Grateful Dead to reunite for Obama concert
The Grateful Dead, the San Francisco cult rock band that has played at political events since the 1960s, will reunite on Monday for the first time in four years to rally support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, a spokesman said on Friday.
Band leader Jerry Garcia died in 1995. Surviving members have played together occasionally since then, most recently in 2004. On Monday, original members Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir will play at a San Francisco theater a day before California’s primary.
“They have agreed to reunite for this one-time-only event in order to lend support to Senator Obama leading into the crucial ‘Super-Tuesday’ series of primaries held on Tuesday, February 5th,” the band said in a statement.
The band gained fame with its free-form psychedelic music when the counterculture movement flourished in San Francisco in the 1960s, and they attracted many loyal fans who came to be known as “Deadheads.”
by Adam Tanner
Reference: Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in San Francisco, California. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, jazz, psychedelia, space music and gospel—and for live performances of long musical improvisation. “Their music,” Lenny Kaye wrote, “touches on ground that most other groups don’t even know exists.”
The Grateful Dead’s fans, some of whom followed the band from concert to concert for years, were known as Deadheads and were renowned for their dedication to the band’s music. Many fans referred to the band simply as “the Dead”. As of 2003, the remaining band members who had been touring under the name “The Other Ones” changed their official group name to “The Dead”. Deadheads continue to use the nickname to refer to both versions of the band.
Their musical influences varied widely, and in concert or on record album one can hear psychedelic rock (in the late sixties), the blues, rock nuggets, country-western, bluegrass, country-rock, and although they rarely played jazz music, the band certainly borrowed for their music the kind of long improvisatory sequences that jazz artists such as Charles Mingus and John Coltrane perfected in the 1950s. These various influences were distilled into a diverse and psychedelic whole that made the Grateful Dead “the pioneering Godfathers of the jam band world.”
Led Zeppelin concert off until at least September
British rock band Led Zeppelin enjoyed jamming together again last year in a charity concert but won’t have another session before September at the earliest, lead guitarist Jimmy Page said in Tokyo on Monday.
A successful reunion show in London in December rekindled hopes of a world tour, but Page said that singer Robert Plant’s tour with U.S. country singer Alison Krauss is keeping him busy for now.
“I can assure you the amount of work that we put into the O2 (concert), for ourselves rehearsing and the staging of it, was probably what you put into a world tour,” Page said.
But, “Robert Plant also had a parallel project running and he’s really busy with that project, certainly until September, so I can’t give you any news.”
Page, in Tokyo to promote a greatest hits release, painted a happy picture of the reunion.
“It was exhilarating, fantastic, every week was a week to look forward to,” he said. “We did the show and it was great.”
The band, formed in 1968 by Page, Plant, bass guitarist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham, became arguably the world’s biggest rock group by the early 1970s.
Their fourth album, released in 1971, included their most famous song, “Stairway to Heaven,” while the band has sold an estimated 300 million albums worldwide.
The group decided to break up shortly after Bonham died in September 1980, although Page and Plant collaborated at times over the years.
Plant, Page and Jones performed together in London before about 20,000 fans on December 10, with Bonham’s son Jason on the drums.
When the concert was announced, the Internet site selling tickets crashed with applications, while the possibility of a new world tour had fans around the globe excited.
Page said after many years the song indeed remained the same.
“That is what was so thrilling really — to come together after all this time and find that there was so much chemistry and so much electricity involved in these four characters.”
by Reuters
Reference: Led Zeppelin were an English rock band that formed in September 1968. Led Zeppelin consisted of Jimmy Page (guitar), Robert Plant (vocals), John Paul Jones (bass guitar / keyboards) and John Bonham (drums). With their heavy, guitar-driven sound, Led Zeppelin are regarded as one of the first heavy metal bands. Their rock-infused interpretation of the blues and folk genres also incorporated rockabilly, reggae, soul, funk, classical, Celtic, Indian, Arabic, pop, Latin, and country. The band did not release the popular songs from their albums as singles in the UK, as they preferred to develop the concept of album-oriented rock.
