Diplo's Mad Decent Label Launches First-Listen Subscription Service

Posted 3/15/12 11:10 am EST by in Music, The Interweb


Diplo

By Zachary Swickey

Philly-based DJ/producer Diplo has launched a new digital subscription service for his personal label, Mad Decent. The site – Mad Decent Premium – is being touted as an “exclusive club” for fans to hear new music from the label.

The pay-for site will give members first-listen access to all of the label’s releases in addition to remixes, mixtapes, live sets, videos, a membership card and a discount at their merch store for all your Mad Decent swag.

The site is said to work in the same fashion as recent streaming service Spotify – a user can stream and download as much content as they’d like from any computer for a flat fee of $10 a month.

To help get things started, Decent is giving a free T-shirt to the first 50 people who sign up and free stickers for the first 250.

If you need further incentive, you’ll automatically get several of the label’s notable releases, including Diplo’s brnad new Express Yourself, Mad Decent Jeffree’s Vol. 2 mixtape, Po Po’s Dope Boy Magick, and the Mad Decent super pack, which includes unreleased tracks by Diplo. Read More...

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Shockingly Good New Toni Braxton Song Continues Full-Fledged '90s Revival

Posted 3/15/12 9:57 am EST by in Music


Toni Braxton

Everything old is new again.

Here in the MTV Newsroom, we love the '90s. We jump at the chance to bring you news about NKOTB, jam to Ginuwine on Friday afternoons, celebrate the reunion of Brandy and Monica, get excited about the impending return of Fiona Apple and champion the return of boy bands.

So it is with great excitement that we announce the return of yet another '90s icon: Toni Braxton.

Sure, she never really went anywhere. Her last album, 2010's Pulse enjoyed a top-ten debut on the Billboard album chart, she's appeared with her sisters on the WE reality show "Braxton Family Values" and she was a contestant on the seventh season of ABC's "Dancing with the Stars."

But it's safe to say that her true career peak was in the mid-to-late '90s when she was churning out some of the hottest R&B hits in the game, from "Un-break My Heart," "You're Makin' Me High," "Breathe Again," "Another Sad Love Song" and "He Wasn't Man Enough." Her best work was done with L.A. Reid and Babyface, who produced the bulk of her mega-selling self-titled debut and its awesome follow-up Secrets.

So when she announced early this year that she was hitting the studio Reid for her seventh studio album, we started to get excited – the two haven’t hit the studio together in something like 15 years. And now she's dropped a new song and we think we're loving it.

"I Heart You" is a massive, anthemic banger that we can already hear blasting out of every club everywhere. Plus, and we think we love her even more for this part, she wrote and co-produced the song herself! "When I wrote this song I was thinking about the feeling you get when you walk into a club and you hear the melody," the singer said. "You feel the beat and you just know it's going to be a good night."

Hear it, after the jump! Read More...

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Mumford & Sons To Perform At White House State Dinner Tonight

Posted 3/14/12 2:28 pm EST by in Barack-Obama, Music


Mumford and Sons

Mumford & Sons are set to perform for President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron at a state dinner at the White House tonight (March 14).

The U.K. band was personally invited to play the gig by Cameron at the last minute. Obama's choice, John Legend, has long since been set to perform at the dinner, which is being held in Cameron's honor with around a thousand guests, including Lord Grantham himself, Hugh Bonneville, and billionaire Richard Branson.

Both performers seem to fit their respective world leaders' musical tastes perfectly. Cameron is a well-known fan of indie rock, having previously voiced his love of the Smiths, and we all know Obama loves smooth-groove R&B and soul after his rendition of Al Green's classic "Let's Stay Together" at a fundraising event in New York in January became a viral sensation.

The Obama and Cameron seem to be getting along famously during the Prime Minister's U.S. visit. They were seen bro-ing out yesterday at the Mississippi Valley State vs. Western Kentucky March Madness basketball game in Dayton, Ohio.

The long-time pals also engaged in a "beer summit" at a G-20 summit in Canada in 2010 related to a bet they placed on the U.S.-England. They exchanged beers brewed in the cities where they grew up – Goose Island 312 from Chicago and Hobgoblin from Witney, U.K. Persnickety as ever, Obama insisted on having his cold, which is not the custom in England. Read More...

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Courtney Love Angry With Muppets for 'Raping' Kurt Cobian's Legacy

Posted 3/14/12 12:00 pm EST by in Courtney-Love


Courtney Love

By Zachary Swickey

The craziness that is Courtney Love has set her sights on a new and unlikely target: Kermit the Frog.

