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CANNES, France – The theme song isn’t quite “Happy Days are Here Again,” but almost. Music industry veterans, after several years of worrying about how illegal Internet downloads could threaten their business, are humming a decidedly upbeat tune these days. While questions remain about how to best deliver hits by U2 or arias by Luciano Pavarotti to music fans, one of the industry’s top conferences opened Saturday in this Riviera resort amid new signs that online downloads could become a moneymaker after all. The optimism at the Midem conference is a sharp turnaround from a year earlier, before music publishers… Read more »

Good Charlotte, Kelly Clarkson, Hoobastank and Simple Plan will lend their support to the ever-growing tsunami-relief effort by performing live at the MTV Asia Aid benefit event in Thailand. Alicia Keys will also be featured the event, which is set to take place on February 3 at the IMPACT Arena in Thailand’s capital of Bangkok and benefits UNICEF and other Thailand- and India-based organizations. Jennifer Lopez will contribute a prerecorded performance to the show, while Sting, Nelly, 50 Cent, Ricky Martin, Green Day, Moby and Ronan Keating will submit specially taped messages of support that will air during the broadcast.… Read more »

Washington – You might say the Janet Jackson moment of President Bush’s inaugural festivities came Tuesday at a youth concert with hundreds of preteen Hilary Duff fans in the audience. No nudity was involved, but the Vince Neil-style profanity probably didn’t win rock band Fuel any fans at the Federal Communications Commission, nor from the parents at the concert. Now the Pennsylvania band is just hoping the concert, “America’s Future Rocks Today,” wasn’t aired live. Borrowing a word from Motley Crue’s Neil, the lead singer of Fuel proclaimed, “Welcome to the greatest –ing country in the world.” Brett Scallions followed… Read more »

SAYREVILLE, New Jersey – This small Jersey ‘burb is pretty far removed from Banda Aceh or Phuket (and even though it’s Jon Bon Jovi’s hometown, it’s pretty far removed from Manhattan, too). But on Wednesday night, Sayreville played host to the first in a series of benefit shows dubbed the Concerts for Tsunami Relief. It was a big show for an even bigger cause. The concert – co-sponsored by Linkin Park’s Music for Relief charity and New York radio giant K-Rock – was held at the Starland Ballroom, a very un-ballroom-like venue just off of Sayreville’s winding Jernee Mill Road,… Read more »

licia Keys will sing “America the Beautiful” prior to this year’s Super Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla. It will be just the third time the song is sung at the Super Bowl – previously performed only by Vicki Carr and Ray Charles. Accompanying Keys will be 150 students from the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, which Charles attended as a youth in 1937. “I’m very excited to be playing at the Super Bowl for the first time especially because I will be singing a song made famous by an artist I admire, miss and respect, Ray Charles, along… Read more »

The Black Crowes will flock together once more, hitting a New York stage for a five-night run. The stoner Southern-rock band have been on “hiatus” since January 2002 and haven’t played a show together since the previous October – and while the band, media and fans have all submitted to the word “hiatus,” everybody knows the Crowes were really broken up, so this little get-together is a pretty big deal. Currently the plan is to take these few shows on and see how it all goes – if the Robinson brothers pull an Oasis and spend the whole time bickering… Read more »

Los Angeles – Grammy-nominated punk trio Green Day returned to the top of the U.S. pop charts Wednesday with its hit opus “American Idiot,” which sold just 178 copies more than Eminem’s reigning champ. “American Idiot” (Reprise/Warner Bros.) sold 100,167 copies in the week ended Jan. 9, according to Nielsen SoundScan, taking its total to 1.9 million units. Worldwide sales stand at over five million copies, the label said. Upon its Sept. 21 release, the album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, a first for Green Day, and it also opened at No. 1 in Britain, Canada, Japan… Read more »

New York – Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher revealed Friday his band’s sixth studio set will be released internationally May 16, almost three years after its previous set, “Heathen Chemistry.” In an interview with BBC Radio 1, Gallagher said the Epic album is finished and has a title, but he declined to unveil it. The album will feature 12 songs credited to all four current members – Noel, singer Liam Gallagher, bassist Andy Bell and guitarist Gem Archer. In the past, Noel Gallagher has served as the band’s primary songwriter. “It’s my favorite one of the last four,” he said of… Read more »

New York – Digital music sales notched a third consecutive record-breaking week in the period ended Jan. 2, thanks to the ripple effect from a Christmas-inspired sales surge of MP3 players and download gift cards. Digital track volume spiked by 1.6 million transactions last week, making a seven-day total of 6.7 million downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The jump marks an all-time high for download sales in a single week, breaking the benchmark of 5.04 million in the week ending Dec. 26. This marks the first time in the history of the Billboard Hot Digital Tracks chart that download sales… Read more »

Paris – Hip-hop rhymers, classical orchestras, church choirs, punk bands and creamy-voiced crooners from Paris to Hong Kong are taking up the fund-raising theme for victims of the Asian tsunami, holding money-raising concerts and singing special songs. Ever since the 1980s African famine relief hit “We Are the World” and its Band Aid predecessor “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” support from musicians has been part of charity fund-raising. But the response to the tsunami has been huge. In Norway alone, dozens of benefit concerts are planned. In its oil capital, Stavanger, groups scheduled a free show Thursday, with cash to… Read more »