In celebration of All Souls Day, Them Crooked Vultures a/k/a Dave Grohl, Joshua Homme and John Paul Jones are giving it away: As of midnight, “Mind Eraser, No Chaser” is available as a FREE download at iTunes. No obligation to buy anything. Not part of a pre-order. No strings attached. FREE. The band also took in the spirit of Halloween with a treat for fans in the form of two skeletons dancing to the tune of “Gunman,” another track off the forthcoming album.
Additionally, “New Fang,” the first single from Them Crooked Vultures’ self-titled debut album due out November 17 in the United States and Canada on DGC/Interscope Records, was recently premiered and is currently streaming at http://www.myspace.com/crookedvultures. The track is also being offered as an instant download for all fans who pre-order the album on iTunes.
While the band just announced their first shows in California and the Pacific Northwest, dates in Los Angeles and Portland both sold out in a number of hours. A few tickets are still available for November 19 at the Fox Theater in Oakland and November 21 at the Paramount in Seattle. For a full list of tour dates visit www.themcrookedvultures.com.
“Know Your Enemy,” the first single from Green Day’s upcoming eighth studio album, 21st Century Breakdown, is available now. After teasing fans with a snippet of the track, the full version has finally hit iTunes for the world to hear.
21st Century Breakdown, which will be released by Reprise Records worldwide on May 15th, is the best-selling trio’s first studio album since 2004’s two-time Grammy Award-winning punk-rock opera American Idiot, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart, spawned five hit singles, and went on to sell more than 12 million copies worldwide. In a recent feature, Rolling Stone called 21st Century Breakdown “even more ambitious than American Idiot” and “a record of die-hard punk ideals…tightly scripted, continually ascending classic-rock excitement.”
Jack’s Mannequin may not be releasing their sophomore album until September 30th, but their new EP, The Ghost Overground, is available on iTunes now. The 4-song EP features “The Resolution” and “Bloodshot,” two new songs off of The Glass Passenger. Additionally, it includes older tracks “Holiday From Real” (live from SIR) and “Kill The Messenger” (live from Rock Xentral). Catch the band on tour now with Paramore.
from BusinessWeek.com:
Apple Inc.’s online iTunes music store is now the number-two music retailer in the U.S. behind Wal-Mart Stores Inc. as measured by unit volume, market researcher NPD Group said Tuesday.
NPD said that iTunes moved into second place due to the amount of music it sold during 2007, which was based on a 12-track CD equivalency for song downloads.
The market researcher began tracking music sold stateside during the middle of 2006. In the fourth quarter of that year, Best Buy Co. took second place behind Wal-Mart, while Target Corp. took third place and Apple’s iTunes store fourth place, NPD analyst Russ Crupnick said.
For the full year 2007, Best Buy came in third and Target fourth, he said.
Crupnick called Apple’s move to the number-two spot “fairly understandable given the pressure that’s been on CDs and the almost 50-percent growth in digital downloading in the past year.”
About 10 percent of music acquired in the U.S. was through legal downloads in 2007, and consumers who bought digital music legally through pay-to-download Web sites grew by 5 million to 29 million in 2007, NPD said Tuesday.
Meanwhile, an estimated 1 million consumers did not buy CDs in 2007, and 48 percent of U.S. teenagers didn’t buy any CDs during the year, up from 38 percent in the year before, according to NPD data.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if we see the same things continuing into 2008 because what our research is showing is that teens are continuing to check out on the CD,” Crupnick said.
NPD also said that the amount of music consumers bought in the U.S. rose 6 percent in 2007, though the decline in CD sales and increase in legal digital download sales still led to a 10 percent overall decrease in music spending.
Apple shares fell $2.55, or 2.1 percent, to $117.19 in morning trading, while Wal-Mart shares rose 80 cents to $51.13.
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