Over 25 years after disbanding following Bonham’s death in 1980, Led Zeppelin continue to be held in high regard for their artistic achievements, commercial success, and broad influence. The band have sold more than 300 million albums worldwide, including 109.5 million sales in the United States, and they are the only band to have had all their albums reach the U.S. Billboard Top 10.
Music Industry Got An Injunction Against Rapidshare in 2007, Site Not Shut Down
In March 2007, a court ruled that Rapidshare could be held responsible for copyright violations committed by users who uploaded copyrighted material to their servers. Now, rumors are circulating that Rapidshare has been shutdown - this does not seem to be the case.
Rapidshare is one of the world’s largest file-hosting sites, with a claimed data storage capability in excess of 4 petabytes and offering at least 110 gigabits of bandwidth.
Almost exactly 1 year ago, P2PBlog reported that the German rights organization GEMA had gained a preliminary injunction against Rapidshare which ordered the company to stop hosting and distributing titles which GEMA represent.
Rapidshare made an appeal - but lost. The court decided that Rapidshare should be forced to monitor all uploads which infringed on GEMA’s copyright - a feat which the company said was impossible.
At the time, GEMA boss Dr. Harald Heker said that the Court’s decision shows that it’s not down to the rights holders to police commercial outfits such as Rapidshare for their copyright works. He went on to say that he felt that the decision would send a major signal to all file-hosting sites where copyright works are used to generate revenue for themselves.
Then in April 2007 it was reported that Rapidshare was fighting back, suing GEMA in response - with the aim of clarifying the legal position for file-hosting sites.
Now, rumors circulating on the web indicate that Rapidshare was shut down. Quite a few sites reported the news but this situation does not appear to be true. Rapidshare’s Wiki page is now closed due to vandalism which is believed to have carried erroneous information which contributed to the confusion.
According to a report, a Rapidshare technician said: “There are rumors concerning attacks made on the Rapidshare.com servers. There are also rumors that Rapidshare has been shut down by a court order. These rumors are false. We would like to apologize to our users and inform them that no data has been lost. There have been some hardware issues as a result of high bandwidth and server overload. We are doing our very best to resolve the hardware issues, and users should expect uptime by midnight tonight (GMT)”
There is no doubt that Rapidshare stores millions of files - including lots of music. The operators of Rapidshare claim they have no idea what material they store on their servers and are in no postion (much like a regular ISP) to monitor or police the content. The users upload the content, they say, and as such, it’s out of their control.
However, the injunctions issued by the District Court in Cologne indicate that Rapidshare’s liability for such infringements still exist as they were carried out during the course of Rapidshare’s business. GEMA head, Harald Heker said at the time: “The mere circumstance of shifting acts of use to users and the purported inability of the operator to control content do not relieve the operator of a service from the copyright liability he/she/it possesses for the content made available for download from the operator’s website(s).”
In the meantime, Rapidshare.com and Rapidshare.de continue to operate.
by Torrentfreak
RapidShare is a German owned one-click hosting pay- and free-service (with limitations) website that operates from Switzerland and is financed by the subscriptions of paying users. RapidShare has two different websites, but both sites claim to be entirely different organizations and entities. The original site is RapidShare.de, which uses the German top-level domain “.de”.
On October 19, 2006, RapidShare announced that “Unfortunately all drives of RapidShare.de are full right now”. A new website, RapidShare.com was set up in an attempt to transfer usage from RapidShare.de to RapidShare.com.[citation needed] When the new Rapidshare.com was launched, holders of “Premium” accounts at the time on RapidShare.de were able to use both the RapidShare.de and RapidShare.com, until their account expired. It is not possible, however, to use a RapidShare.com account on the German site.
