Canada's Nelly Furtado continues to celebrate her "best pop and rock act in the world" gong and plans to release a new single.

The song, All Good Things (Come To An End) was co-written by Nelly, Coldplay's Chris Martin and uber-producer Timbaland. She said: "It was a great story. He came in a jam with us in Miami actually. We were jamming all night and he had to leave cos he had a Coldplay gig the next day. I said, why do all good jams have to come to an end and then the next jam was this song. He's great. I met him during the festival circuit here in the UK early on in my career and yeah, I think he is one of the best songwriters in the world."

Earlier this week Nelly won the best rock and pop act award at the World Music Awards held in Earls Court, London.

Thrilled supermodel Kate Moss was high as a kite last night — after landing tickets to tonight’s live X Factor show.

The 32-year-old catwalk beauty is a huge fan of the ITV1 hit and asked producers for VIP seats for her and rock star lover Pete Doherty. She is keen to back sexy Leona Lewis — the talent show’s last female singer.

An insider said: “Kate has been keeping an eye on the show and she’s been impressed with Leona. She's asked for tickets, so it will be a real honour to have her come down.We’re used to having glamorous people on the show but a supermodel is the icing on the cake.” Babyshambles star Pete, 26, will also get a warm welcome.

The source added: “Getting Pete will also be great because he’s not normally associated with things like The X Factor. Having him on will add a nice rock ’n’ roll edge to proceedings.

“Let’s just hope it doesn’t turn into a shambles.” X Factor boasts a host of famous fans — including Robbie Williams, 32, who asks for tapes to be sent to him when he is at home in Los Angeles.

Coldplay’s Chris Martin and Hollywood wife Gwyneth Paltrow are keen on band Eton Road, while Elton John and Take That are also avid viewers. The show even gained royal approval after Zara Phillips joined the audience for Celebrity X Factor. This series has also seen a string of appearances from A-list music figures, including Rod Stewart, 61, and 57-year-old Lionel Richie.

Chart-toppers Westlife will be on tonight’s “Number Ones” themed show — singing a duet with Delta Goodrem.

The Crazy Frog is returning with a new song for the festive season - a cover of Wham's hit single 'Last Christmas'.

The single will be released on December 11 and the video for the track sees Santa's workshop being overtaken by evil characters who abduct Santa and put him behind bars, before the Crazy Frog comes to the rescue. The Crazy Frog was originally created in Sweden and became a hit ringtone.

The irritating amphibian had a number one single in June 2005 with a cover of Axel F, which beat Coldplay's 'Speed Of Sound' to the top of the charts. The Crazy Frog's cover of 'Last Christmas' follows the frog's Christmas single 'Jingle Bells / U Can't Touch This', which reached number five last year. 'Last Christmas' was originally a hit for Wham in 1984, when the track peaked at number two in the UK singles chart.

The label family that includes Capitol, Virgin, and Astralwerks bucks the trend and takes its videos to Gotuit.com

EMI, whose labels put out records by such Spin mainstays as Coldplay, Gorillaz, the Decemberists, Liz Phair, and many more, signed a deal to distribute its videos to consumers for free via Gotuit.com, the two companies announced today.

"Gotuit offers viewers an exciting and high-quality way to enjoy our artists' videos," said David Munns, EMI's North American CEO. "They're a valuable new channel for fans to connect with our artists' music and creative vision."

In signing with Gotuit, EMI distanced itself from fellow majors Universal Music Group and Warner Bros., both of whom signed deals with YouTube in recent weeks. In terms of functionality, both services are rather similar, with easy to use, Flash-based video players, but Gotuit has two main differences: First, its videos cannot be embedded in third-party web pages as YouTube's can, and second, Gotuit is very much involved with expanding its reach into the TV-based video-on-demand services offered by cable and satellite providers nationwide.

Talk: Does this sound like a good move for EMI, or are you sad now that you won't be able to embed that tearjerker video for Coldplay's "The Scientist" on your blog? COMMENT

On SPIN.com:

YouTube Strikes Deals with Universal, Sony/BMG, CBS

YouTube, Warner Team Up

On the Web:

http://www.gotuit.com/

EMI's failed attempt to buy Warner Music earlier this year cost the music company more than £6m, the world's third largest music group revealed yesterday.

The £6.2m exceptional charge added to restructuring costs of £33.5m in the first half for EMI. Overall, its revenue fell 4.1 per cent to £867.9m while profits before tax more than halved to £18.6m, compared with £41m last year.

EMI believes it sales this year will be boosted by strong sales of albums over the Christmas period from big-name artists Robbie Williams, Norah Jones, Joss Stone, Moby and a new collection from The Beatles, mixed by Sir George Martin, to be used in a new Cirque du Soleil show. Eric Nicoli, the chief executive, yesterday said The Beatles "mash-up" album, to be released on Monday, was "extraordinary and difficult to imagine".

The interim figures also suffered from comparison with strong sales of albums from Coldplay and Gorillaz in the first half of last year.

Mr Nicoli argued yesterday that EMI has a "bright future" as an independent company, despite the costs of its failed merger with Warner Music. It was abandoned after European courts annulled the 2004 regulatory clearance of the merger between Sony and BMG.

Patrick Yau, an analyst at Bridgewell Securities, said that the company needs three "blockbuster" albums over the Christmas period that sell around 3 million units if it is to match market expectations for the full year.

Digital sales at EMI increased nearly 80 per cent in the first half and accounted for more than 9 per cent of its total revenue. It expects to derive a quarter of its revenue from digital sales by 2010.

From January, all of EMI's CDs will also contain extra content that can be unlocked using a computer.

