Valleywag - Idolator

100 and single

Workin' On A Mystery: Tom Petty Is This Week's Stealth Chart Star

Ed. note: Chris "dennisobell" Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on this week's Billboard charts:

You won't find one of the biggest-selling artists of the past week on the Billboard Hot 100, because chart rules make him and his band ineligible. But one week after Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers brought their unassuming live act to the Super Bowl halftime show, they're all over the lists that count everything.

As we've explained before, Billboard segregates albums and singles that are more than a couple of years old from its flagship charts. But even if songs like "American Girl" aren't allowed to appear on the Hot 100, Petty had a very big week.

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1:00 PM on Fri Feb 15 2008
By Chris Molanphy
1,275 views, 15 comments

beauty and the geeks

"Digg Girl" Toys With Nerds' Emotions Just Enough To Get Her A Record Deal

One last Super Bowl post and then we are done (unless the powers that be at the big game announce that yes, Diamond Dave and Co. will show up next year): Perhaps you recall the commercial at the game's outset that featured a young woman mewling a "sensitive" tune for about a minute, followed by a pitch to buy the song the Doritos logo. That singer was Kina Grannis; she won the Doritos "Crash The Super Bowl" contest that spotlighted musicians who, in the words of a Wall Street Journal piece from Friday, "reflect Doritos' 'bold, intense' image because they 'bring a passion' to their music." Not to mention their ability to use the fawning attention of geekboys in order to get what they want! More »

1:45 PM on Mon Feb 4 2008
By Maura Johnston
1,053 views, 7 comments

Latest by Ianny: Her song is internet quality, but I don't think it was really television or record deal quality. As for The Digg Song, it's better than the song that won her the contest in my opinion. Best of luck more »

all out of ilike

Universal Music Group Pulls Its Streams From iLike

Continuing its trend of pulling its music from online services that won't pay it heed—or at least a nice chunk of money—Universal Music Group has yanked 30-second sound samples of its labels' songs from iLike, the music-sharing site that's quite popular with the Facebook set. According to Silicon Alley Insider, the dispute stems from a lapsed agreement between UMG and the sound-sample middleman Muze, which supplied iLike with UMG's streams. So now iLike and Universal are trying to hammer out some sort of deal that will restore the label's audio to the service, a deal which, if precedent is any indication, will likely involve iLike cutting some sort of punishing check to Doug Morris and his merry band of shmoos. All that, just so some sophomore at UW-Whitewater can keep introducing himself to prospective conquests with "In Da Club." More »

5:50 PM on Thu Jan 3 2008
By mjohnston
466 views, 3 comments

Latest by n/a: That's not how copyright law works, I'm afraid. more »

launches

RCRD LBL Drags MP3 Blogging Into Semi-Legitimacy

So RCRD LBL, the joint venture between Gizmodo/Engadget founding editor Peter Rojas and Downtown Records, launched today, and surprise: It's an MP3 blog! Well, but it's an MP3 blog with one important twist: It pays the artists whose work is featured on it, thanks in part to some totally sweet advertising revenue from the likes of Nikon and Puma. Which is why its first post is all, "please don't rehost our tracks! thanks!" Yeah, good luck with that, guys. More »

10:00 AM on Thu Nov 15 2007
By mjohnston
953 views, 6 comments

Latest by n/a: @ninety_nine: Hey 99, I'm with you. I occassionally get free CDs because I work in the business, but I mostly buy old honky tonk records at the store down the street, and then I buy my new music from eMusic more »

social networking

Facebook Music: Discographies, Tour Dates, No Blinking Backgrounds

The long-rumored Facebook Music platform seems to be in its nascent stages: Today I got the first e-mail asking me to visit a musician's page on the social-networking site, which will probably be a relief to many out there as it's superior to MySpace on aesthetic terms (lack of annoying blinky backgrounds, in-network Scrabble games), if not so great as far as privacy is concerned. More »

3:00 PM on Wed Nov 7 2007
By mjohnston
2,206 views, 7 comments

breaking

Pirates Everywhere Pour Out A Little For OiNK

Oh snap! Looks like all those "serious music aficionados" will have to argue about bitrates somewhere else now, because the combined might of British and Dutch law enforcement has shut down OiNK, the invite-only file-trading hub that had become the P2P-era equivalent of a Little Rascals treehouse fort with a sign that read "No 128KBps Allowed." More »

