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British punk legends the Sex Pistols are to reissue their anarchic song “God Save the Queen” to mark Queen Elizabeth’s 50 years on the throne, their record company said Thursday. “(The record) is to be reissued around the Golden Jubilee celebrations on May 27,” Virgin Records said in a statement. “It will feature the original artwork.” The single’s anti-royal lyrics and cover image of the queen with a safety pin through her nose caused outrage on its first release in 1977. The song includes the verse: “God save the Queen/She ain’t no human being/There is no future/In England’s dreaming.” While… Read more »

The suit filed against Arista Records for royalties from the re-release of Whitney Houston’s “The Star-Spangled Banner” was dropped Monday (December 17), according to a spokesperson for Arista Records. “It was the shortest lawsuit in history,” the spokesperson said. “It was an administrative oversight from [Houston’s] Greatest Hits album.” Leonard David Stone, executive director for the orchestra, said until a resolution has been reached, he was prohibited from commenting on the matter. The Florida Orchestra, which recorded the national anthem with Houston in 1991, filed a suit Friday (December 14), asking a judge to ensure that Arista honored an agreement… Read more »

Mark Mothersbaugh says the score he wrote for The Royal Tenenbaums is a logical progression from the work he did on director Wes Anderson’s two previous films, Bottle Rocket and Rushmore. “Bottle Rocket was a jazz quintet, a little bit quirky,” says the former Devo singer. “Rushmore was a little more Vivaldi influenced, a lot more sixteenth notes. This movie, although the sounds are related to the last two movies, kind of branched out further. I’d never used any horns before. The core of it is a cello and piano. There’s a lot of harp in this movie, a lot… Read more »

It’s official. Michael Jackson, the self-proclaimed “King of Pop,” is the “King of Sales” this week, but music industry insiders predict he will soon lose the crown to pop teen queen Britney Spears. Jackson’s first album of original music in six years, “Invincible,” sold 366,272 units in the week ended Nov. 4, the first week of its release, topping all other U.S. albums, according to Soundscan, which tracks music retail figures. The pop star made an unprecedented in-store appearance Wednesday at the Virgin Megastore in New York’s Times Square, wearing a shiny royal blue outfit, complete with his signature finger-less… Read more »

The Yankee Group today released a new study that examines the viability of webcasting, even as online-only broadcasters such as Live365, RadioWave, ClickRadio, and NetRadio suffer losses, announce layoffs, and face the specter of shuttering operations altogether. Ryan Jones, the analyst who authored the report, said in the executive summary, “The challenges facing Internet-only webcasters are significant enough to keep broadcasters in the lead for the foreseeable future. But a growing listener base, falling streaming costs and an increasingly cooperative advertising community are all aligning to mark webcasting as a soon-to-be profitable complement to broadcast radio.” The report indicates that… Read more »

MusicNet, Pressplay working out kinks in technology, licensing – now they need paying users. Although the major labels have been making strides in their efforts to deliver music to listeners’ desktops while collecting money for themselves and their artists, the road ahead is still littered with questions, and the labels’ long-promised services still are not a reality. When will music fans see them? When they do, will they be willing to pay for something they now can get for free? Can the industry shoot down all the new hotshot – and free – file-trading services? And whatever happened to Napster,… Read more »

While choosing new tunes for her upcoming album, one of Whitney Houston’s old hits inspired some feelings of patriotism. According to her label, Houston, who had been in the process of picking songs for the LP with Arista CEO L.A. Reid before last Tuesday’s terrorist strikes, decided to do her part to help the country recover by agreeing to have her rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” re-released. Houston has waived her royalty rights to the recording and instead the proceeds will be split between the New York Firefighters Disaster Relief Fund and the New York Fraternal Order of Police Fund,… Read more »

Music by Britney Spears, ‘NSYNC, the Backstreet Boys and Tool will be legally available online this year, thanks to a deal announced Tuesday (July 24) between the artists’ record company and the fledgling subscription service MusicNet. Zomba, which boasts the Jive imprint, home to Spears, Aaron Carter, Mystikal and other hot acts, is the fourth record company to join MusicNet, which is scheduled to launch in the fall. MusicNet is set to be available through America Online, RealPlayer software and even the planned subscription version of Napster. “People ask, ‘will there be compelling major-label content available through MusicNet?’ ” the… Read more »

Napster has become so effective in blocking the trade of copyrighted material that the sharing of songs on the service has virtually ground to a halt, research firm Webnoize said on Wednesday. Webnoize said users of Napster’s latest software, which incorporates file identification technology, had an average of 1.5 song files to share at any given time as of Wednesday, down from a peak of 220 songs in February. The newest version of the once-phenomenally popular song-swap software includes audio fingerprinting technology, developed by Relatable, which helps Napster filter out copyrighted songs in order to comply with a court injunction.… Read more »

While Janet Jackson’s new album, All for You, is expected to top next week’s Billboard 200, the title track is still holding strong as the #1 song in the country. Like most of Janet’s album, the song is produced by the singer/songwriter with the Flyte Tyme team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and it includes an inventive sample – from Change’s 1980 disco cut “The Glow of Love,” which featured Luther Vandross on lead vocals. “It was Jimmy’s idea,” Janet told MTV Europe of the sample. “I hadn’t heard the song before. He thought that he was going to… Read more »