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EMI Group Plc chairman Eric Nicoli didn’t confirm any of the myriad rumors of possible merger plans for his music major at a media confab in Gotham Tuesday, but he didn’t try very hard to dispel them, either. The British label group – which has been twice spurned by European and U.S. regulators in its attempts to link up with rival majors – would benefit from the expanded scale and geographical reach offered by a combination, Nicoli said at UBS Warburg’s Media Week event. And the regulatory skepticism, while still significant, may have been diminished somewhat by the dismal performance… Read more »

British rock band Oasis is to return to the stage in Wales on Sunday to finish a European tour after a brawl in a Munich bar forced two shows to be canceled. Wildman vocalist Liam Gallagher, 30, lost two teeth in the fight on December 1, leaving him unable to sing in two scheduled German shows. But a band spokesman said on Saturday dentists had repaired the damage and the final, British leg of the two-month tour would go ahead. “The Oasis UK tour will therefore be going ahead as planned, starting this Sunday,” he told the band’s Web site… Read more »

Oasis has postponed two German concerts, following a brawl in a Munich hotel over the weekend. The English band has postponed its November 4 show in Dusselfdorf and a date in Bremen, Thursday December 5. The postponement of the shows came after the group had already postponed appearances in Munich Sunday and in Hamburg on Monday. The further postponement came about because the band’s singer, Liam Gallagher, required further medical attention after sustaining facial injuries and several broken teeth in the nightclub fight. A official statement on the band’s website (oasis.net) says: “Following the events of last weekend, Oasis have… Read more »

After a long struggle marked by false starts, frustration and fan indifference, commercial online music services see this year as the crucial second act of a hit show in the making. Since launching a year ago, subscription music services headed by the major label-backed ventures Pressplay and MusicNet have taken heat from music fans who compared them unfavorably with free peer-to-peer networks like now-idled Napster. But after expanded licensing deals and platform upgrades, these services and rivals Listen.com’s Rhapsody and FullAudio, are better armed to take on free services like Kazaa and Morpheus, which emerged in the wake of Napster’s… Read more »

Considering that their debut Hybrid Theory was the best-selling album of 2001, Linkin Park don’t exactly need to alter their sound for the follow-up, due in March. “I’m sure we could do some crazy stuff now,” says Park rapper Mike Shinoda. “But we like what we like. We know what kind of music we want to make, and we just go after it.” For the past several months Shinoda and the rest of his band mates – guitarist Brad Delson, drummer Rob Bourdon, DJ Joseph Hahn, bassist Phoenix and singer Chester Bennington – have been hard at work on next… Read more »

The tail end of last year wasn’t among the highlights of Slipknot’s seven-year career. Although the band’s third album, Iowa, dropped in late August, prompting maggots everywhere to rejoice, tragedy struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon a couple of weeks later, temporarily curbing fans’ elation and fostering an environment in which songs such as “Everything Ends” and “I Am Hated” weren’t among the most welcome. Factor in the bad news that percussionist Clown’s wife had taken ill, and that the band was touring in the midst of a slumping economy, and the bulb-nosed performer wasn’t the happiest of… Read more »

Tower Records, the storied 1960s music chain that launched the music megastore and became a cultural retailing icon, strolls into its 43rd holiday shopping season this weekend struggling with debt and on the ropes. The West Sacramento, Calif.-based Tower hopes four weeks of strong sales will reverse a new image as the tottering giant inside a stumbling music industry. Among the chain’s troubles: deep-discounting rivals, changing consumer habits, lack of hits and its own missteps in the 1990s as the music business began a dramatic shift. Tower exemplifies the even deeper woes in a recording industry beset by piracy, computer… Read more »

“The Osbournes,” the reality series about rocker Ozzy Osbourne’s unorthodox family and home life, drew 6.6 million viewers in its second-season premiere, MTV said Wednesday. Tuesday’s ratings were up 84 percent compared to the first season’s premiere, and viewership rivaled that of the highest-rated episode last season, the music channel said. “‘The Osbournes’ juggernaut shows little signs of slowing down,” MTV programming president Brian Graden said in a statement. Last year, the show became an unexpected hit and the highest-rated show in MTV’s 21-year history. This season’s content is decidedly different, as the family copes with its newfound celebrity and… Read more »

Bertelsmann Music Group has completed its Jive lessons. The major label group said Tuesday it has closed its acquisition of Zomba Music Group, home to teen-pop label Jive Records, paying more than $2.74 billion to acquire the stakes in the closely held group it didn’t already own. BMG already held 20% of Zomba’s record labels and 25% of its music-publishing portfolio. The deal, which got rolling in June after Zomba owner Clive Calder triggered a long-standing “put” option to sell his interest, gives BMG full access to Jive’s roster of pop megastars, including ‘N Sync, Britney Spears and the Backstreet… Read more »

“The Osbournes” becomes a reality show in the bleakest sense this season, as Ozzy and the kids cope with matriarch Sharon Osbourne’s colon cancer. Yet as the second batch of episodes begins Tuesday, MTV also is trying to maintain the wackiness that made the series the network’s biggest hit. The heavy-metal rocker, his wife and two of their three children are very different people than they were when they opened their home to us a year ago – and opened the floodgates to a slew of copycats. They still spew plenty of profanities for the censors to bleep out. And… Read more »