A computer program is changing the face of the music business by allowing record labels to predict a hit at the click of a mouse. Is this the death of pop as we know it, asks Jo Tatchell, or a new hope for unsigned bands everywhere?
Martin and Ruth, aka Spike, the next big girl/boy duo (so they hope) add some synth and a new background vocal to the mix. He saves the song and she emails it to Polyphonic Human Media Interface who, within 24 hours, will tell them whether their song will be a hit. When the results arrive they hover over the 20in screen and click on the returned mail. There is a graph, showing a cluster of many dots, like a constellation, and somewhere in the cluster a red spot. The spot marks their song, not quite a bullseye, but still in the throng. “It’s scored a seven,” Ruth says, scanning down. “We’re in. The record company will definitely meet us now.” Their future suddenly looks a lot rosier.
Read full story: http://blog.mp3adrenalin.com/2007/07/10/technology-is-changing-the-face-of-the-music/
The world’s best-selling multi-artist album series, NOW That’s What I Call Music!, returns this summer with a scorching collection of today’s hottest tunes. NOW That’s What I Call Music! Vol. 25, to be released July 17, features 20 smash hits from the current Pop, Modern Rock, Rap and R&B charts.
Read full story: http://blog.mp3adrenalin.com/2007/07/10/new-release-vol-25-now-thats-what-i-call-music/
Erick Morillo, house music producer, DJ, record label owner, and admitted former male gigolo, joined the New York house scene after getting involved with the group Reel 2 Reel, but his first production collaboration “Muevelo,” was with reggae artist the General in 1992.
The collaboration went platinum and was voted Billboard magazine’s Latin Single of the Year. However, it was with his first house track shortly after that Morillo found his talent for house music.
“The New Anthem’/’Funky Buddha” was released on Strictly Rhythm. With this label he released a DJ mix album, DJ Erick Morillo, Live and More. Morillo found fame when he joined with Trinidad-born producer the Stuntman and Marc Anthony. The result of this was the future club anthem “Move It,” which topped international dance charts. The singles “Go in Move,” “Can You Feel It,” and “Raise Your Hands” then followed.
Read full story: http://blog.mp3adrenalin.com/2007/07/10/erick-morillo-from-reggae-to-house/
Siblings Brandon and Brittany Hargest, along with childhood friends Lesley Moore, Chris Fedun and Libby Hodges (who left the group in 2004) quickly became a teen phenomenon, touring worldwide and releasing nine albums on EMI-owned Sparrow Records which collectively have sold over 1.3 million copies.
As previously announced, Jump5 will disband at the end of 2007 — but not before hitting the road one last time. The Hello & Goodbye Tour will take Jump5 to 30 major markets from September through the end of the year, including stops in Houston, Seattle, Evansville, Morristown, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Louisville, Little Rock, Atlanta, Orlando, Tampa, Denver, Las Vegas, Bakersfield, San Francisco and Nashville.
Read full story: http://blog.mp3adrenalin.com/2007/07/10/christian-alternative-to-pg13-pop-jump5/
As any 14-year-old will tell you, the true measure of a pop star’s popularity is how many friends he has on MySpace. And as far as friends goes, megastar rapper 50 Cent’s got plenty of ‘em — more than 908,000. But even 50 knows he’s going to have to harness more than just a well-organized MySpace contingent to top the 1.14 million copies he sold of his last album, “The Massacre,” in 2005.
Read full story: http://blog.mp3adrenalin.com/2007/07/09/virtuall-life-of-music-stars/
On Labor Day weekend in 2001, Suzanne Vega fell off her bicycle and broke her arm, just as she was rehearsing to go on tour in support of a new album. She could not yet have known that this—pathetic as it was—would turn out to be the least of her troubles.
Vega’s youngest brother, Tim, worked at the World Trade Center. And though he was not there on the day that the Twin Towers were destroyed, he lost his job at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council—and his very tenuous foothold in life. Tim, an alcoholic since his teens, drank himself to death in the eight months that followed the terrorist attacks. Not long after her brother’s death, Vega, whose record sales were in decline, was dropped by A&M, the label she’d been with since her 1985 debut. Shortly after that, she fired her manager, divorced her husband, and sank into a depression. The only thing that got her out of bed every day was the fact that she—a single mother raising a child alone in Manhattan—had to feed her daughter and get her off to school in the morning. “For a while there,” she says, “it was no manager, no record deal, no songs, no boyfriend, no husband. What am I doing here?”
Read full story: http://blog.mp3adrenalin.com/2007/07/09/suzanne-vega-is-back/
It’s not the actual content of “My December,” Kelly Clarkson’s just-released third album, that currently makes it unlistenable. I’m not saying that it’s a bad album — it’s a solid, heartfelt, occasionally beautiful exercise in mainstream modern rock, and most reviews are confirming that. “My December” is unlistenable in the sense that nobody can really hear it. Sometimes this happens to a work of art: The din around it from a controversy renders the thing itself mute.
At least the dust-up is about the work itself, not how many kids somebody has adopted or a political aside made on a foreign concert stage long ago. But the way it’s playing out in the hype-dominated, expert-laden, power-obsessed culture of celebrity says something truly depressing about the limits of pop as art, and as democratic expression.
Read full story: http://blog.mp3adrenalin.com/2007/07/09/my-december-of-kelly-clarkson/
You know summer is here when radio stations start serving up bangers like this. This single is most definitely bigger than big, and should further cement Ivor Novello nominated and pop princess in waiting Luciana’s tight grip of the UK charts.
This year she was up for the prestigious songwriting award, in the Best Contemporary Song category for her and Bodyrox’s UK No.2 hit single ‘Yeah Yeah’, alongside Amy Winehouse and Hot Chip. So not just another pretty face then…
Read full story: http://blog.mp3adrenalin.com/2007/07/09/bigger-than-big-from-lucianas/
Like the mercurial comet he has been for more than four decades, Sly Stone suddenly appeared in concert in San Jose last night, burned hot and bright for a brief time and then disappeared into darkness.
But for the 16 minutes he was on stage, the 64-year-old funkmeister showed continued possession of the gifts that helped shoot Sly and the Family Stone to stardom in the late ’60s to the mid-70s.
Read full story: http://blog.mp3adrenalin.com/2007/07/09/san-jose-concert-of-sly-stone/
The 2007 season of Beaumont Concerts in the Park kicks off Wednesday, July 11 with Air Supply at 7:30 p.m. at Stewart Park.
Wednesday, July 25 will be Three Dog Night at 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday, Aug. 1 at 7 p.m. War will perform.
“The Tokens” and The Diamonds will entertain Wednesday,. Aug. 15 at 7:30 p.m.
All concerts to be held at the Stewart Park band stand, Eighth and Orange streets in Beaumont.
Read full story: http://blog.mp3adrenalin.com/2007/07/09/beaumont-concerts-season/
