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NASHVILLE —  Watch Nathan Followill breeze into his local Nashville watering hole, and it’s obvious that he’s well known and well liked by the crew at McCabe’s Pub. Clad in sweats and a Yankees cap, the Kings of Leon drummer comes off more as cool local guy than international rock star Nothing in this manner indicates that his Nashville-based rock band’s fourth album is finally making the Kings as big in the United States as they have been in Europe since 2004, when the group had back-to-back No. 1 singles in the United Kingdom According to the band’s label, RCA,… Read more »

Bruce Springsteen has castigated Ticketmaster after it encouraged US fans to buy tickets online for one of his gigs at inflated prices. The Boss also put the boot in about any possible merger between Ticketmaster and concert promoter Live Nation, declaring that such a move would “make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan”. Springsteen, his manager Jon Landau and the entire Springsteen tour team claimed on the Brucemeister’s website that such a move would lead to “a near monopoly situation in music ticketing”. Officials in Connecticut and New Jersey are launching investigations into Ticketmaster’s sales practices, following… Read more »

Indie heavyweights Nettwerk, INgrooves, IRIS Distribution, RoyaltyShare and Wind-up have all signed deals to have their music featured and sold on MySpace Music. Indie aggregators The Orchard and IODA signed on several months ago. Today’s announcement leaves Merlin and its supporters including Koch and Beggars as the last large indie holdouts. When MySpace Music launched late last year, the indie community cried foul because they had not been offered the same equity position that the social networker gave the four major label groups. “Without an equitable participation by independents, that creates a situation that is both unhealthy and dangerous,” Merlin… Read more »

The pressure had been building up behind the scenes for longer than most music fans realized. But when the teen-pop explosion burst onto the charts in early 1999 it felt like the music world had been blindsided overnight by a flood of squeaky-clean acts who would dominate the charts for years to come. And in some cases, those ripples are still being felt today. It’s hard to believe it now, but over the course of a few months between late 1998 and early 1999, radio and MTV were inundated with the debuts and breakthroughs from Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, ‘NSYNC,… Read more »

Britney Spears' new single "Womanizer" made a record-breaking leap to top spot on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart on Wednesday, underscoring her musical comeback after making headlines with her personal woes. Billboard said the song, the first from a new Spears album due for release in December, jumped from No.96 to No.1 in the past week and returned Spears to the top of the list for the first time since her 1999 debut single "Baby One More Time." "Womanizer" is also No. 1 on iTunes charts in Canada, France, Spain and Sweden, Spears' record company Jive said. Billboard said the… Read more »

For those about to rock, AC/DC salutes you. Unless, that is, you want to buy the Australian heavy metal group's newest album, "Black Ice," on iTunes, or anywhere but Wal-Mart when it drops in record stores on October 20. "Maybe I'm just being old-fashioned, but this iTunes, God bless 'em, it's going to kill music if they're not careful," lead singer Brian Johnson, 61, told Reuters. AC/DC, formed by brothers Angus and Malcolm Young in 1973, is among only a handful of musicians to refuse to put their music on the popular download website in a move that Johnson defended… Read more »

This just hasn’t been the Barenaked Ladies’ year. First, cofounder Steven Page gets busted for drugs. Now this. BNL’s lead singer and principal songwriter, Ed Robertson, and three others narrowly averted disaster Sunday, walking away unscathed from a float-plane crash near Bancroft, Ontario. According to the Intelligencer of Belleville, Ontario, Robertson was at the controls of a Cessna 206 when a gust of wind caused the plane to stall, forcing him to put down in a wooded area near the resort of Baptiste Lake. “Everyone is fine and that is the important thing,” Barenaked Ladies rep Adam Smith told the… Read more »

Simple Plan’s guitarist Jeff Stinco was notably absent from Simple Plan’s Download set on Friday (June 13th). He grabbed a last minute flight back to Canada for ‘personal reasons’. The band was keen to fulfil their commitments and play the metal festival, but struggled on stage without the aid of their much loved lead guitarist. Front man, Pierre Bouvier seemed confused, telling the crowd, “It’s great to be in Birmingham”, when they were actually in Donninton. Simple Plan played a shortened set including ‘Your Love is a Lie’, ‘You’re Gone’, ‘Welcome to My Life’, ‘Generation’ and ‘I’d Do Anything’ before… Read more »

Yoko Ono lost her legal bid Monday to stop the playing of a 15-second excerpt of John Lennon’s song “Imagine” in a film challenging the theory of evolution. Lennon’s widow had sued the makers of “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” saying they used the ex-Beatle’s anthem without her permission. Ono, who had sought a preliminary injunction before the movie gets a wider release, said she would appeal. The other plaintiffs were Lennon’s sons, Sean and Julian. U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein ruled that if the case went to court, the filmmakers would probably win under the fair use doctrine. “That doctrine… Read more »

The secret’s out: MySpace Music Secret Shows are a hit. Social networking pioneer MySpace has created its most successful music program with the intimate Secret Shows series, whose 150th installment will feature Gnarls Barkley on June 8 at Irving Plaza in New York. MySpace Music launched the Secret Shows franchise in January 2006 and has since hosted such acts as Rilo Kiley, Moby, Maroon 5, the Killers, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Tenacious D, Lily Allen, Ice Cube, James Blunt and Neil Diamond in cities around the world. The concept is the brainchild of MySpace Music editor Isac Walter, who wanted… Read more »