Apparently, Love is more than unhappy with the Muppet posse’s rendition of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” that was used in their new 2011 movie without her “permission” – saying it “raped” the memory of her late husband.

Love – who was nearly evicted from her apartment last December – continues to be under the false assumption that she has sole power to approve or deny any use of Nirvana music for commercial purposes, and she claims she never gave any companies permission for the Muppets to cover the song.

However, TMZ reports that Love sold half of her interest in Cobain’s music to a company under the name Primary Wave Music (it was reported earlier that she'd sold only a 25 percent stake).

Love will be even angrier when she discovers that Primary Wave got permission from the two surviving members of Nirvana – Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic (two guys she hasn’t exactly gotten along with in the past) – with Grohl even making a cameo appearance in the flick.

Despite Love’s chagrin, she’s still raking in the dough; she and her daughter, Frances Bean, will get a cut of the song’s profits.

Last fall, Love inked a book deal with William Morrow – an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers to “set the record straight” with her memoirs, which will surely make for a pretty wild read.

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Cody Simpson To Join Big Time Rush On Summer Tour

Posted 3/14/12 10:24 am EST by in boy bands, tour, Tour Dates


With One Direction storming the plaza at "Today" and Bieber fever heating up again as the release of "Boyfriend" nears, teenage boy pop is all the rage again. And now, two of the genre's hottest acts are teaming up for a summer tour.

Australian teen dream Cody Simpson is set to hit the road with the boys of Big Time Rush for a summer tour behind his still-untitled debut. The poster also debuted the album's first single, "So Listen," a clubby dance track featuring T-Pain.

Although Simpson is drawing comparisons to Justin Bieber, the young singer told MTV News that he really aspires to be more like Justin Timberlake. "He has such a sophisticated presence," Simpson said of Timberlake. "I watched his FutureSex/LoveSounds tour, and it's something you really get inspired by. He does so much in the show: He plays piano and guitar and he just is always singing. He sounds amazing live and he dances great. He's just an all-around entertainer. That's something I want to strive to be. It's always good to have someone you want to be like."

Listen to "So Listen" and check out Simpsons summer tour dates with Big Time Rush after the jump! Read More...

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Get Your Musical March Madness Badges For Facebook And Twitter Here!

Posted 3/13/12 3:43 pm EST by in March Madness


Musical March Madness

By Kara Klenk

Musical March Madness is underway right now and this year we’ve made badges for every band in the competition, which you can use as your profile pic for Facebook, Twitter, BBM, AIM, whatever!

Want to make one of our MMM badges your Facebook profile pic? Follow these easy steps:

1) "Like" MTV News on Facebook.

2) Go to the Musical March Madness 2012 – Badges album.

3) Tag yourself in the photo of your favorite band.

4) Go to your profile, click on the picture in your timeline and choose "Make Profile Picture."

To download the badge directly to your computer, click on your favorite band’s name below! Read More...

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NKOTB's Joey McIntyre Doubts The Staying Power Of One Direction

Posted 3/13/12 12:03 pm EST by in NKOTB


One Direction

Zachary Swickey

Veteran boy bander Joey McIntyre of New Kids on the Block isn't sure red-hot British bands One Direction and The Wanted are going to be long-term players on the music scene.

Talking to Yahoo UK, McIntyre said, "The odds are against both One Direction and The Wanted – neither of them are going to work in America – it hasn’t happened in 50 years so why now?"

(He had to be speaking specifically about British boy bands, as his own group found success in the U.S. in the early-90s and NKOTB's tour mates the Backstreet Boys, along with NSYNC and 98 Degrees, led the charge in the late-90s/early-00s boy band Renaissance.)

Backstreet Boy Howie Dorough was not as abrasive toward the up-and-coming groups, saying, “I’m not one to tell anyone what to do, how to make their career happen. The hardest places to crack are the UK and USA. And for success to happen a lot of things need to go right. It was a lot of right time, right place for Backstreets Boys.”

McIntyre, however, wasn't done speaking his mind. “The music has to be able to stand on its own but that’s not the only thing that matters. To have long term staying power the music has to be strong enough, to be timeless," he continued. "But nowadays with the Internet, you do something good or bad – either way the attention is on your and that makes you successful as well."

