MusicNewsTidBits.com

Joining in on the board games like The Beatles, Kiss, Elvis and Metallica, AC/DC are releasing a Collector’s Edition of Monopoly. Oh man this is classic. You can own albums and properties like AC/DC Lane and Black Ice, trade albums and locations. Get this, the tokens are Stacks of Cash, Angus’ School Boy Hat, Lighting Bolt, Dynamite and a Cannon. So great.

Forbes has come out with their 2011 list of highest paid musicians of the year and of course at number 1 is U2 at $195 million for the second consecutive year. Overall they have made $700 million on their 360 degree tour. Here are the remaining:

Bon Jovi at $125 million
Elton John at $100 million
Lady Gaga at $90 million
Michael Buble at $70 million
Paul McCartney at $66 million
Justin Bieber at $52 million

Pharrell Williams will serve as creative director for Karmaloop TV which will launch later this year. Karmaloop TV is a new network that will feature original productions and movies focused on the 18-34 year olds who grew up with the internet. Karmaloop CEO Greg Selkoe said Pharrell will help to create a brand that will get cutting-edge youth culture excited about TV like MTV did in the 80′s.

Beats By Dre, Jimmy Lovine and Dr. Dre, are partnering up with Chrysler for their 2012 Chrysler 300S.  They will help Chrysler’s engineer design to tune the 10-speaker sound system which will be the first model to have the new system.

Ziggy Marley has created…..Marijuanaman. It’s going to be a comic written by Man of Action Studios Joe Casey with illustration by Jim Mahfood and will come in an oversized deluxe hardcover graphic novel.

Marley states “Marijuanaman represents the hope of the future… the hope that we will utilize all of the power that the universe has given us to save our planet.”

The 48 page full cover hardcover will hit stores at $24.99 this year on….wait for it….April 20th!!

EMI is the fourth largest group of record labels in our great music industry. Well now Citigoup has purchased Maltby Investments, who owns the EMI Group. EMI has Katy Perry and the Gorillaz with back catalogs of Radiohead, Pink Floyd, the Beatles and others. Will this change anything? Probably not. It sounds like there is just more people to pay and rob the artists of money.

The word’s been out for about a month but I finally got around to checking it out. The TDK Boombox is pretty cool but for $399/$499 you can get much better products for that price. Check out the pic then the Cnet review on it.

The good: The TDK Three Speaker Boombox delivers a finely tuned, powerful sound in a portable system with an unforgettable design. Features such as AM/FM radio, as well as RCA and instrument input, set it apart from the competition.

The bad: There’s no way to secure your iPod/iPhone or other connected device; support for Bluetooth is absent; radio antennas are handled by two dangling wires; no remote; hefty weight and battery-hungry design make portability impractical.

The bottom line: TDK’s Three Speaker Boombox is as beautiful as it is powerful, but the hefty design does not travel well.

It’s the only museum on The Beatles that belongs to a private collector. Rodolfo Vazquez opened his personal collection museum at The Plaza in downtown Buenos Aires that has over 8,500 Beatles memorabilia. Everything from photos to clothing and even a box of condoms that have Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s image. Um that’s kinda weird!

You gotta love the young ones for creativity. An 18 year old has been BUSTED for hacking and stealing songs from Kelly Clarkson, Ke$ha, Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga then selling them online to make some dough. How about $13,000 worth? The 18 year old is from Duisburg, German and STILL lives with his parents. He goes by the name of ‘DJ Stolen’ ( real name Deniz A.) and had a 23 year old accomplice (Christian M.) that he says “I haven’t heard from him for a while.”

Apparently he had attached a Trojan (no not the condom) to an MP3 file that was sent to the official addresses of the music stars, their managers and their record companies.

He says “I’m a fan and I just wanted to have cool music. I’m no blackmailer.”

If convicted he could be sentenced up to five years in prison.

Remember back in November I mentioned that Michael Jacksons white crystal glove that he wore during the ‘Bad’ tour was going up for auction

http://musicnewstidbits.com/music-news/idols-icons-sale-get-a-part-of-history

Well it finally sold. For $330,000!!! Insane. Some other stuff sold at that auction:

Fedora Jackson wore on stage: $72,000
Jacket signed by Jackson: $96,000
Marilyn Monroe’s empty prescription bottles (2): $18,750
X-Ray of Albert Einstein’s brain: $38,750
Military Style Jacket John Lennon wore for 1966 Life Magazine Shoot: $240,000

Shit it must be nice to have that kind of money laying around where you can buy this kind of stuff.

I guess this is a good combo since he is so famous for his ‘Can’t Drive 55′ song. Talon Motors has a new vehicle called the ‘Invader’ that’s a 3 wheeler and can go 0-60 in under 4 seconds (sweet). It’s powered by a Suzuki Hayabusa engine with fully adjustable suspension. Well Talon hooked up with Sammy Hagar to produce a “Red Rocker” version that will have some custom designs that Hagar will create with Talon Motors. The standard Invader starts at $42,900 so I can’t imagine how much more when Sammy puts his touches on it.

This guy just never stops. I’m glad since his last album wasn’t all that great (ouch). So he just started a new clothing line called SOLO and will be out sometime next year. The first item is a hoodie with headphones sewn into the hood. Whaaaaat. Check out one of them below or see the whole set up at SoloByCube.com

Well I don’t have much info on this but there was a small announcement by Flavor Flav that he is going to have his own line of Vodka, wine and Chicken. WTF!

“I’ve got the Flavor Flav flavored vodkas and a range of wine coming with my lyrics on the back.”

As for the Chicken:

“It’s called FFC and the Colonel better watch out.”

Wow….just Wow!

After waiting and waiting to get the Beatles catalog online, it finally happened. And the winner is…..iTunes of course. On the November 16th EMI CEO Roger Faxon finally got the deal to work out with Apple’s Steve Jobs even with Google and Amazon in the mix. Apparently iTunes offered the best option for the music deal.

As of the other day there were over 15 Beatles songs on the iTunes top 100 and eight albums in the top 20. Nuts.

It’s been 40 years that Queen has been with EMI but now the have ended their relationship and moved over to Universal Music Group. Moving to Universal will bring remastered versions of all of Queens albums sometime next year.

Brian May of Queen says “We are very excited after all this time to be embarking on a new phase of our career.

Its seems that after the 2007 purchase of EMI by Terra Firma they have been losing big acts such as Radiohead, Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney.