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The record industry plans to turn up the heat on Napster. An RIAA spokesperson told Reuters Thursday that the organization will file a court complaint accusing the file-sharing service of failing to comply with a recently revised injunction requiring the removal of copyrighted songs. “It’s clear that Napster is not complying with the court’s order,” RIAA spokesperson Jano Cabera told the news service. Another spokesperson told MTV News that the organization will file a noncompliance report on Tuesday. Napster continues to claim that it’s doing everything it can to comply with the injunction by blocking songs on lists submitted by… Read more »

Rock superstars U2 launched their first U.S. tour in nearly four years in classic form in Florida Saturday night, treating 20,000 devoted, delirious fans to a crowd-pleasing mix of old and new songs delivered with their legendary energy free of the extravagances of their most recent tours. The Irish rockers hit the stage of the National Car Rental Center arena at Sunrise, near Miami, with the house lights still on and launched into a swinging “Elevation” for their new album “All That You Can’t Leave Behind”. For the next two hours they put on a performance in which the songs,… Read more »

Guitar jangle, electronic effects and strings meet again on rock band’s 12th album. Edging as close to the conventional pop realm as they have in their 20-plus years, R.E.M. will release Reveal, an evocative tapestry of reflective, expertly crafted songs, in May. “We’re really interested in finding the beauty of music these days,” said bassist Mike Mills, who clarified that the rock band’s 12th studio album isn’t quite as subdued as it may seem. “Taking a song and seeing how you can find something really lovely inside it, I think that might tend to make it sound a little more… Read more »

A commercial titled “Performance,” the first fruit of Britney Spears’ global marketing pact with Pepsi, will debut online via Yahoo! Sunday (March 25), at 6 p.m. ET, two hours before its broadcast premiere during the Academy Awards on ABC. Set in a Pepsi bottling plant, the clip features Spears singing the now familiar “Joy Of Pepsi” jingle, as well as a cameo by former senator Bob Dole. Taking the idea of a commercial premiere to another level, beginning March 20, Yahoo! Broadcast will offer behind-the-scenes footage of the commercial shoot, a 15-second “teaser” preview, and Spears’ diary documenting the making… Read more »

With Napster a shell of its former self and services like MP3.com paying hefty tribute, record labels are poised to conquer cyberspace with their own streaming and downloading services. Ironically, only one thing stands in the way: copyright. Record companies aren’t the only ones that hold copyright on music recordings. Music publishers, who represent lyricists and composers, do too – owning the rights to the piece of music itself. For every copy a record company distributes, the publisher gets a small cut. That’s how the people who write the songs get paid. Suddenly, the industry finds itself on the other… Read more »

Anyone hoping that the music industry’s infatuation with youth was just a passing fad got a big wake-up call when 21-year-old Lance Bass announced he was opening a management company last year. A member of pop group ‘NSYNC, Bass sent a message to all of the jaded industryites who refused to take young superstars seriously: they’re here, they’re hot, and they ain’t going away. That Bass’ first client would be 16-year-old country singer Meredith Edwards (she turned 17 in early March) therefore seemed somehow appropriate. Bass obviously knows something about launching teen acts; as for entering the world of Nashville,… Read more »

Rancid, Weezer, 311, Kool Keith, Pennywise, Rollins Band, and the Misfits are some of the bigger artists confirmed to play the annual Vans Warped Tour, set to kick off June 22 in Phoenix. An official announcement of participating venues and additional acts for the nearly two-month tour is expected within two weeks. Making its Warped Tour debut this year will be Incredibly Strange Wrestling, a hybrid of punk rock and hardcore wrestling. ISW appeared on the San Francisco scene in the mid-’90s, and features such wrestlers as El Pollo Diablo, Macho Sasquatcho, Chupa Suave, and El Homo Loco. Young punks… Read more »

Her brother may have appointed himself King of Pop, but Janet Jackson earned her crown as Queen of Radio this week. The title track from the R&B superstar’s upcoming seventh album, All for You, made radio and chart history when it was added to every pop, rhythmic and urban radio station that reports to the national trade magazine Radio & Records. No other song has conquered all reporting stations in its first week at radio, let alone mastered three formats in one week, R&R’s Kevin McCabe said. “All for You” also debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart at… Read more »

One Napster alternative that’s attracting thousands of downloads a day is taking a wholly different approach to file-swapping – and looks to be circling the wagons against potential legal threats. First, Aimster is encrypted, so users can’t be spied on, something the recording industry did to Napster to collect evidence of copyright infringement. Aimster also asks users not to trade in pirated files. Aimster piggybacks on instant-messaging services including America Online’s AIM, allowing users on the same “buddy list” to share files. A new version of Aimster posted late last month attracted 200,000 downloads in its first 10 days –… Read more »

In Mishawaka, Indiana, 250 students staged a walkout to protest a no-music rule, while a music teacher in Tipton, Iowa, resigned after administrators asked her to halt a student-group research project on Eminem. Music was banned on all Penn-Harris-Madison School Corp. buses February 23 in Mishawka, after a parent complained that her child, an elementary student, was exposed to the graphic lyrics of Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me” on the bus radio. Last week, the ban was widened to include music played in all district buildings, including music usually played during study halls and gym classes. In response, about 250 of… Read more »