Source: http://news.independent.co.uk

EMI, the world's third largest music group, reported first-half profits ahead of expectations this morning and reiterated its optimism about a second half that will see releases from Robbie Williams and Norah Jones.

After taking into account the effect of an accounting fraud at its Brazilian arm revealed by EMI last month, underlying profit before tax came in at £18.6m for the six months to September 30. That was down sharply on last year's £41m but above City analysts' forecasts for £18m. The group put the decline down to the £9m one-off cost from Brazil and the fact its music division was this year weighting its release schedule towards the second half.

The latest first half suffers from a tough comparison against last year when EMI benefited from releases from Coldplay [pictured], Gorillaz and the Rolling Stones. In the second half, EMI will raise the stakes with new albums from Joss Stone, All Saints and Australian country singer Keith Urban.

The music publishing arm, where first-half revenues were in line with last year, is pinning its hopes on albums from Natasha Bedingfield, Kelly Clarkson and Jay-Z.

"The strength of this line up, together with continued strong growth in digital revenues and ongoing cost discipline, give the board confidence that the group is on track to deliver results in line with its expectations for the full year," EMI said in a statement.

It reiterated last month's message to investors that the Brazilian accounting fraud was a one-off. It predicted that the financial impact would be limited to the music division's statutory revenues being reduced by £11m. Earnings before interest, tax and amortisation would also be knocked down by £9.0m from the amounts indicated in October's trading update.

"However, given the disruption to the business, it is likely that EMI Music's operations in Brazil will underperform in the full financial year," the group said.

EMI did not provide any update on the senior managers it said it had suspended while investigating the fraud.

Overall, revenues at the music division slipped 5.2% at constant currency. But the company suggested it had made some headway in protecting itself against falling CD sales by raising the proportion of revenues from digital sales, such as internet downloads.

Group digital revenues jumped by 68.4% to £73.7m in the first half and they represented 8.5% of total revenues, up from 5.4% in the financial year ended March 31.

That compares with figures from the IFPI global industry group last month showing that digital sales now account for 11% of the total recorded music market.

EMI's shares have been been buoyed by recent talk that Warner Music Group might make a renewed bid for its rival after failing earlier this year.

Today's results shed no light on whether either music group will consider pursuing the other again any time soon.

The two rivals terminated their tit-for-tat pursuit of each other in July after a European court ruling cast doubt on the chances of a deal succeeding.

The bidding contest reached stalemate when the court stunned the record industry by striking out the commission's approval of the merger between Sony Music and Bertelsmann's BMG.

Source: http://business.guardian.co.uk

EMI Group said it was confident it was on track to deliver results in line with full-year expectations as it posted first-half underlying pretax profit slightly above forecasts on Wednesday at 18.6 million pounds.

The world's third largest music company had said its profits in the six months to end-September would be down from the 41 million pounds posted last year because its release schedule is stronger in the second half than the first.

Analysts had expected profits of around 18 million pounds. It also discovered an accounting fraud at its Brazilian arm in October which affected the reporting of results.

The company has said it has strong second-half releases from Robbie Williams, Norah Jones, Joss Stone and The Magic Numbers.

It posted group revenues of 867.9 million pounds, down 4.1 percent from the previous year at constant currency.

The London-based company, home to artists including Coldplay, said its recorded music division was down 5.2 percent at constant currency, largely due to its album release schedule.

Its music publishing unit delivered revenues in line with last year.

EMI said in a trading update in October it expected underlying pretax profit of 27 million pounds but this was revised after the Brazilian accounting fraud was discovered.

The group maintained its interim dividend at 2 pence per share.

Source: Reuters

The Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department gave antitrust approval Tuesday to Universal Music Group's planned acquisition of BMG Music Publishing for $2.09 billion.

The deal must now receive approval from European regulators to become final.

BMG - owned by German media company Bertelsmann AG - owns the rights to more than a million songs by contemporary recording artists such as Nelly, Maroon 5 and Coldplay, as well as classic hits by the Beach Boys, Barry Manilow and other entertainers.

Universal Music Group is a unit of Paris-based Vivendi SA. It's publishing arm controls the rights to songs by artists such as 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige and Chamillionaire.

If approved, the deal would combine the No. 3 and No. 4 music publishing catalogs.

"We were confident that the regulatory authorities would find that the acquisition did not raise competition concerns, and we appreciate that the Justice Department promptly reached the same conclusion," Universal Music Group said in a prepared statement.

European Union regulators said earlier this month they would issue a ruling on the deal by Dec. 8.

Unlike the recording business, which sells CDs and other products to be sold at retail, music publishers make money by licensing songs for use in movies, TV shows, CDs, video games, ringtones and other media.

The companies also collect performance fees when songs are played on the radio or in public venues such as clubs.

Some analysts have warned that EU regulators are likely to scrutinize the deal, in part because of an EU court ruling in July that overturned the European Commission's go-ahead for the merger that created Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

That 2004 deal, which reduced the number of major recording companies from five to four, is being re-examined.

Source: Various

Boy Kill Boy have committed their support to War Child, dedicating their next single Shoot Me Down (released November 13th) to the charity, with a proportion of royalties from sales going to the charity, as well as adding their name to a soon-to-be-announced London benefit gig.

Boy Kill Boy have had a splendid 2006 of sold out shows and hit singles. Their debut album Civilian was released in May and has sold nearly 100,000 copies. Boy Kill Boy join the likes of Radiohead, Blur, Oasis and Coldplay in supporting War Child.

Chris Peck, the band's singer, has had first-hand experience of one of War Child"s programme areas, Democratic Republic of Congo.