Napster goes back to MP3s
Napster, the brand that dragged the entire world kicking and screaming into the digital music revolution and then became a casualty of RIAA litigation, will soon be returning to its roots in the DRM-free music world. The P2P-turned-legit subscription service announced this morning that it will begin selling unprotected copies of its entire catalog in MP3 format beginning in the second quarter of 2008. Users of the service will be able to buy individual DRM-free tracks and albums, but Napster’s subscription service will remain unchanged. The company hailed the announcement as the first subscription service “featuring major label content” to announce plans to sell unprotected MP3s.
Of course, since the conversion won’t be happening for another few months, the company was very short on details. This morning’s statement revealed only that users of Napster’s online service and its mobile subscription service, Napster and Napster To Go, would be able to buy the MP3 files and use them on any number of devices that support the ubiquitous format. The announcement didn’t mention pricing, although it’s not unreasonable to expect that it will be similar to current track pricing.
Another big omission in the announcement was a list of which major labels will offer DRM-free tracks via Napster. EMI, Universal, and Warner Music Group have already begun selling DRM-free music through other outlets, and Sony BMG is rumored to be joining the party very soon. But that doesn’t mean that they’ve all signed on with Napster yet, and Napster CEO Chris Gorog admitted to the Wall Street Journal that the company is still finalizing agreements with “at least some” of the four.
Speaking of Sony BMG, the music label confirmed today that it is, indeed, planning to dip its toes into DRM-free waters, albeit via carefully-controlled experimentation. The label told USA Today that it will begin selling gift cards in select brick-and-mortar stores on January 15 for $12.99 that will be redeemable at its planned online music store, MusicPass. Through the “Platinum MusicPass” part of the service customers will be able to select from 37 albums available without DRM. Sony’s move isn’t exactly the nail in the coffin for DRM just yet (especially since users will have to go to a B&M store first before going back home to get the DRM-free content, which seems oddly backwards), but it’s only a matter of time before Sony BMG drops its experiment and joins the rest of the Big Four in a more straightforward way.
As for Napster, the move to DRM-free sales is the latest in a long line of attempts to gain a larger share of the digital music market, after trying a number of other initiatives. The service has remained one of the most popular when it comes to online music subscriptions, but is still battling against larger stores—namely, the market-leading iTunes Store. From that perspective, it comes as no surprise that going DRM-free has been popular among music retailers—iTunes still only offers DRM-free tracks from EMI artists and some independent labels. A different and wider mix of DRM-free artists could give an edge to an iTunes alternative, and that’s what Napster is going for.
“The ubiquity and cross-platform compatibility of MP3s should create a more level playing field for music services and hardware providers and result in greater ease of use and broader adoption of digital music,” Gorog said in a statement. Translation: Down with Apple!
by Arstechnica
Reference: Napster was a file sharing service that paved the way for decentralized P2P file-sharing programs such as Kazaa, Limewire, iMesh, Morpheus, and BearShare, which are now used for many of the same reasons and can download music, pictures, and other files. The popularity and repercussions of the first Napster have made it a legendary icon in the computer and entertainment fields.
Napster’s brand and logo continue to be used by a pay service, having been acquired by Roxio.
Jay-Z stepping down as Def Jam president
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Universal Music Group said on Monday that rap artist and hip-hop mogul Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter is stepping down as president of its Def Jam Records unit, effective by the end of the year.
Carter, 38, has been president of the rap label since 2005, and has signed acts including R&B singers Rihanna and Ne-Yo.
Universal said Carter, a top-selling rapper who performs as Jay-Z, will continue recording for its Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam label. But the company did not give a reason for his decision to quit the executive suite.
“Now it’s time for me to take on new challenges,” he said in a statement. “I am pleased to have had the opportunity to build upon the Def Jam legacy,” he added.
Carter will focus on his expanding franchise of 40/40 Nightclubs over the next year and other businesses, according to a source familiar with his plans.
Carter regularly tops the lists of richest hip-hop moguls, and was No. 9 on Forbes’ Celebrity 100, the annual roster of the world’s most powerful — and best paid — celebrities, with an estimated compensation of $83 million.