Apparently, McIntyre's words come from a place of concern, as he lamented the lack of a normal youth the guys will endure before it all comes crashing down. “It costs being a pop star, they [One Direction and The Wanted] don’t have regular girlfriends," he said. "They don’t have the experiences that everyone else has and that can be a bad thing. They’re missing out on being late on rent, doing laundry, or going out on normal dates – that’s missing out. And they’ll have to learn it all later.”

Do you think Joey McIntyre is right or wrong in his assessment of The Wanted and One Directions career longevity? Let us know in the comments below.

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Nick Jonas Set To Return To 'Smash'

Posted 3/13/12 10:10 am EST by in Jonas Brothers, Television, Video


Only weeks ago, Nick Jonas stopped by the MTV Newsroom and shared that he wanted to return to the NBC hit musical drama, "Smash." Well, it seems, his wish is now coming true.

Nick will tackle his bad boy character, Lyle West, once again when he appears on the May 14 season finale of the show, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He really stirred the pot when he first appeared last month, chewing scenery alongside screen legend Angelica Huston and now, it seems, he’ll get to flex his acting muscles one more time.

"He's a fun character," the Jonas Brother told MTV News in February about hoping to return to the show. "Lyle is very precocious and definitely a bit different than I am in reality. But there are a lot of similarities too: Lyle started off in musical theater [and so did I]. That's how he knows all the people involved in 'Marilyn' [the musical at the center of the show]. ... He's a fun character; I hope he can come back again."

"Smash" revolves around the drama of staging a splashy Broadway show. In real life, Nick currently stars in one, as the lead in "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying."

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Olivia Munn Laughs Off Nude Pic Scandal With Jokey Letter And Pic At SXSW Screening

Posted 3/12/12 4:38 pm EST by in Celebrity, Internet, The Interweb


Olivia Munn

People are still talking about the nude pics of Olivia Munn that showed up online last week after a hacker broke into her phone and leaked the images, but the starlet is taking it all in stride and is even laughing off the experience by fighting fire with fire.

(Soapbox: We get that, for one reason or another, people are super interested in celebrity nude pics, but can we please stop hacking their cell phones? It's a pretty cold thing to do. Snapping a pic of someone when they are out in public – fine. Breaking into and stealing their private property – not OK and pretty illegal.)

While Munn's pictures were not particularly explicit, the writing on them, allegedly by Munn, was. Like, VERY. The images had graphic text superimposed on them, most of which were instructions, and arrows pointing to where to, um, carry out her directions. They were basically illustrated sex instructions and they were something.

Well, this weekend at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, Munn was unable to attend a screening of her film "The Babymakers" because she was filming HBO's Aaron Sorkin series "The Newsroom," but she sent a fun letter with the film's director apologizing for her absence and detailing what she was doing when she wasn't sending lewd texts. She also included a picture of herself with some superimposed text to mock the mini-scandal. Both are kind of awesome.

"Oh, and one last thing – some of those pictures weren't even me," Munn at one point writes. "I mean, you can't even see my penis…"

You know you want to read it. Check both letter and pic out after the jump. Read More...

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Fray Frontman Isaac Slade Wants To Punch The Killers' Brandon Flowers 'In The Mouth'

Posted 3/12/12 10:49 am EST by in Fighting, Music, The Killers


The Fray

By Zachary Swickey

The Fray may be known for their relaxed music and its frequent use on “Grey’s Anatomy,” but frontman Isaac Slade isn’t keen on anyone pointing that out exactly.

Slade – who just released The Fray’s third album, Scars and Stories, earlier this month – has got his sights set on The Killers’ frontman Brandon Flowers for derogatory comments the singer made about Slade’s group.

Slade talked to the Daily Star about this beef, saying, “When we started making the album, I saw footage on YouTube of Brandon getting mad at a Killers crowd who were a little sedate. Brandon was yelling, ‘Come on, stand up and dance. This isn’t a f**king Fray show.’”

Well, that little comment hasn’t sat too well with Slade. While he surprisingly admitted that his shows can be a bit on the chill side, he doesn't necessarily see that as a bad thing and wants Flowers to know it.

“All I could do was laugh because that’s true – we do have a very thoughtful, sensitive crowd who don’t get to dance much. Still, I’ll pay Brandon back for picking on our fans. Next time I see him I’ll have to punch him in the mouth,” Slade vowed.

The Fray’s Scars and Stories debuted at number four on the Billboard charts last month with 87,000 copies sold. The Killers are in the midst of recording their fourth studio album and are expected to make their live return with a headlining slot at the UK’s V Festival this summer.

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