He comments: "Back in '95 I was lucky to spend a couple of months in Uganda with a home-grown organisation called 'The Ruwenzori Project'. There, me and fifteen others worked on an environmental programme in the Ruwenzori jungle which borders Uganda and the D.R.C. With this and through visiting neighbouring schools and orphanages I had a pretty up-close experience of war's devastation on the community, especially the kids.

"Those stories have since stayed with me so now I'm delighted to have anything to do with War Child and their long-term vision. We can't wait to play in support of the charity and to have our next single 'Shoot Me Down' linked to the project. Most of all we look forward to growing with War Child and being a part of this down the line in any way we can."

War Child's campaigns director Julian Carrera comments:

"At War Child we love it when great British bands decide they want to stand up and represent the children we work with. Boy Kill Boy are another great British band and have had a fantastic year, and we are delighted that they have chosen to lend their support to our work - and to help us long term too. We're really excited the band has decided to make their single 'Shoot You Down' a War Child single too."

Related links:

http://www.warchildmusic.com/

Boy Kill Boy - Suzie

Help A Day In The Life Warchild Album

http://www.warchildmusic.com/

Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. (SCEA) announced today the release of SingStar Rocks!, available exclusively for the PlayStation®2 computer entertainment system. Developed by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's London Studio, SingStar Rocks! is an innovative new title that invites players to step into the spotlight and exercise their vocal chords in an engaging, social experience that encourages even the shyest singer to unleash their inner rock star.

SingStar Rocks! features 30 fully licensed music tracks from a wide variety of artists and also includes footage of the original videos for each song. The songs span several genres from chart-topping rock, pop, hip-hop and legendary artists, including Fall Out Boy, Gwen Stefani, Coldplay, Jet, Scorpions, KT Tunstall, The Killers, Blur, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and many others.

Players can save their favorite performances to Memory Card for future playback, and customize and enhance playback with numerous audio effects.

At the end of May 2005 a friend told me of a development I assumed was a joke.

The number one single in the United Kingdom had just been confirmed. Beating out the rap group Akon, as well as the incessantly popular Coldplay by nearly four copies to one, was a blue, animated froglike creature from a German mobile phone company.

It seems a ring tone, a retake on the huge 1980s hit “Axel F.”, had become England’s favorite music. It would hold the premiere UK spot for the next four weeks. Over the next few months it climbed to number one throughout most of Europe and Australia.

It doesn’t take an audiophile to recognize that the musical possibilities of a cell phone are crude to the point of abstract. But ring tones are perhaps the music industry’s fastest growing opportunity, with $4 billion in global sales during 2004. Though the online music industry proper is only beginning to sell complete singles for $.99 a track, 20-second ring tones have been selling well for years now for about $3 each. Most ring tones are composed of either monophonic or polyphonic (SP-MIDI) sequences, but many newer models support compressed audio clips. The most popular musical ring tones are always cell-phone-capable arrangements of pop songs, with just enough fidelity to be recognizable as a reference to the source material. These brief tunes are their own referential music; music that acts as a sketched abstract of an established song, evoking the memory of this music. The cell phone, so perfect a medium for purely referential music has indeed formed a happy union with the content referencing that has fueled pop music for ages.

But doesn’t the Crazy Frog phenomenon reveal that ring tones can escape their second-hand status as mere pointers and become our preferred music? This anthropomorphic corporate mascot may in fact herald the next stage of popular music as it shifts into its next form, whose value and meaning lies increasingly in its reference to the medium of its predecessor.

Technological innovations not only change music production but what listeners think music is and is not. At the end of the 19th century, new copyright laws allowed the Tin Pan Alley alliances of composers, lyricists, and publishers to make sheet music a song’s tangible artifact, with performers and enthusiasts alike purchasing copies of hit songs (e.g. “After the Ball Is Over") by the millions. In the 20th century, gadgetry gets its big break, and technology no longer merely plays a socially catalytic role but becomes the means of producing musical sound. By 1911 the price of the newly invented Victrola had dropped as low as $15, filling American homes. Stars quickly began to record for emerging record companies. The deep voices of celebrities like Enrico Caruso were a natural fit for this technology, which ignored nearly everything above 2,500 Hz and below 150 Hz, badly reproducing the rest—less than an eighth of the fidelity of our modern CD standard. Much like with cell phone ring tones, this sound served as a mnemonic for the what was understood as the prevailing mode of music—live performance—that it would soon overtake.

But the bright sound of the piano, hostile to early recording methods, found its own way to survive in this age of simulation. As early as 1905, professional pianists were mechanically recording every nuance of their gestures onto rolls of paper. These rolls could then be played back on the Pianola or other brand-name player pianos in one’s living room. A 1920s advertisement for these devices shows just how deeply technology had dug itself into the act of music making. In one frame we see a bored, snoozing family surrounding a regular upright piano with caption reading “The Silent Piano”. In the next, the same family is dancing and singing along with a player piano. Indeed, in 1925 player pianos outsold “silent pianos”.

Radio’s appearance was initially greeted by the industry with hostility but soon found a role as partner. By 1930, Billboard was reporting that “sheet music and record dealers now consider radio a boon to their business, rather than a detriment.” As live performing professionals had once advertised sheet music, now radio would advertise records, since by this point, music was now near completely encapsulated within a vinyl physical object referencing an imagined live performance few people actually witnessed, if it were to take place at all.

But the rise of television in the 1940s and 1950s presented radio with a new challenge. To maintain its entertainment value in the face of television, radio responded with its Top 40 format, choosing songs directly from the Billboard chart of the same name. The domination of the hit single had begun. Casey Kasem hit the airwaves in 1970, counting down hit songs in reverse order. Corporate consolidation among radio stations began in the mid 1980s and resulted in the top 20 owners maintaining more than 20 percent of all domestic stations.