Carter, who has said he was a street hustler growing up in the Marcy public housing project in a tough section of Brooklyn, New York, has sold millions of records and launched an array of media and fashion businesses.
Though known for his cutting-edge rap lyrics and rags-to-riches story, Carter often is mentioned in local gossip columns because of his romantic relationship with R&B singer Beyonce Knowles. Last week, he denied rumors that the couple had married in secret.
The rapper joined Def Jam as president to help turn around the fortunes of the then-struggling seminal rap label. His move to management followed his 2003 retirement from recording. His albums, including “Hard Knock Life” (1998), “The Blueprint” (2001) and his classic debut “Reasonable Doubt” (1996).
He returned to recording last year with the album “Kingdom Come” and this year followed up with an album inspired by the movie “American Gangster”.
Def Jam’s successes during his tenure as president, included Rihanna and Ne-Yo, who this month racked up 11 Grammy nominations between them.
“Jay made it clear to us that he feels the time has come to take on different challenges in his life. While we regret his decision to move on, we certainly respect it,” said Antonio ‘L.A.’ Reid,” chairman of Island Def Jam.
Universal Music, a unit of French media and telecommunications group Vivendi, is the world’s largest music company with 30 percent of the worldwide market share.
Wikipedia Reference: Shawn Corey Carter (born December 4, 1969) better known by his stage name Jay-Z, is an American rapper and current president and CEO of Def Jam Recordings and Roc-A-Fella Records. In addition, he co-owns The 40/40 Club and the New Jersey Nets NBA team. He is one of the most financially successful hip-hop artists and entrepreneurs in America. Known for his flow and blending of street and popular style, he can compose lyrics without the use of pen and paper. His critically acclaimed album, The Blueprint, was allegedly written in only two days. After announcing his retirement from recording music in 2003, he returned in late 2006 with the album Kingdom Come which sold 680,000 copies in its first week, Jay-Z’s highest-selling album in a one-week period.
Along with Damon “Dame” Dash and Kareem “Biggs” Burke, Jay-Z was one of the founders of Roc-A-Fella Records, a hip hop record label. Jay-Z is the richest hip hop Entertainer (followed by Sean “Puffy” Combs, a.k.a. Diddy), having a net-worth estimate of $547 million.
Sony Music must pay $5m (?2.4m) to a small record company for missing its logo off Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell album, a US court has ruled.
The decision comes after a court settlement in 1998 decided Sony should include the Cleveland International logo on future copies of the record.
But Sony failed to add the logo for more than a year afterwards.
Cleveland founder Steve Popovich said: “I worked too hard for them and made them too much money to get robbed now.”
Sony claimed the logo omission was a mistake that was eventually corrected.
According to court documents, Sony claimed that Mr Popovich had fabricated the logo agreement.
In an original dispute over royalties from the album, Mr Popovich and his former partners were awarded $6.7m (?3.2) by Sony.
Bat Out of Hell, which was originally released in 1979, has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, according to court records.
Reference:
Meat Loaf
Michael Lee Aday (born Marvin Lee Aday; September 27, 1947), better known as Meat Loaf, is an American rock singer and actor of stage and screen. He is noted for his albums Bat out of Hell, II, and III and several famous songs from movies. The Neverland Express is the name of the band he fronts, as its lead singer. In 2001, he changed his first name to Michael.
Despite setbacks (including bankruptcy, on more than one occasion), Meat Loaf is notable for the success of his music career, spawning some of the largest-selling albums of all time, and breaking several records for chart duration. Bat out of Hell, the debut album which had been four years in the making, has sold over 37 million copies. After almost 30 years, it still sells an estimated 200,000 copies annually, and stayed on the charts for over 9 years. Each of the seven tracks on the album eventually charted as a single hit.
