Napster Inc.

The Tech Dream Factory: Networks and Incubators Promise "Insider Access," for a Price

Napster-Hating Metallica Comes to Jesus, Er, Spotify

Nearly 13 years after suing Napster, the filesharing site that started it all, the grouchy old men of Metallica have had a come-to-Jesus of sorts with the power of the Interwebz: Today, drummer Lars Ulrich announced that Metallica's music will be coming to Spotify. He even gave Napster co-founder a ... More >>

"The Perks of Being a Wallflower": Teen Angst in the Naughties

Fall Arts: Assorted, Uncategorizable Awesomeness

Beat It

Music Labels Make Life Tough for Spotify

​Patrick Carney of the Black Keys is not a fan of Sean Parker, to say the least. Parker is an "asshole," Carney told NME.com on Monday. It's hard to blame Carney, though his rage might seem a bit misdirected -- or maybe just too concentrated on one person. Parker of course was the guy who brought ... More >>

Marijuana Legalization Measure Courts Billionaires for Vital Campaign Cash

Close. But close enough?​Regulate Marijuana Like Wine, a marijuana legalization measure vying to get onto the November ballot, has only $80,000 in cash on hand, according to finance records. But in a poll released this week, it had potential support from 62 percent of likely voters -- and that, ba ... More >>

Assessing Metallica After 30 Years and Four Nights at the Fillmore

In Print: Assessing Metallica After 30 Years and Four Nights at the Fillmore, and More

From SF Weekly's latest print music section: Metallica at the Fillmore​Metallica at 30: Text messages like the one I got from a friend before the third Metallica show last week -- "You are dead to me" -- were exactly the reason I decided to go to all four of the Bay Area metal band's 30th ann ... More >>

Metallica's Top 5 Most Alienating, Hate-Inducing Actions

​"Metallica loves to be hated," James Hetfield told Playboy in a 2001 interview. The group's detractors would argue that over the years, Hetfield and the boys have done a more than capable job of cultivating that hate. There are young music fans, born around the mid-1990s, who only know a wor ... More >>

Facebook's Cheesy Ads: Do They Make it Worth $100 Billion?

​A couple of weeks ago, Business Insider, the puerile gossip 'n' lies site run by disgraced, bubble-era Internet-stock analyst Henry Blodget, informed us that a "source close to Facebook employees" said in an e-mail to the site that the company would go public within weeks. The article's author, N ... More >>

Snoop Dogg, The Killers, and Jane's Addiction Soundtrack the Opulence at a Facebook/Spotify Party (Photos)

Snoop Dogg. Photographs courtesy of Julie Schugard for Spotify​ Open bars of oysters, sushi, wine and cheese, and lots booze. Sound too good to be true? How about adding surprise musical entertainment by the Killers, Jane's Addiction, Snoop Dogg, and Kaskade? Yep, it happened. Last night's p ... More >>

The Killers, Jane's Addiction, and Snoop Dogg Are Playing a "Secret Show" for the Gods of Tech Tonight

​After hearing rumors all day, it appears this is finally actually confirmed: Snoop Dogg, Jane's Addiction, Kaskade, and the Killers are playing a "secret" show after today's Facebook conference, hosted by Napster founder Sean Parker, according to SFist. So after spending the day hearing abou ... More >>

Hey, When Did Metallica's Lars Ulrich Turn into a Cool, Funny Guy?

​Over the years, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich just hasn't done a lot of things to make people like him. Let's recount: he's often an obnoxious interviewee; he pulls some of the most annoying faces in drumming history; he played a role in one of the most embarrassing music documentaries on earth, ... More >>

MTV at 30: A Reflection on the Journey from Beavis and Butt-Head to Jersey Shore

​When I was born, MTV had already passed its eighth birthday. Now that I've dated myself, I'll make another confession: I never had cable television growing up. So I watched MTV take over the planet like someone who lived in a different dimension -- I watched music videos with my friends at th ... More >>

Justin Timberlake: Top 5 Ways He Can Save MySpace

New media mogul?​Justin Timberlake's newly announced ownership stake in MySpace is without doubt the coolest thing to happen to the ailing social network in some time. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. just sold MySpace, which it acquired six years ago, at a $545 million loss. But new owner Specific Med ... More >>