The emphasis on hit singles in the market had the effect of diminishing the significance of artists themselves. To the public, many artists are reduced to and equated with their singles, remaining one-dimensional. Without live representation, an artist’s opportunity to connect with an audience as one human to another disappears.

Now the single-based format is stronger than ever, thanks to song downloads and the advent of music-compression technology—MP3s. The 2005 addition of paid music downloads to Billboard‘s charting metrics signaled their growing significance. Not only does the distribution of individual songs reinforce the importance of singles, but the ad-hoc social process of exchange among users of the wealth of recordings available as swappable digital files encourages users to create a montage of singles, mix-tape style. Indeed, Apple’s research found that many consumers constantly listened to their iPods in shuffle mode, prompting them to create a screenless player the size of a pack of gum that would automatically play loaded singles randomly. This randomization divorces music—now freed from aesthetic, geographic, and personal features—from the musicians who performed it. With all the emphasis on singles, the notion of artists as active musical entities loses force as the aesthetic direction they once offered through albums dissolves. The consuming public confronts their song collections as though they were found sounds, akin to musique concrète. The result is a two-way street of musical decontextualization: Disembodied singles are both better suited for ad-hoc arrangement while such an arrangement further reinforces the idea of singles as isolated found sounds.

But aren’t we searching for more than sounds? If one random ordering of music is as good as another, what does this say about the role of music in our lives? Apple claims in its ads that “iPod Shuffle adds musical spontaneity to your life. Lose control. Love it.” For many however, there’s just not much to lose.

Recording technology needed to evolve to a point where it could effectively stand in for live performance. It didn’t need to be perfect, but the bar for fidelity was fairly high. Now, with recordings handing off the baton to shuffled MP3s, the target for fidelity is that much lower. Even though 128-kilobits-per-second MP3s typically reveal their flaws over multiple listens, this iTunes-recommended encoding level is the most popular, a testament to music’s changing role in society. Digital singles aren’t trying to represent the live show, they’re shooting for the CD playing out of your computer into mediocre headphones. We in turn adapt to the new condition, eventually forgetting the original reference—now the poor-sounding MP3 is what music is. Like a techno-cultural game of telephone, we’re getting signal loss here. Music is simply moving further from our biological experience of sound, becoming more conceptual, more abstract. Increasingly, music need only be vivid enough to trigger memories of cultural reference points. Online file-sharing communities are, most important, about the exchange of these cultural references as about trading songs themselves.

Popular music has always been about fashionable image-making, but as the high-fidelity recording industry drowns in a cacophony of ring tones and MP3s, images—music videos—become more significant. (It’s no coincidence that iPod models have recently added video capabilities.) When yoked to images, music becomes even more a mere referential trigger. Liberated from acoustics, musical experience serves to convey a blend of visual images and cultural references that a listener uses to build their self-concept. The feverish popularity of personalized ring tones (and individualized ring-back tones) attests to this. For many, one’s unique acoustic phone signature is a source of pride, a declaration of self amongst a group that recognizes the cultural references inherent in one’s choice of ring tone. Developing video-phone capabilities now display friends’ faces along with the ring-tone associated with them. Songs are increasingly becoming powerful functional mnemonics associated with one’s social networks.

Coldplay’s crushing defeat makes perfect sense in this light. Think about it: Which experience is likely to get a more emotionally invested response—the single you’ve heard some on the radio, sandwiched between other singles (and commercials), or the simple, catchy tune you picked out that goes off every time your boyfriend or girlfriend calls? Ring tones transcend whatever song they once referenced, even the live performance recordings once referenced. They are immediately and inexorably linked to something far more personal: other people.

So, in an age when most people neither buy records nor go to live performances but constantly answer their phones and download digital singles, we have to ask ourselves who the real performers are. It is possible that the only “live” musical experience left is at the point of user playback. As individual events, these experiences are clearly impoverished—several seconds of midi playback or a few minutes of compressed content, transient and disposable. But when viewed en masse as fodder for social exchange, we see a newly purposed popular music where consumers might take over where their stars left off, adding their own semantic depth to the flatlands of digital music surrounding them. By appropriating music for social practices tied to these contemporary modes of communication, can’t we dig out more hospitable, personalized spaces for ourselves and our peers? Isn’t it ultimately empowering to dictate our own musical meaning?

Possibly, but the challenge of assuming the directive role once exclusive to performers (and producers, musical directors, etc.) is formidable. The consequences of curating your musical environment poorly won’t be dramatic or immediate. Music will simply gradually lose depth, becoming less expressive on its own terms. When musical experience becomes an unconvincing arrangement of disembodied singles and a room full of easily identifiable, but annoying ring tones, the Music in music waves goodbye. What’s left is the functional component. We start thinking of music as caller ID, as time-killing stimulus between subway stops. The industry will in turn respond to these needs. As Tin Pan Alley weeded out the complexity and improvisation of its product’s blues and jazz roots to produce songs both professionals and amateurs could play from sheet music, marketplace entropy will now provide no more than we remember to ask for. Also, personalized references inherently draw listeners’ social circles tighter about them, wielding ring tones and singles with extra-musical meaning their friends alone understand. For the rest of us, the appeal of the ring tone is lost without a meaningful reference to the original, full-range musical experience—to us it’s just bad music.