Although he enjoyed success with Bat out of Hell and Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell, Meat Loaf experienced some initial difficulty establishing a steady career within his native United States; however, he has retained iconic status and popularity in Europe, especially the UK, where he ranks 23rd for number of weeks overall spent on the charts, and is one of only two artists with an album never to have left the music charts. With the help of his New York collection of musicians John Golden, Richard Raskin and Paul Jacobs his European tours enjoyed immense popularity in the 80’s. In Germany, Meat Loaf became notably popular following the release of Bat out of Hell II but has enjoyed most of his success among pop/rock fans. He ranked 96th on VH1’s ‘100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock’.
Meat Loaf has also appeared in over 50 movies or television shows sometimes even as himself, or as characters resembling his onstage personality, such as his memorable role as Eddie in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He appeared in the acclaimed feature film Fight Club, as Robert “Bob” Paulson; he is credited for this role as “Meat Loaf Aday”.
In 2007 Meat Loaf granted filmmaker Bruce David Klein exclusive access for the making of Meat Loaf: In Search of Paradise, an independent theatrical documentary film that captures the legendary rocker and his life in rehearsals and on the road during his 2007 World Tour. The film was an official selection of the Montreal World Film Festival in 2007.
Sony
Sony Corporation (Son? Kabushiki-gaisha?) is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation and one of the world’s largest media conglomerates with revenue of $70.303 billion (as of 2007) based in Minato, Tokyo. Sony is one of the leading manufacturers of electronics, video, communications, video games and information technology products for the consumer and professional markets.
Sony Corporation is the electronics business unit and the parent company of the Sony Group, which is engaged in business through its five operating segments electronics, games, entertainment (motion pictures and music), financial services and other. These make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. Sony’s principal business operations include Sony Corporation (Sony Electronics in the U.S.), Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Sony Ericsson and Sony Financial Holdings. As a semiconductor maker, Sony is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders. Its slogan is Sony. Like no other.
Live Earth set to rock the world on July 7
NEW YORK (AFP) - From New York to the Antarctic, from Shanghai to Rio de Janeiro, the world is getting ready to rock Saturday as organizers of the Live Earth events seek to raise awareness of global warming.
Some 7,000 events in 129 countries including eight giant concerts are being promoted by former US vice president Al Gore as part of his passionate bid to focus attention on the dangers of climate change.
The 24-hour event on July 7 includes music, theater and other shows and will be broadcast live worldwide to get the message across to two billion people about the need for drastic measures to protect the environment, say promoters.
A wave of music is set to ripple round the globe starting in Sydney then fanning out to Tokyo, Shanghai, Johannesburg, Hamburg, London, New York, and Rio.
Some 150 stars including Police, Genesis, Madonna, Bon Jovi, Ai Otsuka, Eason Chan, Mana, Joey Yung, Shakira, Linkin Park, Rip Slyme and Red Hot Chili Peppers will be taking part.
Smaller concerts will take place in other cities, most notably Kyoto, where countries came together to establish the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate warming.
Another show will be held at a British base in the Antarctic, where some of the effects of global warming are the most visible.
“This monster line-up will ensure Live Earth meets our goal of bringing together people from around the world to combat the climate crisis,” says Live Earth founder Kevin Wall.
“Live Earth will be a monumental event both in terms of entertainment and in turning the tide against global warming.”
Gore, whose film “An Inconvenient Truth” about climate change won this year’s Oscar for best documentary, says one of the key aims is to urge a massive reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050.
“If we are going to solve the crisis, we have to commit, and we have to do it now,” he said.
“Live Earth will ask people across the world to commit to changes in their lives and to move other people, communities, companies and governments to reduce our carbon output by 90 percent by 2050 and ensure there is a new, global treaty on climate change by 2009.”
The number of participating countries, has however, fallen short of what organizers had hoped for. No Muslim country is taking part; and Turkey has vetoed a concert in Istanbul for security reasons and a lack of interest.
Plans for a concert on the mall in front of the US Congress in Washington were also turned down by Republican lawmakers.
Wall compared it to organizing 10 soccer World Cups at the same time. The concerts will be carried on television stations and on the Internet, at liveearth.msn.com.
