Search Results for: every time i die

There comes a time in every band’s career when it has to choose between staying on the well-worn path or taking a detour onto the road less certain. For Simple Plan, that decision was made earlier this year when they headed down to Miami’s Hit Factory studios to work with producer Nate “Danjahandz” Hills, Timbaland’s protégé and the man responsible for Britney Spears’ “Gimme More.” “We’re a band that’s sold something like 7 million records, had two records that did really well, so we had to find a way to change without changing, to kind of reinvent ourselves,” frontman Pierre… Read more »

Relationships in the entertainment world can be famously fraught. And few are more so these days than the one between Steve Jobs and Universal Music chief Doug Morris. You may recall that Morris recently refused to re-up a multi-year contract to put his company’s music on Apple’s iTunes Music Store. That’s because Jobs wouldn’t ease his stringent terms, which limit how record companies can market their music. Now, Morris is going on the offensive. The world’s most powerful music executive aims to join forces with other record companies to launch an industry-owned subscription service. BusinessWeek has learned that Morris has… Read more »

“Big Casino,” the bombastic first single from rock band Jimmy Eat World’s new album is the story of an aging rocker laying out his version of reality.The Vegas-circuit character is explaining to a younger musician that “rock’n’roll is not all it’s cut out to be,” frontman Jim Adkins explains. “It’s kind of a loser anthem. It’s about a guy with unearned confidence whose assumption of worth is a protective front for total failure.” But Adkins stresses that the song is not a commentary on the band or on the music industry, noting, “We’re in a very good place.” Its new… Read more »

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 »

In one of the final sessions of the Future of Music Policy Summit, panelists discussed how the music industry is going through a process of “disintermediation,” where fewer steps stand between artist and audience, thanks to social networking and Internet distribution. “Someone spoke earlier about a ‘musician’s middle class,’” said Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora.com. “In this world, you don’t need to be a full-time professional musician.” Instead, the speakers noted that it’s possible for amateur musicians or independent bands to reach new and unexpected audiences over the Web. Speaking for promotional service echomusic, Pinky Gonzales pointed to Todd Rundgren… 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 »

It’s happened to everyone. You’re cruising in your car, cranking the tunes, when the radio DJ announces a promotion awarding tickets for a sold-out show to the first fan who correctly answers a trivia question. Answer in hand, you call in, only to get a busy signal — again, again and again. Soon, that scenario will be as antiquated as dial knobs on TVs. Radio stations nationwide slowly are incorporating mobile text-messaging systems that let listeners respond to promotional campaigns, request songs and interact with advertisers from the keypad of their mobile phone. For radio station operators, it’s not only… Read more »

With an emphasis on the visual over the audio, MTV from its inception has never been “about the music.” But after seeing interest in its signature trophy show wane in recent years, the network put the spotlight where it belongs for a music awards show: on the concert stage. The result of this brainstorm, and a few other format changes to its Video Music Awards? The most watchable show in many a Moon Man outing. Even if that isn’t saying much. And this despite opening with an onstage career suicide by Britney Spears. More on that later. The 2007 VMAs… Read more »

I thought about being nicer in the title of the article, but it is simply the truth. MTV tried to re-invent the awards show this year and managed to make it worse. The VMAs were moved to Las Vegas this year to try to add some new flavor to the beleaguered show. The idea was to have bands hosting parties in different rooms at the Palms. The show would cut between the main stage where presentations were made and the party rooms. Fall Out Boy, Kanye West, Foofighters and others performed from the parties. That was the best part of… Read more »