This is an age where all marketing points to making things as easy as possible for listeners. Everything a consumer could possibly want becomes a click away, eliminating as much decision-making as possible. When I’m browsing through apartment listings, I appreciate this, but for music things aren’t as simple. What is required is a way to empower listeners, sparking them into activity—to return control and provide the means to learn to use it. An attempt to “add spontaneity to your life” via a random number generator simply doesn’t work; spontaneity is a much richer human phenomenon. If listeners are to be the last keepers of live musical experience, the last performers, they will need the ability to make these musical decisions for themselves and, as their techno-social networks evolve, one another.

Source: http://www.popmatters.com

Do you have a living room big enough to house a tenpin bowling alley? Or does your home have a internal wall of at least 30ft - high enough to build a climbing wall?

If so, and you are based in central London (zones one or two), and interested in selling, you could have just what Simon Harris is looking for. He is the founder of Cityscope, a property search and sales agency which deals exclusively in 'unconventional living spaces'.

On the search side, his clients have included a couple of professional ballroom dancers who wanted a living room large enough to practise in; a pianist who wanted a room big enough to house three grand pianos - plus a studio where her artist husband couldn’t hear her practising; and a rock group who wanted a studio with living accommodation above for some of their staff (Coldplay, just between you and me).

ELVIS is expected to top the chart once more at a charity auction being held on Friday night.

A Cherry Records receipt signed by The King himself could be the biggest fundraiser of the night at the auction of 85 film, sport and music memorabilia items being held on behalf of Larkrise School, in Trowbridge.

Other big names to feature in the lots of signed photographs, shirts and other items include Pirates of the Caribbean stars Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp, top bands the Kaiser Chiefs and Coldplay, Clint Eastwood and Ronnie Barker.

Organiser Julie Decarteret said: "We have had a fantastic response and we are hoping to top £2,000. I think we will get a good price for the Elvis item whatever happens."

Sporting stars Shane Warne, David Coulthard, Jenson Button, Freddie Flintoff and the Bath Rugby team have also given their support and their signatures.

The auction is the brainchild of Ms Decarteret, 42, and her friend Dave Neville, 39, and they have organised the whole event, including shelling out for the memorabilia, themselves.

It is the second auction evening the pair, both committee members at the Trowbridge Trades and Labour Club, have organised.

They were inspired after they were approached by the Friends of Trowbridge Hospital to hold a quiz night at the club to raise funds.

From that the friends, both keen sports fans, came up with the idea of holding a sport memorabilia auction also raising funds for the hospital.

The event, held in May, was such a huge success, raising more than £1,600, they immediately began organising a second.

For the first auction all the items, more than 40, were donated.

But this time around they, along with Ms Decarteret's partner, Darren Starr and daughter, 15-year-old Kirsty, have been going to memorabilia sales and trawling internet auction site, ebay, as well as contacting people for donations.

The items on sale can be viewed at the club, in Stallard Street, from 7.30pm tonight with bidding due to start at 8pm.

Entrance is £2 and a buffet is included.

Source: This Is Wiltshire

Coldplay, Iggy Pop, Rolling Stones and U2 set for new video

Iggy Pop, The Rolling Stones, Patti Smith, Red Hot Chili Peppers, U2, Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake have teamed-up to appear in a Johnny Cash video. The artists are among a host of 36 celebrities who all make cameos in the clip for 'God's Gonna Cut You Down'.

They join Hollywood actors Johnny Depp, Dennis Hopper and Chris Martin, who also appear. The video, which is taken from Cash's recent album 'American V: A Hundred Highways', sees each artist in black to honour the late singer.

'God's Gonna Cut You Down' is scheduled for an iTunes release in the US on November 21. The video will also be aired live across various sites, including YouTube, on the same day. Cash passed away three years ago after complications from diabetes aged 71.

More on the video here

British acts dominated the list of top-selling bands and artists across Europe this year heralding a "golden age" for the country's music scene, the UK record industry's trade association said on Thursday.

Performers such as Coldplay, The Kooks, Katie Melua and the Kaiser Chiefs scooped 19 out of 36 Platinum awards given to artists selling more than one million copies of an album across Europe, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) said.

U.S. artists took 12 of the awards run by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, including two for the Scissor Sisters who are signed to a UK label. Robbie Williams was the most successful UK performer, receiving awards for three separate albums whose total sales exceeded 12 million.

"These latest figures confirm that we are going through a golden age for new British music, even by our own high standards," said BPI chairman Peter Jamieson.

"The success UK music is enjoying today bodes well for future years because as ever in music, it's the hits of today which pay for the hits of tomorrow."

The BPI said more performers were likely to earn Platinum Awards by the end of 2006 when sales of releases by the likes of the Arctic Monkeys, Snow Patrol and Razorlight were finally added up.

Source: Reuters

SANTA ANA–More than 1,400 people gathered at St. Barbara’s Catholic Church church today to say good-bye to fallen firefighter Pablo Cerda.

The church overflowed with mourners. Father Richard Kennedy told the crowd Saint Barbara was the patron saint of firefighters, a remark made poignant by the presence of hundreds of Cerda’s fellow firefighters from all over Southern California.

The ceremony concluded with a slideshow presentation featuring photos of Cerda as a baby, playing soccer for Los Amigos High School in Fountain Valley and in his firefighting gear. The slideshow was set to music by the band Coldplay.

Chris Martin attended the Sir Paul McCartney’s live show at The Royal Albert Hall on Friday November 3rd where he premiered Ecce Cor Meum (”Behold My Heart”) a four-movement work for chorus and orchestra.

This is McCartney’s fourth classical album since the Liverpool Oratorio was released in 1991.

German media company Bertelsmann AG said Wednesday its profit in the first nine months of the year fell by almost half because of income tax expenses and one-time items including a legal settlement over Napster.

