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Singer Ali Campbell is leaving the reggae band UB40 after selling tens of millions of records worldwide in a career spanning nearly 30 years, a spokesman for the group said on Friday. Campbell will quit after performing his last concerts with the band next month in Australia, New Zealand and Uganda. In separate statements, Campbell blamed “intolerable management difficulties,” while the band said the singer was keen to pursue his solo career. “I have been deeply unhappy with administrative practices and with many decisions that have been made in recent years,” Campbell said. “Suffice to say I felt I had… Read more »

Tom Petty says he’s not much of a football fan, but playing the Super Bowl halftime show was an offer he couldn’t refuse. “The most significant thing about it is the people watching worldwide … it’s probably the biggest audience you can have I would imagine,” the 57-year-old singer told “It’s quite an honor to be asked, if you look at the people who have done it, it’s a very elite crowd … it’s a great opportunity to play for the whole world at once,” Petty said. Tickets for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ North American tour go on sale… Read more »

Lily Vasquez, a marketing manager from Clifton, New Jersey, spent nearly eight years trying to break into the music business as a singer before she stumbled across SellaBand.com. The Web site is one of several where artists can have their albums funded by fans — a proposition that takes advantage of digital technology, online social networking and the current uncertainty in the established music industry. The sites are reinventing the relationship between artists and their fans, upsetting the traditional role of the record label as the tastemaker, promoter and distributor of music. “I didn’t really understand the site when I… Read more »

Velvet Revolver guitarist Slash says the group is planning a significantly shorter turnaround for its third album. The Los Angeles rockers plan to start working in earnest on the follow-up to last year’s “Libertad” in April, almost immediately after they finish a tour that starts Thursday in Chicago and includes dates in North America, Australia and Europe. “That’s the big thing right now,” Slash says. “I’m really jazzed about doing it. I’ve been working on new ideas, and we’ve had a couple times where the guys all got together and worked on some stuff. I’m itching to see what this… Read more »

Suddenly there’s a whole new meaning to “Come On Over Baby” for Christina Aguilera. The five-time Grammy winner and hubby Jordan Bratman welcomed their first child in Los Angeles on Friday. The couple announced the birth in a quick text message to friends and family around 4 p.m.: “Baby has arrived. Mom and dad are doing well!” (Apparently not even the prospect of dirrty diapers can dampen their spirits.) There were no further details immediately available. However, a rep for the singer disputed the delivery dispatch. “The information you have is inaccurate,” the spokesperson said without elaboration. “We will let… Read more »

Like it or not, major record companies are expected to continue drafting their artist contracts so that labels share a piece of most — if not all — of the artists’ rights in all types of revenue streams, not just record sales, but also concert tickets and t-shirts. Artist lawyers say that their responses are as varied as the rights and terms in each label’s “360-degree” deal. Some labels want to be the merchandiser, while others want rights only in certain types of merchandise connected to album cover artwork. And when it comes to artist royalties, some labels pay a… Read more »

After 2006 — a year when virtually no one managed to launch a digital music service in competition with Apple’s dominant iTunes — 2007 was a refreshing change of pace. Several fresh faces emerged onto the digital music scene this year, buoyed in part by record companies’ newfound willingness to experiment with different business models, but also by the departure of several high-profile competitors. By far the most visible service to throw in the towel this year was MTV’s Urge; now, a new entity called Rhapsody America joins Rhapsody’s technology with MTV’s editorial and music curation staff. Sony began the… Read more »

The Material Girl is about to become a Hall of Famer. The ever-evolving Madonna was announced as a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee on Thursday along with John Mellencamp, The Ventures, Leonard Cohen and The Dave Clark Five. A panel of 600 industry figures selected the five acts to be inducted at the annual ceremony, to be held March 10 in New York. “The 2008 inductees are trailblazers – all unique and influential in their genres,” Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation President and CEO Joel Peresman said in a statement. “From poetry to pop, these five… Read more »

Josh Groban’s “Noel” led the U.S. pop album charts for a third week Wednesday, tying Elvis Presley as the record-holder for the most consecutive weeks at No. 1 with a Christmas album. Now in its ninth week of release, “Noel” moved 581,000 units in the period ended December 9, according to Nielsen SoundScan, an 8% boost over the previous frame. Presley’s “Elvis’ Christmas Album,” meanwhile, ruled the charts for three weeks in 1957. Alicia Keys’ “As I Am” rose one to No. 2 with 234,000 copies, swapping places with the Eagles’ “Long Road Out of Eden,” which sold 204,000. The… Read more »

Green Day have revealed they have 45 songs prepared for their new album. The band is currently working on the follow up to 2004’s American Idiot and has admitted that they are at a chaotic stage in the writing and recording process. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong explained: “We have a lot of music–something like 45 songs…It’s total chaos…I want to dig into who I am and what I’m feeling at this moment–which is middle-aged. “We’ve been doing this for almost 20 years now. You want to make sure you’re being honest with yourself. I also have to ask myself, ‘hat’s… Read more »