Kings of A&R

I Want To Be Popular: This interesting video of John Mayer popped up on the blogosphere. His good musicianship and personality allows him to hang out with the popular kids in high school. For some reason his music never struck a chord with me..

Have you seen the new video for ‘Pretty Buildings‘ by People in Planes? Check it out here. It’s good, original and different.

Listen to the new track Actions and Motives by alternative act 10 Years that comes off the Division record which be will be in stores this tuesday May 13th. The songwriting became so intense and divisive that the band almost broke up during the recording process. The band will be performing on the Linkin Park’s Projekt Revolution Tour this summer.

Unsigned midwest act One Less Reason gives us another reason how today’s artists can reap rewards from the net. Their numbers show them selling 30,000 units independently and logging 100,000 PAID downloads. Their website welcomes upwards of 12,000 visitors each day, so it is no wonder why retailers are knocking on the door of this unsigned wonder. “They are in an incredible position, marketing wise” says their publicist Stephanie Christie, “To be able to open for acts like One Republic and book Top 40 radio interviews one day and dominate the charts of Alternative Addiction and active rock radio the next day is quite impressive.” Check out the live performance for A Day To Be Alone uploaded on YouTube by a fan.

Listen to In All Honesty by Safe As Houses. Also listen to Addicted by Jacqueline Rose who is Clear Channel’s artist pick of the month.

Seattle based indie band Barcelona’s “It’s About Time” was added to regular rotation on Seattle’s 107.7 The song was #10 most requested twice last week. Check out the music video here.

We want to hear new music. We don’t care about Myspace plays, but you must have at least one. We also want to see decent pictures, including close ups. We noticed many artists today don’t know how to take decent pics. Go ahead and find yourself a good photographer. If your singer isn’t photogenic you may as well find another one. More importantly, the pictures on your myspace shouldn’t look like they belong in your high school year book. Email tips@kingsofar.com along with a link to your myspace, and let us know your favorite song.

Coldplay’s Viva la Vida: The new Coldplay track Viva la Vida is simply incredible. If you lost your faith in music, this band just may restore it.

Microsoft May Build a Copyright Cop Into Every Zune: A future update of the software for Microsoft’s portable media player may well include a feature that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on it according to The New York Times. ‘Microsoft, which suffers from its own piracy problems, is sympathetic to Hollywood’s concerns’.

MTV’s New Pitch To Advertisers: Being that traditional media is losing influence and with MTV being no exception to the rule - MTV Networks is pitching a new way of advertising called ‘podbusting‘. Podbusting breaks up commercial pods with content that is almost indistinguishable from the entertainment programming’. The company is promoting podbusting as a way to persuade viewers not to skip over or drift away from the advertising that interrupts the programs. This is all fine and dandy until the viewer realizes he is being sold.

New Music: Check out the band Something To Burn who hails from la-la land. We attended their live show at The Whisky in Los Angeles last month and it was nothing short of bad ass. Regarding their live show, they will throw most acts under the rug. Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland was so convinced of the band that he signed them to his indie label called Soft Drive. We are still not completely sure of the label situation but this is a must see band. Listen to the tracks Stories Better Left Untold, Below, and
Say Goodbye. More information about the band can be found here.

TVT’s Credit Crunch: Here is a list of TVT’s unsecured creditors. You will even find Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger in the list.The indie lable filed chapter 11 several months ago.

Coldplay Reaches 2 Million: Coldplay’s new single ‘Violet Hill’ has been downloaded over 2 million times which was made available only 7 days ago. “A spokesman for the band said demand was “staggering,” adding Violet Hill would have outsold the whole of last week’s top 40 singles four times over”. Listen to the track here, it grows on you with each listen. It definitely has a Floyd vibe. Coldplay is the one of the few bands that broke in the last decade that mean anything.

Buzznet Still Buzzing: Buzznet who just grabbed Stereogum and Idolator are now putting their eggs in the basket with AbsolutePunk. Buzznet is a media network that focuses on music discovery and discussion. Universal Music also recently invested into Buzznet.

The Radio Airwaves: Weezer’s track ‘Pork and Beans‘ is #1 on the Alternative Rock Format while Disturbed’s new single ‘Inside The Fire‘ is #1 on the active rock format.

Recommended Listening: Listen to Broken Sky by Copper. The band is consistently building their base and just finished writing some killer new tracks that could potentially take them to the next level. We will post soon…

KOARs favorite My Favorite Highway will be releasing a new record scheduled for a July release date. We have been pimping this band for a while, and if you’re not familiar with the band, check them out and listen to
Murder On The Radio and They Tried To Kill Chivalry. Truly a cut above the rest!

Signings:The four piece pop punk band, The Years Gone By, has signed to Rise Records.

Universal Republic has signed the Nasvilled based singer/songwriter
Erin McCarley. It also appears that Republic also struck a deal with the band
State of Shock. Their track “Money Honey” was a top 10 single at three formats including Rock, CHR and Hot AC, and is #1 on this weeks Sirius Hits #1 Countdown.

A Change in Direction? Bill Gates, the granddaddy of technology says their will be a massive change in internet technology. Lets hope he is right. “The Internet has been operating now for 10 years,” Gates said. “The second 10 years will be very different.”

New Music = Tips@Kingsofar.com

12,000 of the world’s independent record labels have joined together to create a virtual fifth major.

“80 percent of the world’s music releases come not from the majors but from independent labels. Getting access to this music is a hassle for stores like iTunes and webcasters like Last.fm, since it takes an incredible amount of effort to do thousands of different (and small) deals. It’s not a great situation for the indies, either, which individually don’t possess the clout needed to get the best deals.”