The company, which owns a range of media properties including European broadcaster RTL Group SA and publisher Random House, said net profit fell to 243 million euros ($309.9 million) in the nine months through September compared with 475 million euros a year earlier. Bertelsmann did not provide quarterly net income figures. Nine-month sales rose 10.3 percent to 13.54 billion euros ($17.27 billion).

The decrease in earnings was the result of tax expenses along with special items, including a 48 million euro ($61.2 million) settlement with Universal Music Group over a lawsuit involving the former music file-sharing platform Napster.

Privately owned Bertelsmann, which is based in Guetersloh, Germany, invested in the original Napster by loaning some $85 million in cash between 2000 and 2001. Napster went off-line in 2001 and has since been reborn as a licensed online music store under new ownership.

Pretax profit rose 8.3 percent to 982 million euros ($1.3 billion) from 907 million euros in 2005, driven in part by an improved European advertising market, but hampered by challenges facing the company's Sony BMG joint venture, including a drop in demand for CDs.

In July, an EU court overturned the European Commission's go-ahead for the merger between the music units of Sony and Bertelsmann AG. That deal, which reduced the number of major record companies from five to four, must now be re-examined.

But Chief Financial Officer Thomas Rabe said the company still expects pretax profit to rise nearly 10 percent for the year.

"We are pleased with the group's operating result," he said. "For the current full fiscal year 2006 we expect a nearly 10 percent increase in operating result and a significantly improved net income year on year."

For the July-September period, the company's sales rose by 2.4 percent to 4.4 billion ($5.61 billion) from 4.3 billion euros in the year-ago period. Pretax profit rose 6.8 percent to 281 million euros ($358.4 million) from 263 million euros, hampered by the 4.5 billion euro ($5.74 billion) buyback in July 2005 of the 25.1 percent stake in Bertelsmann held by Groupe Bruxelles Lambert.

In September, Vivendi agreed to buy Bertelsmann's BMG Music Publishing arm for 1.63 billion euros ($2.09 billion) in a deal that will give the French company the world's largest music publishing catalog and songs by artists such as Coldplay and Robbie Williams. The EU is set to rule on the sale by Dec. 8.

A Cornish theatre and concert venue says it is facing a financial crisis.

The Hall For Cornwall in Truro has made a loss of £100,000 and claims it may have to raise ticket prices or shut its doors if extra funding is not found.

Despite a rise in the number of ticket sales, managers claim the end of Objective One funding and rising maintenance costs are to blame. The venue, which opened in 1997, attracts about 180,000 theatre and concert-goers a year.

The hall is used for a wide variety of shows, from opera to rock concerts and pantomime to amateur dramatic performances. Over the past few years, audiences have risen by more than 40% and it has managed to attract bands such as Coldplay.

But there has been a series of financial problems as only a small part of money from ticket sales, on average about 20p in every £1, goes to the hall. Most of it goes to the teams and companies producing the shows. In 2000, a rescue package saved it from closure, and in 2005 it introduced a 50p levy on all ticket sales to raise money. Hall for Cornwall's annual review reflects on a rollercoaster year for the Cornish venue.

In a review of the venue covering April 2005 to March 2006, Director Tim Brinkman says the hall's extra grant funding from arts coucils and other groups is considerably lower than similar theatres elsewhere in the country.

Mr Brinkman added that Objective One European funding came to an end this year, and ticket sales alone could not fill the gap left. He believes the 50p levy may have to be increased to make up the deficit. "What we would have to do is make sure that we do it in such a way that it doesn't dissuade people from coming," he said. "But I would like to think people wouldn't mind giving us a few extra pence on top of the ticket price that we can use for theatre."

Trustee Denis Arbon said more grants were also needed from the Arts Council and local authorities. He said: "It can't rely solely on ticket sales, it has to be a combination of things. But we will continue to operate because, by all measures, apart form the fact that we're under-funded, the whole thing is very successful."

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk

NEW YORK -- While sales of recorded music and attendance at concerts continue to slide, profits in the increasingly legitimate secondary ticketing market have surged so dramatically in the past year that music dealmakers now liken the industry climate to a Wild West gold rush.

With FM radio no longer shaping American musical tastes and music labels seemingly less focused on artist development, agents and promoters now have a vital new channel for artist financing, consumer data-mining and direct-to-consumer promotion. But just how the music industry will quantify, capture and make use of all that potential data and revenue is still shaking out.

Clay Aiken, the Eagles, Jewel, Coldplay, Christina Aguilera, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill are just a few of the performers who have experimented with new promotional services offered to them by Ticketmaster and StubHub.

"Right now it's a huge jigsaw puzzle," says veteran concert promoter John Scher, co-CEO of New York-based Metropolitan Entertainment. "With certain genres not even present on radio or MTV anymore, which of these new ticketing companies is going to help you market your show, help efficiently sell your tickets -- and candidly -- which is going to participate in the building and development of artists so that there are new headliners 10 years from now?"

Once the sole province of scalpers and only slightly more scrupulous ticket brokers, the secondary ticketing market -- defined here as the legal reselling of tickets to live entertainment and sporting events -- is estimated to be a $4 billion-plus industry, now powered by Internet middlemen, corporate packaging, individual sellers and, increasingly, performers themselves.

As ineffective state laws limiting resales have fallen by the wayside and as broadband access has become the standard, such familiar names as TicketsNow, StubHub and Tickets.com -- as well as eBay and the classified ad site Craigslist -- are becoming concert industry forces.

