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The Foo Fighters are clarifying that they didn’t approve of one of their songs being played during a Donald Trump rally in Arizona. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the presidential race and the independent politician is now backing the former Republican president. During a rally in Gilbert in the swing stage, the song “My Hero” was played, and now the band, fronted by Dave Grohl, is breaking their silence. “Let us be clear,” the band’s social media account on X/Twitter posted. The band shared a screenshot of an exchange with another X user asking the Foo Fighters if...

BACK-SCRATCHING BIZ: Lil' Kim, one of many artists whose popularity was rigged. WireImage Eliot Spitzer.......unveiled a deal to halt bribery of DJs and rigging of ratings — schemes designed largely to hype mediocre acts, but also bigger names, in order to score higher returns. Four months ago, he extracted a $10M settlement from industry leader Sony BMG to break up its payola ring involving DJs, radio station executives and crooked middlemen. He's still probing the industry's two remaining mega-firms — EMI and Universal Music. In his crackdown on Warner music — the industry's No. 3 label — Spitzer accused...

Sony BMG admits to bribing radio stations to play its artists. IN 1980, according to a book about the music industry by Fredric Dannen called “Hit Men”, CBS Records decided to run an experiment with a band, Pink Floyd. Their concert dates were sold out in Los Angeles, and radio stations everywhere were playing “Another Brick in the Wall (Part Two)”. Dick Asher, the deputy president of CBS Records, wanted to find out whether the band's popularity meant he could refuse to pay the usual bribes, or illegal “payola”, to the four big Top-40 radio stations in Los Angeles. Like...

Millions of music buyers will receive a check for about $12.60 in the mail if a settlement of a price-fixing lawsuit wins court approval today. U.S. District Judge D. Brock Hornby will hold a hearing to determine whether the $44 million settlement is fair. Roughly 3.5 million U.S. residents who purchased music between 1995 and 2000 registered for claims in the price-fixing suit against major record labels and large music retailers. Hornby also will determine whether registrants who failed to sign penalty of perjury documents will be allowed to share in the settlement and whether petitions of Canadian residents who...

Yesterday, we conducted a strategy session (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/868480/posts) on Free Republic on how to respond to the latest remarks by Simon Renshaw, the Dixie Chicks manager. As the thread unfolded, the strategy has crystallized and I have compiled the suggestions into a document which articulates the goals, message, and action items. But first, a recap. We all know the Dixie Chicks went abroad and insulted the President. They then apologized. But now the Dixie Chicks manager has some harsh words for fans complaining to radio stations, describing them as "radical" "weasels" (his own words) engaged in "conspiracy". Now it's time for...

HOLLYWOOD, Jan. 17 NBC News will do an entire hour on Michael Jackson's face during the February sweeps, NBC Entertainment President Jeff Zucker announced today. The "Dateline" special "Michael Jackson Unmasked" was approved by NBC President Andrew Lack, who left the network last week to head Sony Music -- Jackson's record label. Oops. "I just hope the folks at Sony Music don't complain," Zucker quipped at Winter TV Press Tour 2003 here. Via an NBC News rep, "Dateline" Executive Producer David Corvo explained that the special will use the "transformation" of Wacko Jacko's face as a metaphor for the transformation...

Record industry attempts to stop the swapping of pop music on online networks such as Kazaa will never work. So says a research paper prepared by computer scientists working for software giant Microsoft. The four researchers believe that the steady spread of file-swapping systems and improvements in their organisation will eventually make them impossible to shut down. They also conclude that the gradual spread of CD and DVD burners will help thwart any attempts to control what the public can do with the music they buy. Doomed disksThe paper was prepared for a workshop on Digital Rights Management, (DRM), at...

<p>LONDON, May 20 — Technology buffs have cracked music publishing giant Sony Music's elaborate disc copy-protection technology with a decidedly low-tech method: scribbling around the rim of a disk with a felt-tip marker.</p> <p>Internet newsgroups have been circulating news of the discovery for the past week, and in typical newsgroup style, users have pilloried Sony for deploying "hi-tech" copy protection that can be defeated by paying a visit to a stationery store.</p>

The writing could be on the wall for computer buffs who copy music CDs for their friends. Sony Music has planted a "poisoned pellet" of software in Celine Dion's latest CD, A New Day Has Come, that is capable of crashing, and in cases permanently freezing, the optical drives of personal computers into which the discs are inserted. Michael Speck, of the Australian Record Industry Association, confirmed yesterday that the anti-piracy software trials were under way but said "spiked" CDs had not so far been distributed in Australia, but it was inevitable. The music companies were "simply protecting their property",...