the 0.5% gap of the year’s 50th week. Further, the 31.3 million album units sold during this Christmas shopping… Read more »

As the early buzz over new music services such as Apple Computer’s iTunes fades, record labels and technology companies are struggling to turn the services into profitable businesses. Speaking at the iHollywood Forum’s Music 2.0 conference in Los Angeles Monday, executives on both sides focused on the 99-cent price tag that has become the market’s standard for downloadable music. Critics say that that price needs to come down if mainstream consumers are to start buying in large numbers, making the Internet a serious factor in the record industry’s bottom line. Record labels say they can’t afford to go lower. “There’s… Read more »

Lots of pop stars who are huge in Europe never succeed in the United States, but judging by Thursday’s MTV Europe Music Awards, Europeans can’t seem to get enough of American idols. Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé Knowles and Christina Aguilera were the big winners at this year’s racy, profanity-laden EMAs, held in Edinburgh, Scotland. Eight of the 12 awards were presented to U.S. residents. Timberlake won three trophies: Best Album for Justified, Best Pop and Best Male. The Neptunes, who produced much of Justified,presented him with the latter, and after they gave him the statue of an “M” on a spring,… Read more »

GO-KART RECORDS announce the release of the GO-KART MP300 RACEWAY on November 4th. Not only is this an awesome compilation CD with 300 songs (yes, 300 songs!) from 150 bands, it’s also the FIRST EVER commercially sold MP3 CD. That’s 300 songs from 150 bands (all CD quality MP3s) on two CDs for only $9.99! The story behind the MP300: As reported by IDG (International Data Group), “MP3” has replaced the term “sex” as the most popular search category on the Internet. This reinforces the importance MP3 technology has acquired in recent years, especially since file sharing and p2p (peer… Read more »

Kevin Richardson hopes others won’t have to follow his path to superstardom. Richardson left his native Kentucky as a teenager for a job at Walt Disney World before auditioning for an Orlando, Fla.-based group that would eventually become the Backstreet Boys. Now Richardson, 31, and childhood friend and songwriter Keith McGuffey have opened a music academy in downtown Louisville. Called The Music Workshop, its a catchall for performers, songwriters and producers seeking a career in music. “When me and Keith were growing up in central Kentucky there wasn’t any real outlet for us. If we wanted to get information about… Read more »