Now Ticketmaster, a unit of Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp. and the titan of by-the-book electronic ticketing for decades, offers a resale forum called TicketExchange. That fan-to-fan site is in addition to the ticket auctions it introduced three years ago, in which fans also have a hand in setting prices.

The company, which once rigorously protected its turf by supporting anti-scalping laws, is now part of a broad industry lobbying effort to undo them.

"It's incredibly chaotic," talent agent Marty Diamond says of the explosive activity in the secondary market. "The technology is out of control. We're all scrambling to keep up with it."

Diamond, whose clients at his New York-based Little Big Man agency include the bands Coldplay and Scissor Sisters, says it isn't just brokers and entrepreneurs who are stoking the action. For hot shows, it's concertgoers themselves who are buying an extra pair to sell in the hope of defraying the cost of their own tickets.

"In all fairness, (face value) prices have careened out of control," Diamond says. "Kids have figured out that, 'I can buy four tickets, sell two, keep two, and I've got my tickets for free.' But at the end of the day I have a responsibility to protect my clients -- and if someone's creating another revenue stream off them, it's suspect."

Some sports teams and a growing list of touring artists are bringing some order to the marketplace by entering into promotional agreements with secondary sellers that steer fans to sanctioned resales, where there is the guarantee that such tickets are authentic.

Artists also are taking advantage of new opportunities, formalizing partnerships that package tickets with CDs, merchandise, VIP fan club packages and travel or that assist them in setting up aftermarket sales platforms of their own.

"Every deal is customized," says Colin Evans, vp business development for San Francisco-based StubHub, the peer-to-peer resale site whose business has soared 13,000% in the past year. Of his company's burgeoning relationship with the music business, he says, "there are definitely many revenue-sharing opportunities here."

Just last month, StubHub hired Chuck LaVallee, previously of WMA, to head its new music business development department.

"It's no longer just ticketing, it's marketing, packages, merchandising, everything," Ticketmaster spokeswoman Bonnie Poindexter says. "All the different players in the business are sitting around the same table today."

"There is no doubt there was a breach in the marketplace, a need not being met," says Nathan Hubbard, chief of staff of Charlottesville, Va.-based MusicToday, the artist merchandising company that has long led the way in direct artist-to-fan transactions, most notably through its lucrative partnership with Dave Matthews Band.

Hubbard acknowledges that artists could have been more alert in recent years to the fact that fans were clamoring for alternative ways to do business. He, too, sees the secondary ticketing market as "money left on the table," but his experience has taught him that if properly handled, it's income that can be easily captured. Artists can simply choose to control their own ticket inventory from start to finish, he says -- making all manner of seating locations and tiered pricing available all along the selling window.

"Overall, I think there will be a shift in entertainment toward the consumer being interested in transacting directly with the brand," Hubbard says. "The natural evolution of the ticketing industry will be venues and artists controlling their own traffic, messaging, branding and relationship with the customer."

Ticketmaster president and chief operating officer Sean Moriarty says his company expects to retain its lead as the industry's top seller of tickets. While he agrees that such resellers as StubHub "have gained some early traction," he says Ticketmaster has the clear edge in reliability because it handles its resale market purely electronically, rather than via physical shipment of hard tickets.

Metropolitan's Scher says Ticketmaster's decades-long technology lead always has been important, but soon it might not matter.

"In the next 18 months, we're going to see a seismic change in this industry," he says. "It's very well known that (leading concert promoter) Live Nation's contract with Ticketmaster will soon be up. (Live Nation CEO) Michael Rapino has said time and again that ticket prices and service charges in this business are too high. So, as the leader, are they going to be able to negotiate a new paradigm with Ticketmaster -- or are they going into the ticketing business for themselves or with someone else?"

Live Nation executives declined comment. But the company, recently on a buying binge, just purchased a substantial stake in MusicToday, creating a partnership that's well positioned to form an alternative ticketing venture if need be. Its deal with Ticketmaster expires in 2008, according to the Los Angeles Times.

"We're at a really interesting time in the ticketing space," StubHub's Evans says. "We're starting to see a lot of moving pieces that potentially could have a significant impact on Ticketmaster's hold over the market. There are now many very convenient options so you don't have to decide today what concert you are going to see seven months from now. The days of the big Saturday morning 'on-sale' are over."

Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com

Coming from the makers of desktop-based widget app Goowy, is Yourminis, which is set to launch on November 6th. Yourminis is the latest entry to the web-based widget desktop space currently lead by Netvibes, Pageflakes, and Protopage. Unlike its competitors which are all AJAX-based, yourminis is built on Flash and has its own share of advantages all together.

Yourminis allows, like its every other competitor, for you to essentially have your own desktop on the web with all sorts of funky things, wrapped with a interface that you can customize to your liking and call it your own.

There are four kind of widgets you can add to your page in yourminis: minis — which are mashups of the most prominent Web 2.0 products and handy tools like calculators and calendars — podcasts, vidcasts, and blogs. As with the other tools, you can create as many tabs as you like, and you can also publish and share it. Here’s one I created with my favorite podcasts, vidcasts, and just for loyal readers, blog (yes, yours truly).

Where yourminis differentiates a bit from the typical web-based widget desktop is in a few aspects. First, it offers the ability to go into heads up-display mode. Currently, this has two users: the integrated badge users can put on their webpages or blogs (i.e. the one on this page — click on “View yourminis”), and a Firefox extension which users will be able to install and have one-click access to their minis with. The extension is set to release anytime soon and I had the pleasure of trying it in its early stages. I have to say, it’s extremely convenient, slick and adds another dimension to this space — something other services lack.

