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BANGKOK, Thailand – Pop stars from around the world will appear live or contribute taped performances to a Feb. 3 concert sponsored by MTV to support tsunami relief work. Performers at the MTV Asia Aid benefit, to be held in Bangkok’s IMPACT Arena, will include Good Charlotte, Kelly Clarkson, Hoobastank, Simple Plan, Asha Bhosle, Jay Chou and Tata Young, MTV said Wednesday. Alicia Keys is scheduled to attend. Jennifer Lopez will contribute a prerecorded performance, while Moby, 50 Cent, Nelly, Ronan Keating, Ricky Martin and Sting will offer taped messages of support. “MTV Asia Aid will help to maintain the… Read more »

Beyonce Knowles may be “Crazy in Love,” but she kept her cool Sunday at one of the more sober Grammy Awards shows in memory. She was the night’s big winner, taking home a record-tying five trophies to join recent Grammy queens Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys and Norah Jones with the most wins in a single year by a female performer. OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below won Album of the Year, giving the eccentric Atlanta funk/rap group three wins, including Best Urban Alternative Performance and Best Rap Album. British band Coldplay took home the prize for Record of the Year for “Clocks,”… Read more »

U.S. album sales rose 10.4 percent in the first month of 2004, Nielsen Soundscan reported, welcome news to the music industry after a three-year slump marked by costly litigation, rampant piracy and consolidation. The uptrend began late last year, a development hailed by Sanford Bernstein analyst Michael Nathanson in a recent report. But he said he was hesitant to say declines were over. Other analysts note that comparisons were easy with last year when U.S. album sales fell. But many saw signs the music business – led by big record labels at Time Warner, Bertelsmann AG, EMI Group Plc, Sony… Read more »

On Jan. 6, San Francisco’s Moscone convention center pulses with all the energy of a rock concert. A crowd sprinkled with hip-hop teenagers, digerati, and aging hippies streams in to hear the annual state-of-the-Mac keynote from Apple Computer Inc. Chief Executive Steven P. Jobs. Every facet of the event bears the fingerprints of the obsessive Jobs – right down to the music that fills the air. This year, it’s the King himself, Elvis Presley. Later, Jobs rolls the tape of Apple’s famous “1984” ad that ran on Super Bowl Sunday that year – and hasn’t been broadcast since. Only this… Read more »

The way things are shaking out, Eminem will go down in history as starting more feuds than Richard Dawson. Last week the rapper’s latest battle, pitting his Shady Records camp against Ja Rule and Murder Inc., took center stage at Giants Stadium during Summer Jam, the annual hip-hop fest thrown by Big Apple radio’s Hot 97. Em protégé 50 Cent started his set with several Ja digs accompanied by a video display. Then Eminem delivered da bomb, performing the blistering Ja Rule-dissing salvos “Doe Ray Me” with D12 and “Hail Mary” with 50 Cent and Busta Rhymes. But don’t start… Read more »

Blamed by shareholders for AOL Time Warner’s sharp fall in fortunes, Steve Case said he will step down as chairman of the conglomerate he helped create – a marriage of old and new media first hailed as revolutionary but now struggling for a future. Case’s departure means the company’s leadership will be without any of the key architects of the blockbuster merger of America Online and Time Warner in 2001. The company said Sunday he would step down in May. In a brief statement, Case said he had concluded AOL Time Warner was better off without him as chairman. “Some… Read more »

As one of the forefathers of rap, with a history of social activism, Run-DMC’s Jam Master Jay was an unlikely target for the kind of violence that killed rappers Tupac Shakur or the Notorious B.I.G. He was married with three kids, and a fixture in the Queens neighborhood where he grew up. Yet authorities were searching Thursday for the gunman who killed the 37-year-old disc jockey with a gunshot to the head inside his recording studio. “Jam Master Jay was a longtime family man and one of the founders of the group that knocked down all the doors for hip-hop,… Read more »

Pop heart-throb Robbie Williams has signed the biggest record deal in British music history, The Sun newspaper said Wednesday. The shares of EMI Group Plc climbed five percent in London after tabloid reports that the record company had signed a $125.5 million deal with the former Take That singer hailed as the new Frank Sinatra. The deal, thought to be for four albums, will give the performer unique control over his work and includes a commitment to try to make him a star in the United States, a market he has failed to break into, the newspaper reported. EMI representatives… Read more »

The surprise wasn’t that Eminem ( news – web sites) has found someone new to take on – namely, Lynne Cheney and the many others who have derided the shock-rapper’s work. The surprise, instead, came near the end of his 70-minute show, which kicked off the Eminem-headlined Anger Management Tour on Thursday. That’s when a visibly discouraged Eminem was left pleading for more from the audience packing Buffalo’s HSBC Arena. “Buffalo!” Eminem yelled out as the set segued from “Drug Ballad” to “Come on Everybody,” with little energy flowing from the crowd. “Buffalo! Don’t die on me yet.” The audience… Read more »

Last week Eminem was a little uneasy about the fact that bootlegging had pressured Interscope to release his much-hyped The Eminem Show way ahead of schedule. Would such a hasty move screw up his game plan? (See “Eminem Show Moved Up Again – Album In Stores Sunday”). Well, 1.6 million records sold later, Em can relax – not that he was really sweating how many units he was gonna move. “I don’t ever buy into the pressure of trying to top my last album for record sales,” he said, cruising around Manhattan on top of a double-decker bus. “The pressure… Read more »