A little over a year ago, the indies launched Merlin, a one stop rights clearinghouse for indie artists. More importantly and according to Ars Technica, “Merlin has announced that it is working on deals with several soon-to-be-launched services, including the highly-anticipated music service from MySpace.” Read the rest here..

NIN Releases Another New Album: Trent Reznor has been on a writing binge lately. Trent announced that he released another album titled ‘The Slip‘ and is giving it away for free. ‘We are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com says Trent’. ‘For those of you interested in physical products, fear not. we plan to make a version of this release available on CD and vinyl in july. details coming soon.

Fueled By Success: The New York Times has a piece titled ‘An Alternative Approach To Marketing Rock Bands‘ which discusses the indie label Fueled By Ramen. The people at the label instill a hard work ethic for the bands they sign. ‘When Mr. Janick signs bands, he tells them how hard they will work, not how rich they will become’. Regardless, hard work and blogging until your fingers fall off doesn’t guarantee success. For instance, “The last album from the Academy Is sold half of what its previous release did, and the new album from Cobra Starship, another of the label’s bands, may not sell 100,000″. It’s all about the songs…

Recommended Listening: Save The Day By Mayday

Check Out My Myspace Plays: TuneBoom, the myspace play count inflator which was used by major and indie labels has mysteriously gone OFF LINE after it was talked about in the blogosphere. ‘Bands and labels looking for a way to fake MySpace popularity have plenty of other ways to manipulate the play counts on MySpace Music says WIRED. What do the number of myspace plays mean? Usually nothing. Of course if you have zero myspace plays, it may just appear that you are DEAD.

Todays artists are eager to put their home made demos on myspace believing it’s their window of opportunity. Sometimes it is but most of the time it isn’t. I notice that artists spend more time networking than writing songs. Songs will make you known, not myspace plays. If it wasn’t for the track REHAB you would never see Winehouse snorting crack on TMZ. Send us your Myspace link and let us know what song we should be listening to. We don’t care how many plays you have, but it has to be at least one. Email tips@kingsofar.com

New Music and Recommended Listening:

Listen to Without You by Standary of Living. Currently performing shows in support of their self produced and Independent released EP titled Patience. For fans of Jimmy Eat World and Counting Crows.

Miami rock band, Another Black Day, will release their self-titled debut through Bieler Brothers Records on May 20th. The track Wicked Soul has begun to gain support at rock stations across the country.

Minneapolis pop act Baltimore who consists of polished seasonal players just released a self titled EP. The track Scream Out Loud was featured on the final episode of MTV’s the Gauntlet 3. Listen to the track This Is The End.

State of Shock who hails from Canada was nominated for a 2008 Juno Award for Best New Group. The track “Money Honey” was a top 10 single at three formats including Rock, CHR and Hot AC, and is #1 on this weeks Sirius Hits #1 Countdown.

The track Handlebars by Flobots surprised the music biz for its quick reaction among program directors and listeners alike. We suggest you read the Idolator column that discusses how the track is finding its way
on different radio formats. Watch the video here.

Starbucks Slowing Down: Starbucks walked away from the recorded music biz because the caffein pusher has to many other fishes to fry. Starbucks CORE business is coffee, not music. It’s challenging to put any thought into music when earnings have sunk 21% in the second quarter. The company even plans to cut on planned U.S. Store Openings.

Will YouTube Make Money? CEO of Google wants to make money off of YouTube, but he just has to figure out how. “I don’t think we’ve quite figured out the perfect solution of how to make money, and we’re working on that says Chief Executive Eric Schmidt’. Of course the only solution seems to be advertising. Schmidt said YouTube planned to introduce new products aimed at generating advertising revenue.

Who’s The Sellout? As for his entry into the music business…  You’re just jealous. He’s passionate about acts, he’s got an audience, he’s a tastemaker (Lefsetz on Perez Hilton)

The amazing critic Bob Lefsetz just wrote these even more amazing words about the Gossip Gangstar! (Perez Hilton)

Don’t let anyone fool you. This love letter relationship is just about press and attention.

The one (Lefsetz) who tells you never to sell out to the BIG MAN, sells himself out to Perez Hilton. I think many critics and artists are frightened of the queen of gossip and want to assure themselves a hunky-dory relationship exists in an effort to escape possible negative press. The easy road is to join popular culture. The artistic road to change is pain and suffering. Building a career is about saying NO, not saying YES. I understand Perez Hilton has become a marketing bullet point because of his popular blog. I also understand the motto “If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em “, just don’t educate me about CHANGE and SELLING OUT.

New Music: Check out the indie band SeaBird. Our favorite tracks are Stronger and Let Me Go On. Singer Aaron Morgan says this about his record, “There is a redemptive quality present in this record, even in the darker moments. We hope this record will be an oasis for those who were left thirsty by years of heartache.”

Attention Artists: We feel your pain and certainly understand how it must feel for not being paid for your creation. You’re told everyday that you should be giving away music for free and never should expect a real payday. The good news is that online media giants like Yahoo, RealNetworks and AOL could pay up to $100 million in royalties owed to thousands of songwriters and publishers, after a federal judge established a formula for determining the payments. Of course these companies are tying to buck the system but let’s hope the federal judge upholds his formula for potential license fees on songs played by the three online services from July 1, 2002 through December 31, 2009, the trade group said.

Concert Attendance Slips:  Could it because of the credit card crunch? Is everyone in debt up to their ears? We think so…