Search Results for: the early november

Los Angeles – In a dismal year for the touring industry, with ticket prices soaring and seats going unsold, music fans in North America partied like it was 1989 as Prince and Madonna topped the concert box office. According to freshly tabulated estimates provided by concert trade publication Pollstar, Prince sold $87.4 million in tickets in 2004, while Madonna earned $79.5 million. Prince also worked a bit harder for his payday, playing 96 shows, compared with 39 for Madonna. Canadian pop singer Celine Dion actually topped Madonna by about $900,000, but her haul came exclusively from 154 dates performed at… Read more »

Los Angeles – Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz continued their reign on the year-end Top Independent Albums chart for the second year in a row. The self-proclaimed “Kings of Crunk” finish the year with two of the top five titles on the indie chart. After breaking through in 2003, the Atlanta-bred party-rap trio of Lil Jon, Big Sam and Lil Bo remained steady sellers throughout 2004. The act’s BME/TVT release “Kings of Crunk” has spent more than 100 weeks on the Top Independent Albums chart, and has now led the chart two years running. To date, the album… Read more »

They endured unpredictable weather on a Spanish plain for their “Vertigo” video and traffic on the streets of New York for “All Because of You,” so U2 thought they were keeping it simple by shooting their next clip in a Dublin, Ireland, theater. That is, until they were put at the mercy of the venue’s Christmas production of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” The group shot the video for the track “Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own” on Monday at the Gaiety Theater, according to a band spokesperson. The theater, which is currently housing the children’s story production, gave… Read more »

Los Angeles – Kelly Osbourne has one word for you and, no, it’s not an obscenity. “‘One Word’ is a song about how one thing can change your whole perspective on life,” Osbourne explained of her new single. “And it has a little to do with Nostradamus and how he predicted all the things that were gonna happen and that did end up happening.” Kelly expects the song to surface in January, followed by her as-yet-untitled next album in March. Linda Perry, the former 4 Non Blondes singer who has reinvented herself as a producer for Christina Aguilera and Gwen… Read more »

Linkin Park love to mix things up. Their two albums, Hybrid Theory and Meteora, consistently and seamlessly blend different styles of music together, melding rap and rock with just enough electronic flourish to keep the ears burning and turning that blend into a digestible, accessible pop formula for millions of hungry fans to eat up. In the last three years the band have sold several million albums worldwide, sold out arenas around the globe, toured with Metallica and progressed further than all their long-since-disappeared rap-rock contemporaries. They are (as our May 2003 issue featuring ’em on them cover declares) the… Read more »

SANTA MONICA, Calif. – The evolution of digital downloads marks another milestone on November 23, 2004, with the debut of UMe Digital, the world’s first all-digital download label from a major music company. UMe Digital product – individual songs, EPs, and full-length albums – will be distributed exclusively online. With its unparalleled music and video marketing capabilities and the power and scope of UMe to place songs in films and TV shows and commercials, UMe Digital offers unprecedented access and exposure for artists. The releases on UMe Digital will be consistent with UMe’s philosophy of marketing established acts and acts… Read more »

Los Angeles – U2 has sold more than 120 million albums worldwide and won 14 Grammy Awards during the course of its 26-year career, so you would think that there would be a level of ease that comes with a new release. Not so, says the Irish band’s longtime manager Paul McGuinness. “There is absolutely no resting on our laurels,” he tells Billboard. “I say to people we have to break the band every time we put out a record.” And this is with an album that McGuinness expects to debut at No. 1 in “32 or 33 countries.” “How… Read more »

For the third time in his career, Eminem has a new album debuting atop the Billboard albums chart. Encore, the rapper’s fourth full-length LP, will bow at #1 on next week’s chart with more than 710,000 copies sold, according to SoundScan. What’s more impressive is that Shady pulled off the feat with less than a full first-week’s worth of sales. Because the album leaked online, Encore went on sale Friday, four days before the previously scheduled release of Tuesday. Since SoundScan ends each week’s tally on Sundays at midnight, Em’s 710,000 copies, which is also the year’s fourth-largest first-week total,… Read more »

London – EMI Group PLC, one of the world’s ‘big three’ music companies, reported a fall in sales and a net loss for the first half of its fiscal year Friday but said it expected an improvement in the second half when its album release schedule kicks in. EMI, whose artists include Coldplay, Norah Jones, Kylie Minogue and Robbie Williams, said it was confident the global music industry was returning to a growth phase after a sales slump from 2000 to 2003. Chairman Eric Nicoli said the global industry recorded a decline of 1.3 percent for the first half of… Read more »

With the Dubliner’s new album, How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, hitting stores on Nov. 23 and their tunes already featured in everything from iPod commercials to episodes of CSI and The O.C., the group is now making plans to blanket the globe. Billboard reports that U2-which last rocked North America four years ago on their mega-successful Elevation trek in support of the 2000 release All That You Can’t Leave Behind -will kick off their jaunt March 1 in Florida. “We’ll play approximate 35 shows in the arenas in the spring in the U.S.,” the group’s longtime manager Paul McGuninness… Read more »