Drowning Pool former Wind-Up Records metal act has over 2,000,000 sales worldwide.  They are currently the #2 unsigned band on Myspace.  They just returned from Iraq and Kuwait performing for the troops with the USO.  Touring base is solid and their catalog still sells over 1000 units a week. There are new demos available. For more information contact  Manager Paul Bassman or lawyer Nick Ferrara.

Black Tie Dynasty from Ft. Worth, TX. Sounds like the Cure meets Joy Division. They are the #2 most played band on KDGE/Dallas with over 40 spins a week.  The callout research has been #1 or #2 for the past 5-6 weeks.  You can hear their single “Tender� here:  They were voted 2005 “Best Rock Band� by the Fort Worth Weekly. For more information contact Erv Karwelis c/o Idol Records.

 

Google is in talks to acquire popular video-sharing site YouTube Inc. for roughly $1.6 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The discussions are still at a sensitive stage and could well break off, this person says.

Rumors of such talks were reported earlier on the TechCrunch blog.

• Best Buy Will Now Cater to the Digitial Consumers.
  Best Buy who owns 840 stores in North America said on Thursday it too wants to be in the online music business. The company is teaming up with music service provider RealNetworks and digital music player maker SanDisk to launch the Best Buy Digital Music Store
  
• David Byrne Frontman of Talking Heads talks Music Shop.
  “I imagine I’d be doing the exact same thing a lot of bands are doing: rehearsing and performing, touring in a van. All that stuff.” What technological evolution in the industry has done is allow artists to keep their costs down, stay afloat and continue making music, he said. Byrne said it took Talking Heads at least three albums before he began to feel their sound was being properly captured. With home computer-based recording equipment, the artist can make a fine-sounding recording without outside help. “All these costs start to go away, and the artists – as a by-product – start to learn how to make their records sound the way they imagine them, all by themselves. They’re not beholden to somebody else – some mysterious magician that calls himself an engineer or producer. Right away, they don’t have to be in debt to a record company,” he said.
• Physical CD’s Down while Digital Tracks Increase: Big increases in the demand for digital tracks and albums have kept the overall music business in line with last year’s totals says Reuters. According to Nielsen SoundScan figures for the week ending October 1, marking the end of the third quarter, physical album sales so far this year totaled 370.5 million units, down 8.3% from the 404.2 million racked up in the year-ago period. Digital album sales climbed 115%, with 22.6 million sold through September. Downloaded tracks soared 72%, to 418.6 million
• Myspace Growing Older:  More than half the visitors to the popular social network site are now 35 or over–up from less than 40 percent last year. The proportion of MySpace’s audience between the ages of 12 and 24, meanwhile, has dropped to 30 percent from 44.3 percent over the last year, according to a study by comScore Media Metrix released Thursday.

• Tower Records is having the biggest sale in its history: Everything must go.  Tower’s inventory will sell for about $90 million. Tower owes creditors about $210 million, according to sources. Bidders can offer to purchase the whole company or specific parts and would be free to operate the company or sell off assets and dissolve the firm. Bidders include Trans World Entertainment
• Hardcore/emo act Atreyu leaves Victory Records and has signed a deal with Hollywood Records.
• Rapper Ludacris scored his third No. 1 on the U.S. pop album charts , while Janet Jackson’s new release opened with her lowest numbers in almost a decade, Billboard reported. Janet Jackson’s “20 Y.O.” (Virgin) entered at No. 2 with 296,000 copies, her smallest debut sales week since “The Velvet Rope” started at No. 1 with 202,000 in 1997.

Sales for 2006 are down 5% compared to 2005 at 393.6 million units.

