CNET Networks Entertainment GameSpot | GameFAQs | SportsGamer | MP3.com | TV.com | MovieTome
Print Email Comment Tag It Facebook Digg this
MySpace, Facebook up music ante
By Jim Welte - MP3.com
February 28, 2008 at 04:41:00 PM | more stories by this author

Pussycat Dolls, Jessica Simpson, Disturbed, Filter, Carlos Mencia, and DJ Z-Trip to head to Kuwait for MySpace show for troops; Facebook launches music section.

MySpace has long been the social networking site for bands looking to promote their music. As has long been expected, it now has company from fast-growing competitor Facebook.

Jessica Simpson Jessica Simpson

The two social networking giants upped the music ante today, with MySpace announcing a huge, star-studded concert for the US troops in Kuwait, and Facebook launching its long-rumored music section.

The three-hour MySpace concert, in cooperation with Armed Forces Entertainment and the America Supports You program, will feature be held live on March 10 for US troops in Kuwait and streamed on the site's Operation MySpace page at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT.

The show will feature performances from the Pussycat Dolls, Jessica Simpson, Disturbed, Filter, comedian Carlos Mencia, and DJ Z-Trip.

"It's truly an honor to perform for the troops," Simpson said in a statement. "Through Operation MySpace, I get to serve my country by doing what I love to do in front of thousands of brave men in uniform. It's every girl's dream!"

Music on Facebook Music on Facebook

But as MySpace looks to stage such a high-profile event, Facebook remains hot on its tail. The site unveiled its music section today, entitled "Music on Facebook." MySpace claims it has nearly 7 million bands using the site to post blog updates, tour date summaries, and streams of uploaded music.

Facebook said that some 80 artists have already set up profiles, including Alicia Keys, Avril Lavigne, Bruce Springsteen, Carrie Underwood, Coldplay, Dave Matthews Band, Foo Fighters, Justin Timberlake, Matchbox Twenty, Rodrigo y Gabriela, The Decemberists, and Wyclef Jean.

The section streams songs though a Facebook Music Player application, and provides links to purchase tracks at the iTunes Store. Bands can also upload a full discography to their page, and Facebook tapped Musictoday to allow bands to sell merchandise through their pages.

Print Email Comment Tag It Facebook Digg this

Back to Today's News »

3 Comments

Oldest First | Newest First
xtinemp3
Facebook is a user's nightmare. I deleted mine.
Posted 02/29/2008 4:15pm
MikeAAA
Carlos Mencia? the troops deserve better than this.
Posted 02/29/2008 9:38am
kazooiedog
Boo! Facebook is pandering to the masses!
Posted 02/28/2008 5:27pm
Sign up now to post a comment!
advertisement

Latest News

Family, label make big Sinatra push Family, label make big Sinatra push
In commemoration of the 10th anniversary of his death, parties roll out postage stamp, new CD and DVD collections, much more.

Picture Galleries

Related Artists

Pussycat Dolls Pussycat Dolls

Founded by choreographer Robin Antin in 1995, the Pussycat Dolls began as a burlesque dance revue based in Los Angeles, spawned a second revue in Las Vegas, grew into an A-list phenomena with a revolving cast of guest celebrities, and eventually became a recording act with a number one dance hit. It wasn't long after launching its revue that the...

Jessica Simpson Jessica Simpson

Dance-pop singer Jessica Simpson was born and raised in Dallas, TX, beginning her performing career as a member of her church choir; at 12, she also auditioned unsuccessfully for The Mickey Mouse Club. While attending church camp the following summer, Simpson was discovered by the head of a tiny CCM label and spent the next three years recording...

Disturbed Disturbed

Heavy metal band Disturbed came together through the matching of a band with a singer. Longtime friends Dan Donegan (guitar), Mike Wengren (drums), and Fuzz (bass) played together in Chicago for some time before hooking up with singer David Draiman around 1997. Draiman had grown up in a religious family against which he rebelled, being expelled...

Filter Filter

Richard Patrick (vocals, guitars, bass, programming, drums) and Brian Liesegang (programming, guitars, keyboards, drums) both experimented with electronics early in their careers. Patrick was a member of the original touring incarnation of Nine Inch Nails. After NIN finished its lengthy first tour in the early '90s, Patrick and Liesegang met...

DJ Z-Trip

DJ Z-Trip already had a few mixes out -- including one in the prestigious Future Primitive Soundsession series -- when his collaboration with DJ P, Uneasylistening, Vol. 1, showed up in 2001. The unorthodox mix made many music fans take notice, if only to puzzle over unlikely pairings like Del tha Funkee Homosapien with Phil Collins and Bruce...

Carlos Mencia

Latino comedian Carlos Mencia grew up in East Los Angeles. An amateur performance at the Laugh Factory led him to give up his job in an insurance company and leave college, where he had been studying electrical engineering, to become a standup comic. After performing around the Los Angeles area, he was named International Comedy Grand Champion...

Related Albums

Pussycat Dolls "PCD"
Pussycat Dolls
There's a kind of beautifully perverse brilliance to the Pussycat Dolls. Not only are they a sextet who got their start as neo-burlesque dancers in Los Angeles, but they make no bones about being a gleefully manufactured dance-pop act. Open the booklet for their 2005 debut, PCD, and their artificiality is made clear: the first page reads "All...
Jessica Simpson "A Public Affair"
Jessica Simpson
There are basically two ways to deal with a divorce in pop music: dig deep into your soul and pour it all out on the page (à la Blood on the Tracks), or treat it as sheer liberation (à la Back in the High Life). Perhaps it's only appropriate that the dissolution of the Jessica Simpson/Nick Lachey marriage -- one of the biggest tabloid stories of...
Disturbed "Ten Thousand Fists"
Disturbed
It started in 2000 with "Down with the Sickness." Disturbed's thick, rhythmic take on alt-metal was perfect music for stalking bloody zombies, and vocalist David Draiman's jaw-snapping Pavlovian grunts made the trigger fingers of first-person shooters itch. There were threads of other groups in the sound -- Pantera's wrenching power, Slipknot,...
Filter "The Amalgamut"
Filter
Although Filter's Title of Record was a creative step forward, Richard Patrick described the album's recording process as an exigent one, where everyone constantly butted heads. To the band's surprise, when they began working on The Amalgamut two years later, they encountered the exact opposite. The band, along with longtime producer Ben Grosse,...
Carlos Mencia "Take a Joke America"
Carlos Mencia
Like many contemporary comedians, Carlos Mencia has a problem with the era of political correctness that dissuades people from making ethnic jokes. "When I was a kid, it was 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,'" he recalls on his first album, Take a Joke America. "Now it's 'sticks and stones may break my bones,...

Tags

add
carlos mencia, disturbed, dj z-trip, facebook, filter, jessica simpson, kiraq, kuwait, myspace, pussycat dolls
Add Tags See All Tags for MySpace, Facebook up music ante
Data Warehouse Clear Gif