Search Results for: dr dre

Anchored from President-elect Obama’s official Youth Inaugural Ball, MTV and ServiceNation announced “Be the Change: Live From the Inaugural” on Sunday (January 11), which will celebrate the huge youth-voter turnout in the 2008 presidential election and ongoing youth community service. The show will feature live remarks from the newly inaugurated president as he addresses young people across the globe from the Youth Inaugural Ball, and call on them to continue to engage in national and community service. Obama’s remarks will be made available to viewers around the world, reaching a potential global youth audience of 1 billion people in 162… Read more »

Sirius XM faces an incredibly difficult road to survival in 2009, multiple media sources report. Almost a billion dollars of debt will mature by the end of the year; should the satcaster not be able to cover that debt, it faces bankruptcy. The bills coming due include almost $200 million in February, $350 million in May and another $400 million in December. The Motley Fool’s Rick Aristotle Munarriz predicts that, “Between its present liquidity and its authorization to have as many as 8 billion shares outstanding, Sirius XM has enough ammo to get through February. Now it needs to clear… Read more »

LOS ANGELES — The group representing the U.S. recording industry said Friday it has abandoned its policy of suing people for sharing songs protected by copyright and will work with Internet service providers to cut abusers’ access if they ignore repeated warnings. The move ends a controversial program that saw the Recording Industry Association of America sue about 35,000 people since 2003 for swapping songs online. Because of high legal costs for defenders, virtually all of those hit with lawsuits settled, on average for around $3,500. The association’s legal costs, in the meantime, exceeded the settlement money it brought in.… Read more »

The record label co-founded by Bright Eye’s Coner Oberst, Team Love, is giving away its catalog along with new material on a rotating basis via a newly launched Team Love Library. Oberst and company’s playful concept has planted a field of viral marketing potential, but they forgot the fertilzer to help it grow. “When Team Love started we had the simple and possibly self-defeating notion that posting all our albums on the website as free downloads would be a good detour around the wreckage of the music industry…”   reads a post on the Library’s site. “Five years later and… Read more »

NEW YORK — Sotheby‘s has withdrawn from auction three papers related to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr after his estate claimed the documents being sold by Harry Belafonte are estate property. Belafonte himself asked that the papers be withdrawn from Thursday’s sale, said Lauren Gioia, a Sotheby’s spokeswoman. The auction house did not comment further. The documents, including a handwritten draft of King’s first anti-Vietnam war speech in 1967, had a collective pre-sale estimate of $750,000 to $1.3 million. “The King estate believes the documents being offered in Thursday’s auction are a part of the wrongly acquired collection,” said a… Read more »

He had one of the biggest opening sales weeks of 2008, and now, Lil Wayne is the year’s most-nominated Grammy contender. Wayne and his latest LP, “Tha Carter III,” lead the pack with a total of eight nominations, while one of the year’s other biggest sellers, Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends,” garnered seven nods. Jay-Z, Ne-Yo and Kanye West each earned six nods, while Alison Krauss, John Mayer, Robert Plant, Radiohead and Jazmine Sullivan received five each. Adele is up for four – including Best New Artist – as are Lupe Fiasco and T.I. The… Read more »

LOS ANGELES — Bono’s adding to his résumé for sainthood. For today’s 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day, the U2 frontman and all-around good guy is helping launch (RED)WIRE, a music-themed site to benefit the cause.   “Through music [people] are not just celebrating their life, they are celebrating lives and the saving of them,” Bono says in a video message. And he’s getting some help from a few all-star pals. Among the featured tunes: the Dixie Chicks’ “Lucky Ones,” the Texas trio’s first new music since 2006’s Taking the Long Way; Jay-Z ‘s “Brooklyn Go Hard,” featuring Santogold ;… Read more »

Music merchandisers weren’t sharing the general optimism of most retailers during Thanksgiving weekend. Music sales were down from 10 percent to 30 percent, and big-name albums released for Black Friday, the post-Thanksgiving kickoff to the holiday retail season, didn’t perform up to expectations, according to merchants contacted by Billboard. Sources said that Kanye West’s “808s & Heartbreak” will sell in the range of 425,000-450,000 units, significantly down from 700,000-975,000 units previously projected. Guns N’ Roses’ “Chinese Democracy” is expected to clock in at 250,000-260,000, not the predicted 300,000-784,000 units. At music specialty stores Newbury Comics, sales were down 21 percent… Read more »

NEW YORK – Coldplay was the hottest iTunes album download this year: Its “Viva la Vida” was crowned the best-selling album of 2008, while Leona Lewis’s “Bleeding Love” was named the top-selling single. Coldplay’s CD has sold more than 2 million copies since its release in June, and has sold more than 500,000 copies digitally – most of which was through iTunes, according to the band’s representative. ITunes does not release its sales figures, its spokesman said in releasing its list on Monday. Jack Johnson’s “Sleep Through the Static” was the No. 2 selling album, while the soundtrack to the… Read more »

Bruce Springsteen has unveiled a second new song from his next album, “Working on a Dream,” jointly through Amazon.com and MySpace Music. Fans can download “My Lucky Day” from the two services exclusively for a week, starting Monday (December 1). The sites are also hosting the live-in-the-studio video for the song, with Amazon.com featuring an extra two minutes of behind-the-scenes clips. The title track from the new album, due January 27 from Columbia, is an iTunes exclusive for the time being. The artist and his E Street Band will return to the live stage February 1 as part of the… Read more »