• Ludo who we posted in KOARs Buzz section and is repped by Dan Friedman have signed to Island Def Jam.
• Houston-based rapper Baby Bash has signed a recording deal with Clive Davis/Arista Records.
• KOAR Traxx (on the right hand side) is updated and will continuously be updated. We feel these are the stronger songs written by the “do it yourself artist’s” and we always believe the cream rises to the top. 
• More analyst’s are predicting that YouTube Is ‘Goin’ Down’. YouTube recently signed a deal with Warner. Such deals with established media companies have probably helped to delay a lawsuit, Bernoff said. “I think media companies would like to see if they can reach some type of settlement like Warner’s.” Some claim the odds are against YouTube, being that it only takes legal action from one large media company to start the site on a downward spiral. Universal Music Group could be that company. Chief Executive Doug Morris told investors last month that he believes sites like YouTube owe the company 10s of millions of dollars for posting music videos and other content related to Universal artists.
• U2 will release its greatest-hits package on Nov. 20th with the inclusion of two new tracks which were produced by Rick Rubin.

XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. said on Wednesday it added some 285,000 new net subscribers in the third quarter, fewer than that of rival Sirius Satellite Radio.

Sirius said it added about 441,100 net new subscribers in the third quarter, a 23 percent rise from the same quarter a year ago. XM Satellite said its total number of subscribers rose to about 7.19 million in the third quarter. One year ago, XM added 617,00 subscribers in the third quarter.

Both XM and Sirius are growing rapidly in a pay-radio market, but both are losing money as they spend heavily on technology and entertainment including celebrity hosts — to win new subscribers. XM and Oprah recently negotiated a 55 million three year agreement.

Both are expected to make significant marketing pushes for the holiday shopping season, typically the strongest quarter for adding net new subscribers

The October will be peforming at the Delancey (NYC) lounge tonight. Great live act with strong songs, 2007 could be a good year for this 5 piece kentucky brit influenced act. Check out the track Kings and Queens and Bedroom Girls

Florida indie act Between the Trees will be peforming at the Knitting Factory on October 11. In the vein of Mae, The Working Title, Love Drug, etc. Check out the track

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

• Hardcore metal act The Warriors signed with Victory Records. (Decoy)
• North Carolina based hardcore metal band Bloodjinn have signed to Pluto Records (distributed by East West/Warner); Legal rep is Ben McLane, Esq.
• The Wall Street Journal drama critic, Terry Teachout, calls out Doug Morris, CEO, Universal Music Group, for short sighted paranoia when he claimed YouTube video-sharing Web site  “owes his conglomerate ‘tens of millions of dollars’ for allowing copyrighted music videos to be posted without permission.”
  Teachout backs up his dissing of Universal Music, by proclaiming Warner Music, “Universal’s smarter competitorâ€? because it was able to come to terms on a future “dealâ€? with YouTube. Teachout believes he has come up with a better business model: “Disseminating high-culture TV and radio programming for free via the Webâ€? because it is “among the simplest and most cost-effective ways to expand the audience for the fine arts.â€?
• Mindless violence for profit
  DVD Series ‘Ghetto Fights 2′ which features cameos by hip-hop artists 50 Cent and Method Man deliver the horrors of the streets showcasing pimp beatings, gang warfare, backyard brawls and female slug-outs caught on tape.

“I watch ‘Ghetto Brawls’ when I’m driving,” Method Man told GQ Magazine last summer when asked about his favorite viewing while in the car.  “It’s a DVD of people just having fights in the hood.”

Scenes include A shoeless, elderly drunk who is tormented by a group of thugs who laugh hysterically as they douse his head with antifreeze, drop his personal belongings into a storm sewer and knock him to his knees with a milk crate. In another scene, a young man is dragged from his parked car and beaten repeatedly outside a liquor store; his head stomped into the pavement until he loses consciousness. One of his attackers steals cash from his pocket as he lies lifeless in a parking lot.

Valerie Smith, a Toronto-based anti-violence crusader “For someone like Universal to be peddling this, that’s outrageous,” she said. “If you take the footage of the homeless person, that’s a crime. That’s assault. And this is most definitely going to encourage kids to videotape stuff like this and submit it.” “It’s like we’ve gone back to the gladiator age and we’re at the coliseum. We’re supposed to be becoming more civilized. Instead we’re kind of rocketing backward.”

Universal Music Canada and its partner, Navarre Canada, distribute Ghetto Fights and Wildest Street Brawls in this country.

• The new Killers record “Sam’s Town” is getting a beat down from critics. The once beloved critic band seems to be the most hated now.