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The red carpet swiftly turned into a red river, but we knew it would take more than a soggy strip of flooring material to put a damper on the MuchMusic Video Awards. An early-evening deluge timed perfectly to truncate the annual, big pre-show build-up to last night’s MMVAs ceremony at Much headquarters on Queen West nevertheless added a new urgency to the usual hysteria that splays around Queen and John at this time of year. There was a real sense of brewing terror in the air on the carpet while everyone who’d gathered outside the old CHUM-City building — the… Read more »

Coldplay sold 125,000 copies of its new album on the first day of release in Britain, a solid tally industry experts say should be music to the band’s ears and those of its ailing record label EMI. “Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends” now looks “certain” to top Sunday’s album chart, according to The Official Charts Company which tracks record sales, even though it was released on Thursday rather than at the start of the week. “Coldplay are an international act … and these sales figures in the UK are the first indication of how the album… Read more »

Atlantic Records sued two members of the alternative rock band Stone Temple Pilots on Thursday, accusing them of trying to prematurely end their recording contract with the Warner Music Group label. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, claims lead singer Scott Weiland and drummer Eric Kretz have threatened to stop performing under their contract and have indicated they would like to end the agreement unless Atlantic makes significant changes. The record company said in the suit that while Stone Temple Pilots has already delivered six albums, it wants the group to record a seventh album and deliver… Read more »

Tapping on fake instruments and screeching into microphones connected to video game consoles has become lucrative for both the music and gaming industries. Downloadable tunes for music-based games “Guitar Hero,” “Rock Band” and “SingStar” have become as vital as iTunes itself – and one of the last ways to expose youngsters to classic rock. The genre will evolve again later this month when game publisher Activision and developer Neversoft release “Guitar Hero: Aerosmith,” the first such play-along rhythm game pegged to one music group, instead of featuring a multi-artist compilation more akin to one of those “Now That’s What I… Read more »

As the recorded music business seemingly careens toward oblivion, John Hiatt is standing on the sidelines having a good laugh. It’s not as if the singer-songwriter has been unscathed by the industry’s decade-long capitulation to piracy. Each of his last three albums sold 30,000 copies less than the one before. His last release, 2005’s “Master of Disaster,” moved 78,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But as he sagely pointed out during a recent breakfast, “I think I’m not the only one. I think we’re doing OK.” That very day his 18th album, “Same Old Man” (New… Read more »

Southern California ska-punk stalwart Reel Big Fish has been blazing a trail of angst-filled, shenanigan-loaded rock for 15 years now. And it seems their legendary summer treks are always a rite of passage for fans. This summer will be no different when the band takes its hi-jinx brand of ska/punk rock to the main stage of the Vans Warped Tour on a daily basis. Touring in support of their self-produced Monkeys For Nothin’ And The Chimps For Free release, singer Aaron Barrett is anxious to hit the road. ” We can’t wait to get back out on tour and get… 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 »

Honestly, given the amount I write about Digital Rights Management, you’d think that I’d rather the industry kept using it, just so I’d continue to have fodder for writing and writing–and occasionally talking–about it. As I was looking into the trajectory of DRM in this past year for my latest look at DRM, a pattern began to emerge. We’ve seen the prevalence of DRM-free music skyrocket over the last twelve months, with vendors like iTunes, Amazon, and Napster all joining the legions of the undamned. In fact, it’s practically gotten to the point where it’s news when a company launches… Read more »

Hail to the Thief suddenly has all kinds of new meaning. Radiohead has a burgeoning beef with Prince over the Purple One’s refusal to allow fan video recordings of his cover of the alt-rockers’ seminal 1992 hit, “Creep,” to be shown on YouTube. Radiohead’s frontman Thom Yorke tells the Associated Press that he has no problems with Prince’s label, NPG Records, taking down clips of the artist performing his own tunes because of copyright concerns. But when it comes to Prince’s version of “Creep,” Yorke says he and his mates are ticked not only because they didn’t get to see… Read more »