Spectators will be invited to sign a statement on Live Earth’s Internet site or by text message.
The event’s organizers are also calling on people to support energy conservation and alternative energy sources, to plant millions of trees and protect the world’s forests, and to support groups dedicated to protecting the environment.
Gore said he will attend the concert in New York and will also appear at another surprise venue.
Each venue will feature top global performers: in London Madonna, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Black Eyed Peas will headline; in New York, Police and Smashing Pumpkins.
Tokyo will get Rihanna, Linkin Park and a bevy of Japanese stars like Ai Otsuka, while in Kyoto Ryuichi Sakamoto and Rip Slyme will top the bill.
In Rio Lenny Kravitz, Pharrell Williams and Macy Gray will share the stage with Brazilian stars, while in South Africa UB40, Angelique Kidjo and Joss Stone will take the stage. Shakira and Enrique Iglesias perform in Hamburg.
Gore said he had asked the artists to compose songs for the occasion, and praised Black Eyed Peas for promising one and coming up with it in seven days.
He also cheered Madonna’s offering: “Madonna’s song is fantastic,” he said.
Ticket sales for the events will benefit The Alliance for Climate Protection led by Gore.
Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place on 7/7/07 that will bring together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.
Live Earth will reach this worldwide audience through an unprecedented global media architecture covering all media platforms - TV, radio, Internet and wireless channels.
Live Earth marks the beginning of a multi-year campaign led by the Alliance for Climate Protection, The Climate Group and other international organizations to drive individuals, corporations and governments to take action to solve global warming. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore is the Chair of the Alliance and Partner of Live Earth.
Live Earth was founded by Kevin Wall, the Worldwide Executive Producer of Live 8, an event that brought together one of the largest audiences in history to combat poverty. Wall formed a partnership with Al Gore and the Alliance for Climate Protection to ensure that Live Earth inspires behavioral changes long after 7/7/07.
Live Earth will stage official concerts at Giants Stadium in New York; Wembley Stadium in London; Aussie Stadium in Sydney; Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro; Maropeng at the Cradle of Humankind in Johannesburg; Makuhari Messe in Tokyo; the Steps of the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai; and HSH Nordbank Arena in Hamburg.
Live Earth concerts will be broadcast to a live worldwide audience by MSN.
With support from the U.S. Green Building Council, creators of the LEED Green Building Rating System, Live Earth will implement new Green Event Guidelines. All Live Earth venues will be designed and constructed by a team of sustainability engineers who will address the environmental and energy management challenges of each concert site, as well as the operations of sponsors, partners and other Live Earth affiliates. Each venue will not only be designed to maintain a minimum environmental impact, but will showcase the latest state-of-the-art energy efficiency, on-site power generation, and sustainable facilities management practices.
Live Earth is a project of the SOS campaign , which is using a powerful multimedia platform - films, television, radio, Internet, books, wireless and others - to move people to combat the climate crisis.
Spice Girls announce reunion tour
The Spice Girls have confirmed they will reform for a world tour to take place in December and January.
The full line-up has not performed on stage since Ginger Spice Geri Halliwell quit in May 1998.
The 11 dates announced include a London show on 15 December, eight days after the tour begins in Los Angeles.
“I think for us it was about celebrating the past, enjoying each other and it’s about our fans. It was the right time,” said Halliwell.
The only British date is in London, with the venue not yet confirmed. The other European dates are in Cologne and Madrid.
Fears and doubts
Earlier this month Mel Chisholm, also known as Sporty Spice, told the BBC she had resisted reforming the group in the past because “it was amazing, it was magical. We could never recreate it”.
Asked why she had gone back on her word she said: “A girl is allowed to change her mind and also this is something that we have only seriously started this year really.
“I think really all of us have had our fears and doubts but we feel that the time is right.”
Good-natured
All five women laughed and joked constantly with photographers and reporters, even good-naturedly booing one journalist.
There had been rumours they would perform at the Concert for Diana memorial show in London on Sunday, but with Emma Bunton currently pregnant they decided not to appear.
