Search Results for: european

Britney Spears’ “Circus” tour is getting an encore. Holly Shakoor, Spears’ publicist, confirms that concerts will be held in several U.S. cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. The shows will kick off August 20th in Canada. Concerts are also scheduled for North Carolina, Iowa, Oklahoma and Texas. They will follow Spears’ concerts in London and several other European cities. The 27-year-old singer also announced this week that her tour will go to Australia in November. Spears’ “Circus” tour reached second place in recent box-office gross rankings by Pollstar.

Apple’s iTunes online music store may reach more customers throughout Europe after the body tasked with collecting artist royalties in France agreed to allow counterparts elsewhere to license its catalog. SACEM, which collects royalties for about 128,000 artists, said it would be willing to drop territorial restrictions and allow national counterparts to license its repertoire, European antitrust regulators said on Tuesday. If pan-European licensing becomes a reality, Apple, which controls slightly more than half of global digital music sales through iTunes, may look at broadening access to the system, European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes added. “If iTunes was readily able… Read more »

There’s a certain serendipity to Paramore’s opening slot on the upcoming and much-anticipated No Doubt return tour. Fans of the latter might remember the video for “Don’t Speak,” where No Doubt’s three male members look daggers at bejeweled frontwoman Gwen Stefani as they’re cropped out of a magazine shoot. A similar thing might have happened over the last two years to Paramore. The young Tennessee pop-punk quintet vaulted into the charts on the strength of such buoyant singles as “Misery Business,” the “Twilight” soundtrack cut “Decode” and their platinum-selling 2007 sophomore album “Riot!” But Paramore’s ochre-haired spitfire singer, 20-year-old Hayley… Read more »

On Sunday, dozens of the world’s best-known entertainers gathered on the site where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech” 45 years ago to offer an exuberant welcome to President-elect Barack Obama. U2 provided one of several emotional highs of the day, performing their tribute to King, “Pride (In the Name of Love),” during which Bono declared, “On Tuesday that dream comes to pass!” Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Beyoncé and Garth Brooks were among the A-list performers who helped set the joyful, optimistic tone at the concert, officially called “We Are One: The Obama Inaugural… Read more »

Rock band Fall Out Boy’s fifth album, “Folie a Deux,” will hit shelves November 4, the same day as the U.S. presidential election. Heralding Island’s release of the album, the band on Monday (August 25) released an online mixtape, “Welcome to the New Administration.” On it are five Fall Out Boy demo tracks expected to appear on the album, including “Lake Effect Kid,” “America’s Sweethearts,” “I Don’t Care,” “ALPHAdog and OMEGAlomaniac” and “Catch Me if You Can/Proclamation of Emancipation,” the latter featuring Gym Class Heroes’ Travis McCoy. The album’s first single, “I Don’t Care,” will be released to radio September… Read more »

It’s 30 Seconds to Mars. And about half that to file a lawsuit. Jared Leto and his bandmate brother, Shannon, were sued Friday by Virgin Records America for failing to come through on a five-album deal the eyelinered duo and the now-defunct indie label, Immortal Records, inked with the plaintiff nine years ago. While Leto used a couple of those years to appear in movies like Girl, Interrupted and American Psycho, his band eventually got the ball rolling with its 2002 self-titled debut. The alt-rockers followed that up with 2005’s A Beautiful Lie. But since their sophomore effort, according to… Read more »

When Hartmut Ostrowski was an up-and-comer in Bertelsmann’s printing and services division in the 1990s, his bosses were discouraged from speaking at meetings of the top executives. In the glamorous world of Bertelsmann, a global media empire with music, television, and publishing properties – Germany’s answer to Time Warner – services were viewed as strictly a backstage function. Now, with Mr. Ostrowski at the helm of Bertelsmann, the stagehands are striding into the spotlight. Two weeks ago, he named Markus Dohle, a 39-year-old German who runs the company’s printing operations, as chief executive of Random House, the world’s largest consumer… Read more »

New York rock band Interpol will return to duty this summer for a run of European and North American festival dates, beginning July 3 in Norway. The trek will likely be the last in support of the band’s 2007 album, “Our Love To Admire,” before it gets busy on its next album. The only North American date confirmed so far is the Pemberton Festival in British Columbia on July 26. “We didn’t really do much of the summer festivals last year,” drummer Sam Fogarino told Billboard.com. “It will be the last hit-it-home, end-on-a-good note.” The new album, its first for… Read more »

With their previous album, Still Not Getting Any …, Montreal band Simple Plan had a rather simple plan in creating it, not straying too far from the power-punk formula found on their debut, No Pads, No Helmets … Just Balls. But the band’s plan concerning its self-titled third effort, now out in stores, was anything but simple. Three new producers were brought into the mix, resulting in an album that keeps things fresh for the group and a bit more adventurous for the listener. “I think the longer you take to make something, the prouder you are of it when… Read more »

“SIMPLE PLAN,” the long-awaited new album from Lava/Atlantic recording group Simple Plan, has made a triumphant chart debut, both here and around the world. The Montreal-based band’s third studio effort — which features the singles “When I’m Gone” and “Your Love Is A Lie” — was the Billboard 200’s highest-charting debut of the week at #14, while also placing high on a variety of additional tallies, including #3 on “Top Rock Albums,” #4 on “Top Modern Rock/Alternative Albums,” and #7 on “Top Digital Albums.” In addition, the album reached the #1 spot on the iTunes Store’s “Top Pop Albums” ranking.… Read more »