Coldplay announces tour in unusual fashion

The biggest story of the week goes to the biggest band in the world. Coldplay, a band who spends their time in the states sparingly, announced plans for the second leg of their North American tour this past week in a most unusual way. On Monday, they launched http://www.TalkTheTour.com, a Web site dedicated to hyping their new single "Talk," along with being a grassroots tactic to slowly announce dates for the upcoming trek.


As it went, for every 33,000 hits the site received, the band would announce another date until the entire tour was announced. The band ran into a problem when by Wednesday, more than 500,000 people had checked out the innovative site, causing more than half of the dates to be revealed more quickly than they had planned. In response to this, the band's label, Capitol, quickly brought together a press release, fully announcing the band's plans.

The second leg of Coldplay's North American visit will run from January all the way through the beginning of April, and will feature Fiona Apple in the opening slot on half of the dates, while former Verve frontman, not to mention close friend of Chris Martin, Richard Ashcroft, will assume the opening services on the other half. Though the band will not venture into Pittsburgh, it will hit the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland on March 20.


Staying in the world of Rock, a new and surprising feud surfaced this week when Bert McCracken of the band The Used made some comments about his relationship with current TRL favorites My Chemical Romance. While both bands have been notorious for being extremely close with each other, McCracken claimed that those days have been long gone.

According to MTV, the Used's lead singer claimed that, though his band mates still maintain a close relationship with the guys from MCR, he had a personal falling out with Gerard and the boys. He claimed that he and the guys don't speak anymore, and though it wouldn't go into detail, he made it certain that it has nothing to do with their sudden success.

Speaking of success and music, the successful illegal peer to peer music downloading service, Grokster was forced to effectively go out of business early this week. The Supreme Court ruled that its service could be held liable for the infringing actions of its users, thus as part of a settlement, was forced to shut down.


For those of you legal downloading Grokster fans out there, the company announced later in the week that it does indeed plan to relaunch sometime within the near future. According to its website, the new program will be called "Grokster 3D" and promises to be "a safe, secure, and legal peer to peer experience that will obtain no adware, spyware, bundles, viruses, or hassle thus offering the best of what peer to peer has to offer."


Moving on to the world of rap and hip-hop, it was announced this week that 50 Cent will play the role of executive producer on none other than Lil' Scrappy's next full length album, due in early 2006. This comes as a surprise due to the fact that Scrappy has been, and will maintain to be, a part of Lil' Jon's BME camp.

Apparently, the two cliques have been collaborating on beats and songs for a good while now, and though one may think two of the biggest hip-hop groups may find it hard to get along, especially when one is led by 50 Cent, the project is actually something they have both been looking forward to. Crappy and Mr. Cent have reportedly been forming a close bond over the past couple of years, and the record will be officially released as a collaboration between 50, Lil' Scrappy and Lil' Jon.


Finally, it was announced this week that Britney Spears will have a new album due out not only this winter, but this month. The brand new mother's label announced that she will be releasing an album dedicated to the plentiful remixes her songs have undertaken over the course of her career.

The album will be wittily titled B in the Mix: the Remixes, and will receive no promotional activity at all. In fact, Spears' official Web site isn't even acknowledging the release at all. The only place that you can find it is her very own paid fan site. There, if you preorder the album, you will automatically be entered in a contest to win a bag full of Britney goodies. You better hurry while supplies last.

Until next time, keep listening.