“We would have loved to have been there this weekend but the timing has been impossible for us,” said Chisholm.
As the conference drew to a close, all five women left the stage holding hands as Brown shouted, “You have been spiced!”
Global success
The tour is being put together by Simon Fuller, whose 19 company masterminded the group’s global success more than a decade ago.
Under his guidance, the five-piece notched up a string of hits - including Wannabe and 2 Become 1 - while also capitalising on their fame with a stream of sponsorship deals.
Emma Bunton, Mel Brown, Mel Chisholm, Victoria Adams and Geri Halliwell quickly became household names - although they were better known as Baby, Scary, Sporty, Posh and Ginger.
They sold more than 55 million records around the world, and even starred in a film, Spice World.
Halliwell quit in 1998 citing “differences”, leaving them to complete a sold-out world tour as a foursome.
Since 2001 each member has since pursued solo careers with varying degrees of success, while Posh Spice has become better known as fashion icon Victoria Beckham.
The Spice Girls are a BRIT Award-winning English all-female pop group, which formed in London in 1994. The group signed to Virgin Records and released their debut single, “Wannabe”, in 1996. The song went to spend seven weeks at the top of the UK singles chart and helped establish the group as an “international phenomenon” who went on to release three studio albums and ten singles, selling in excess of 53 million records world wide.
The group embraced merchandise and became a regular feature of the British press. Each member of the group were given aliases by Top of the Pops Magazine in 1996 which were adopted by the group and media alike. According to biographer David Sinclair, “Scary, Baby, Ginger, Posh and Sporty were the most widely recognised group of individuals since John, Paul, George and Ringo”, stating that the group were “a social phenomenon that changed the course of popular music and popular culture”.
Career records and achievements
- Total record sales in the region of 55 million. As of February 2000, the Spice
- Girls had certified sales of 35.1 million albums and 18.2 million singles: Note however, this does not include sales for their third studio album.
- Combined sales of the Spice Girls with their individual solo careers result in nearly 100 million records sold, a tally of 40 UK hit singles and 17 UK number ones.
- Certified sales of 13 million albums in Europe, 11 million in the US, and 2.2 million in Canada.
- Total of nine number one singles in the UK - tied with ABBA behind Take That (ten), The Shadows (twelve), Madonna (twelve), Westlife (fourteen), Cliff Richard (fourteen), The Beatles (seventeen) and Elvis Presley (twenty-one).
- Three consecutive Christmas Number One singles in the UK for: (”2 Become 1,” 1996; “Too Much,” 1997; “Goodbye,” 1998)
“Wannabe” is the biggest selling single by an all female group.
- First (and only) female act to have their first six singles (”Wannabe”, “Say You’ll Be There”, “2 Become 1″, “Who Do You Think You Are”, “Spice Up Your Life” and “Too Much”) make number one on the UK charts. (Their run was broken by “Stop”, which peaked at number two in March 1998.)
- The Spice Girls achieved the highest ever annual earnings by an all female group in 1998 with an income of $49 million.
“Spice” is the 13th biggest-selling album of all time in the UK with over 3 million copies sold. It topped the charts for 15 weeks (non-consecutive), the most by a female group in the UK
- Highest international debut on the Billboard Hot 100 at number five with “Say You’ll Be There”. (This record still holds to date.)
- “Spiceworld” shipped 7 million copies in just two weeks, including 1.4million in Britain alone - the largest-ever shipment of an album over 14 days.
- Spiceworld: The Movie broke the record for the highest-ever weekend debut for Super Bowl Weekend (January 25, 1998) in the US, with box office sales of $10,527,222. This record has since been beaten by The Butterfly Effect in 2004.
- Spiceworld: The Movie topped the UK video charts on its first week of release, selling over 55,000 copies on its first day in the shops.
- Received a plethora of awards including four BRIT Awards, three American Music Awards, three MTV Europe Music Awards, one MTV Video Music Award and three World Music Awards.