Google Launches Bummer of a Cloud-Based Music Service -- Blame the Big Labels

GoogleUpload your music to the cloud, and play it on all your devices.​ It's on. It's live. And, for a little while, anyway, it's free: Go here to request an invitation to Google's cloud music service, released today under the entirely unthrilling name Music Beta. So what's it do? We ran thro ... More >>

Stopping piracy: How ultracheap downloads could save the music industry

Napster's Sean Parker Showers $100K on Marijuana Measure

RamaScreenNapster's Sean Parker -- yes, the guy played by Justin Timberlake in The Social Network -- put his pot money where his mouth is​The e-mail came Monday from Oaksterdam University's Richard Lee, the main driving force (at least publicly) behind cannabis semi-legalization measure Propos ... More >>

"The Social Network": David Fincher on Facebook's unlovable creator, Mark Zuckerberg

Top 5 Most Excruciating Moments in Music Documentaries

We've yet to see Joaquin Phoenix documenting his own nervous breakdown in new movie I'm Still Here, but critics have been largely disgusted by what's on view. With that in mind, here are five other moments in music documentaries that have left us feeling queasy and depressed.5. Jim Morrison Having H ... More >>

Record Labels Suing Everything Good Into Oblivion

MP3Tunes' Michael Robertson: "The music industry is still suing ... anyone they even think is taking their business." ​"Geeks say greedy record companies hinder innovation" "Copyright licenses cramp our creativity, techies yelp at 'summit'" "NorCal biz dudes: SoCal biz dudes think we're shitting ... More >>

Last Night: Metallica at HP Pavillion

​Metallica December 12, 2009 HP Pavilion At San Jose Better than: Getting drunk with your boss at the office holiday party. Still alive and kicking out the jams more than a quarter of a century after making Kill 'Em All, Metallica doesn't really have anything left to prove. The band members are ... More >>

Indie songwriters find success in wooing the superfan

Metallica's Hetfield Hospitalized, Spinal Tap Rolls On

Metallica.comTime to Turn the Page? Metallica's James Hetfield New Music Express has reported that that Metallica's James Hetfield was hospitalized for "a stomach bug and dehydration," forcing a cancellation of a March 8 Stockholm show .This latest health-related incident parallels a similar incid ... More >>

Cell phones: the future of music broadcasting

Metallica: Metal heroes once more

BitTorrent, Comcast, EFF Antipathetic To FCC Regulation of P2P Traffic

Welcome Back to School, Now Stop the Downloading

Bay Area's MySpace Top Ten

Band Width

Dangermouse and Girl Talk talk Copyright

Letters to the Editor

Week of Wednesday, December 14, 2005

This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

The Tinkerers

The Books, Battles, Prefuse 73, and other bands for whom, musically speaking, freedom is on the march

Bouncer

The best place to ponder the Metallica movie Some Kind of Monster: Zeitgeist, of course

Polishing the Brass

Judging from last week's Music Law Summit West, the future of the music biz is unclear – but that's not what the RIAA wants you to think

Hear This

Join indie hip-hopper Sage Francis in saying "Fuck Clear Channel."

House of Tudor

A Deadhead's Songcatchers and the best rock band in America

Metallica

St. Anger

Download or Die

The RIAA's war on the consumer

Various Artists

The Amos House Collection, Volume II (Wishing Tree)

Slack Keys and MP3s

Two Bay Area collectors put the spotlight on vintage Hawaiian music

House Of Tudor

Silke Tudor uncovers lonesome organists, DIY provocateurs, and noisemaking bastards

Ransom Notes

Can one man convince millions of people to pay for their "free" music?

Pop Philosophy

Buddy, Can You Spare Some Change?

I Have a Dream 2.0

New Seybold upgrade brings ethics, privacy, adulation, salvation via Internet

Riff Raff

This Column Is Brought to You by the Letter M, the Letter P, the Number 3, and the Concept "Death of the Artist"; On That Note ...

Riff Raff

Free Lars Ulrich!; New Groove; Sound Off

Riff Raff

Everything I Ever Needed to Know About the Music Business I Learned From Eddie Money, etc...