9:22 AM on Tue Oct 23 2007
By jharv
3,922 views, 27 comments

since you asked

The RIAA's $220,000 Playlist: Just As Crappy As You Might Expect

One of our commenters asked about the songs that the major labels focused on in their successful lawsuit against Jammie Thomas; we found it (courtesy of Threat Level) and it's reprinted after the jump. Behold, the songs that you may want to take out of your shared-music folder pronto: More »

12:30 PM on Fri Oct 5 2007
By mjohnston
2,428 views, 15 comments

web 2.no

Get Ready To Get Poked: Here Come The "Facebook Musicians"

Who knows if this backstory is true, but after last year's "Arctic Monkeys were made huge by MySpace" chatter it was bound to be the brainstorm of some intrepid music publicist: A "classical boy band" called Blake that claims to have met on Facebook has signed a five-album, £1 million (USD$2.05 million) deal with Universal Music Group. (Because, after all, meeting on Facebook is a sign that a relationship is in it for the long haul, right?) From the Telegraph: More »

3:30 PM on Fri Jul 20 2007
By mjohnston
954 views, 4 comments

Latest by FunkyJ: I don't know if people still sing Moon River at parties, but if you want to be cool and hip you'll find a copy of Kid Koala re-mixing it live (and dedicating it to his mum)... Simply awesome! more »

emi

The EMI-Apple Deal: It's All Well And Good, But What Does It Mean For You?

EMI's decision to do away with digital-rights management for its online catalog and Apple's decision to carry DRM-free music on the iTunes store have been inspiring a lot of chatter around the blogosphere. But what does the announcement by Apple CEO Steve Jobs and EMI CEO Eric Nicoli (pictured above, with halos) mean for consumers, labels, and other digital-music stores? While we won't see the results on a grand scale until next month—when iTunes is scheduled to put EMI's unprotected files on sale—we have the answers to a few questions inspired by today's news.
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2:05 PM on Mon Apr 2 2007
By mjohnston
1,438 views, 7 comments

Latest by rich36: I think it's a little rich that Steve Jobs is promoting DRM-less music after saddling iPod owners and people who buy from iTunes music shop with Fairplay DRM. That being said, at least some progress is being made. more »

emi

Steve Jobs' Music-Industry Rant Might Be Winning Hearts, Minds Of Record Execs

When Steve Jobs squawks, people listen: Earlier this week, the Apple honcho posted a lengthy missive about the need to make all digital music files unprotected, arguing that the major labels have to make their music as accessible as they can in order to combat piracy (reading the polite-but-firm essay was like reading the longest Olive Garden comment card of all time). And today, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that EMI is considering making all of its music available in restriction-free MP3 format: More »

8:51 AM on Fri Feb 9 2007
By Brian Raftery
89 views, 2 comments

Latest by Serolf Divad: Risk insurance? What morons! It's like they're worried that once these songs are made available in MP3 there'll be no stopping their unfettered and unauthorized dissemination. Earth to EMI (and everybody else: your music is already available in MP3 format. more »

lou reed

Lou Reed Takes A Walk On The Corporate Side

In case you were wondering what, exactly, you were missing when you heard about all those industry parties featuring big-name musical guests, Lou Reed is here to let you know that the answer is "Not much, except for that drained-soul feeling." From a report on a Web 2.0 party with a Blackberry-wielding crowd:

Lou looked miserable. He ended a song, looked out and, in that distinctive Lou Reed voice, said to the crowd: "Maybe you can talk louder."

He continued: "I can turn the sound up and hurt you."

Some people cheered.

Lou gave the order to the sound guy: "Turn it up."

He strummed a blaring chord, then spoke some more, turning up the irony.

"This is the moment I've waited for my whole life. When I was on St. Marks Place I thought, someday there'll be a cyberspace and I'll be playing for AOL." (There was a big AOL banner behind the band.)

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4:50 PM on Thu Nov 9 2006
By mjohnston
41 views, 9 comments

Latest by Chief Wahoo: Met Lou backstage st the Knitting Factory a few years ago. He was a complete prick. more »

youtube

YouTube: Now Officially A Pain In The Ass For Everyone Involved

The Wall Street Journal looks at the difficulties that labels and studios are having when it comes to policing YouTube's music videos: Not only do the entertainment companies have to locate and identify all of the various copyright-thwarting clips, but they have to work in coordination with the publishing companies who represent the songwriters. It's a big, bureaucratic nightmare, one that apparently requires countless hours of watching 14-year-old kids sing along to Akon: More »

9:38 AM on Fri Nov 3 2006
By Brian Raftery
571 views, 6 comments

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