The thing about great products, platforms and tools is that their limitation is only dependant the user’s imagination, and nothing else has an input. This can be seen with yourminis. Not only does it allow users to integrate rich media like videos from YouTube and AOL, pictures from Flickr, and music through its internal MP3 Player widget, there’s something cool you can do with them: create collages. For examples of what users have come up with so far, check out the collages on Coldplay, 50 Cent, and Dallas Mavericks. This is some truly awesome stuff. While not for personal use (i.e. to set as a startpage), socially, this could prove to do what MySpace did once again. Every band, movie, artist, baseball team, and such could have their own minis showcasing themselves. Other areas this could be used in is as a portfolio for photographers, fan creations, personal ‘that’s gotta hurt’ video collections, and simply to share those family vacation pictures. Added the advantage of have an integrated badge which can go into heads-up display mode upon being clicked on, the possibilities here are endless and most importantly, purely dependant on the creator.

The market that yourminis is looking to tap has proven to be extremely competitive and tough. When one of the players gets a version 2 revamp, the other’s already on version 3 while the other other is set to release version 4. Needless to say, they’re all excellent products and keep topping each other at every step. So, for a new product to enter this space and make something for itself proves to get harder and harder. Does yourminis have a chance? In the personal widget space, perhaps, possibly, but where I can really see it taking off is in those user-generated collages and montages. What it’s really doing is taking the idea of every band and film-maker having a MySpace page and users creating and posting montages of their favorite tennis players, actors, and role models on YouTube, a step further. As we’ve seen in the past, this is the kind of stuff that appeals to teenagers and the MySpace generation alike. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear more of yourminis in the future.

Source:

From a Kevin Federline chat transcript:

spongebob asks what musicians do you admire?

Kevin Federline says Tons of people man, right now I’m liking Lupe Fiasco, Ludacris, Jay Z and the fact that he is comin’ back. Other artists like Coldplay, and even older people that aren’t around anymore like Jimi Hendrix and a couple of rock ‘n roll people.

More on this here [thanks boomslang]

Joseph Arthur returns for show Monday at Lime Spider

When singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur returns to his native Akron to perform at the Lime Spider on Monday night, it will be another special event in what has been a year full of them.

After bouncing from label to label, Arthur decided to go the DIY route and release his latest album, the relatively stripped-down Nuclear Daydream, on his own Lonely Astronaut records. The subsequent tour has been his first with a four-piece backing band.

Early last month, he appeared on Late Night With David Letterman and his performance of the Stones-flavored Slide Away prompted the usually taciturn Letterman to remark: ``I want to go with those people. I would like to be with those people.... I think they are doing things I'm not,'' adding ``Wonderful music, too.''

In addition to that awkwardly phrased late-night affirmation, Arthur saw his song In the Sun from his second album, Come to Where I'm From, recorded by one of his musical heroes (and now good buddy) Michael Stipe, along with Coldplay's Chris Martin. It was a benefit single for hurricane victims in the Gulf Coast and became the name of the charitable organization (www.inthesun.org).

His Stipe connection led Arthur to meet members of the aid group Six Villages, who took him to a refugee camp in northern Uganda. Armed with painting supplies, Arthur interacted with and taught basic painting skills to the children, many of whom were orphaned by the paramilitary group the Lord's Resistance Army.

Arthur wrote and recorded his song The River Blue with some of the children and brought home about 300 of their paintings. ``They were pretty amazing,'' he said. ``Depictions of the LRA and what had happened to them, their homes burning down and their families being murdered.''

Arthur said the trip ``had an extreme impact on my life,'' and certainly added some perspective to his own trials and tribulations.

``Well, when you have little problems, you can't really buy into them as much, you know? It's like, whatever, dude.''

The recordings will be part of a benefit CD aimed at building a rehab center in the camp Arthur visited, ``revolving around giving them the means to express themselves in order to heal themselves through the traumas they've suffered.''

But even with all his globe-hopping, the Brooklyn-based Arthur says returning to Akron, which he left four days after graduating from Firestone High School in 1990, is still special.

``It still feels like home,'' he said from a tour stop in Virginia.

``My folks still live in the exact same place and I still go there. I've been in New York for the better part of 10 years, so it's my adult home, but Akron -- I was born and raised there from zero to 18, so it's always going to feel like `home' home, and I still got some old friends there.''

Before assembling the band, Arthur's standard touring mode was the high-tech troubadour singing his sensitive songs backed by his guitar, harmonica and a plethora of effects pedals and loop machines, which he would sometimes leave running while he created a painting during the show.

``It's been a real evolution for me to kind of break away from doing it all myself and sampling myself, and now half the show I don't even play guitar, I just front the band. It's kind of exciting for me.''

The band, which features Jennifer Turner on guitar, Greg Wieczorek on drums, Sibyl Buck on bass and Golden Smog/Jayhawks member Kraig Jarret Jonson on keyboard and guitars, has not only inspired Arthur to flex his rock muscles (usually held in check on his albums and solo performances) and already active songwriting muse.

``As the tour has progressed, I've been writing a bunch of songs and the band has been writing a bunch of songs, and it's become more collaborative and more of a rock show. It's cool, it's opened up a new world for me.''

Source: http://www.ohio.com

Dead! bounces manically from Queen-like bluster to stylish punk-pop.

Teenagers is a grandiose grind, built on testosterone and T. Rex-styled guitars. I Don’t Love You opens like Coldplay’s Yellow, before turning into an anthem like Green Day’s Wake Me When September Ends.

(Producer Rob Cavallo, who worked on Green Day’s American Idiot, helps My Chemical Romance build a concept album that’s just as good.)

Source: http://www.ohio.com