Rubin Joins Social Networking Site: The MOG Music Network is announcing that music producer Rick Rubin will join its board, and will take an active role in the development of MOG. Mog is a social networking site where users can set up personal pages with their musical interests.

Learn From The Best: Motley Crue and Guitar Center have teamed up to present giving one unknown band a chance to get signed on Eleven Seven Music, a management deal with 10th Street, and the opening slot on the next Motley Crue tour. Click here for more info.

Signings: Pop punk band The Friday Night Boys have signed to Fueled By Ramen. Check them out in our January Recommended Listening Column.

New Stream: The new Staind record can be streamed here. The band has had an impressive career selling over 15 million albums worldwide. The new record ‘Illusion Of Progress’ will be released August 19.

YouTube Makes Changes To Audio Compression: Youtube sound quality is horrific and thankfully they are making changes. “Recent modifications have ensured that every video uploaded to YouTube retains its original audio levels,” a Google spokesperson told Wired this week.

Pop rock band Shorelines End is from Dallas, Texas. For fans of Switchfoot, Lifehouse, and Vertical Horizon. The band is set to record more songs in late August. Our favorite tracks include Surface and More Then You Know.

Next Shows:

Aug 15 The Warehouse    Abilene, Texas
Aug 17 Rock For Caitlan Greenville, Texas
Aug 17 Narah Hookah    Arlington, Texas

Rolling Stone Mag Shrinks In Size: Rolling Stone Mag is going through a rough period. Rolling Stone is one of the mags that stood out in newstands because of its size, but on Oct. 30 the mag will adopt the standard size used by all but a few magazines. Rolling Stone has paid circulation in the United States of more than 1.4 million, the highest in its history, but its single-copy sales have fallen from 189,000 in 1999, to 132,000 last year. “Along with the change in size, Rolling Stone will switch to heavier, glossy paper and sleeker page designs, and it will be glued rather than stapled — “perfect bound” instead of “saddle stitched,” in magazine lingo — giving it a flat spine rather than a tapered edge.”

Say No To iTunes? We have been saying that Kid Rocks latest sales numbers is the summer story. The success of Kid Rock’s summer hit ‘All Summer Long’ are convincing some music execs to change promotion strategy. It’s definitely interesting that he’s the only artist that’s not available on iTunes with a monster hit right now, and we’re seeing that kind of a growth,” says Livia Tortella, general manager of Atlantic, who acknowledges that the company is considering keeping other artists’ singles off iTunes in hopes of building album sales. “It’s certainly spurring a lot of debate in our company.”

Kid Rock says,”It’s funny, I have a shitload of stock in Apple — I think it’s one of the greatest companies in America,” he says. “But it’s just not very American to me when Apple tells you how they want to sell your product and tell you what it’s worth.”

Recommended Listening: Listen to Johnny Boy and New Day by
Deep Insight. The band hails from Finland and has self released two full length albums. In the summer 2005 the band´s single Hurricane Season (our favorite) reached number one position in the Finnish official top ten and stayed on the list over two months. The third album ‘One Minute Too Late’ was released in Finland in 2006, and the single New Day was went straight to number #1. The band is currently working on a new album.

The Disney Machine: Another teen queen could be following in the footsteps of Miley and the Jonas Brothers. Her name is Demo Lovato, she will soon be starring in a new Disney Channel Original Series called Welcome to Mollywood that begins production in September 2008 and she is currently on tour with the Jonas Brothers.

Katy Perry Ties Beatle Record: Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” has tied the Beatles “I Want To Hold Your Hand” to become the longest-running No. 1 in the rock era for the singer’s Capitol Records label. What does this really mean? Absolutely nothing.

Brian Eno and David Byrne: The Times Online sits down with ‘left of center’ producer Brian Eno who has worked with me bands like Radiohead, U2, and Coldplay. Eno is reuniting with David Byrne of Talking Heads and he cannot share The Times with clips of music fearing it could be leaked on the internet and what he calls ‘Corporate American paranoia’. Eno says on the making of the Byrne record, “We wanted to paint a picture of the human trying to survive in an increasingly digital world.” Eno says he hardly goes into record shops and primarily buys music on iTunes.

“In the past, I might have undertaken all kinds of expensive marketing plans to prepare for a record release. It’s going to be interesting to see if audiences find out about this record solely through internet word-of-mouth.”

Sexy: Rock band Trapt started their own social networking site called www.onlythroughthepain.com, and it’s much sexier than myspace. Of course social networking sites like this are better suitable for bands with a catalog than new artists with limited content. The band is expected to debut in the Billboard top 10 this week. Check out the track Contagious.

Warner Wants More Cash In video Game Deals: Warner CEO, Edgar Bronfman wants a bigger payout around the popular video games like “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band. Bronfman yesterday threatened to stop issuing song licenses for games that allow users to pretend to be rock stars if the revenue-sharing model for the games doesn’t improve for the music business according to the New York Post. Who can blame him? They own the content.

New Stream: The hugely popular boyband Jonas Brothers are streaming their new album here. We won’t even click on our own link – we still have music morals.

Floyd To Set Sail On Sea: Our KOAR tech is a genius. Aside from fixing our bugs that inflict our website from time to time, Veken Gueyikian owns Kiqstart Music, an entertainment company based in NYC whose clients include the number one Pink Floyd tribute band Think Floyd USA. The band has even caught the eyes of the Floyd members themselves as they have performed before Roger Waters at Milwaukee’s Summerfest and have received personal acclaim from David Gilmour himself. The band will host the first Pink Floyd themed cruise aboard a Carnival Cruise Ship to the Bahamas titled ‘Great Gig in the Sea”. Fans can register at GreatGigintheSea.com. Were going for sure!

This Week Sales: Kid Rock’s album ‘Rock n Roll Jesus’ continues to sell like hot cakes with another 95k copies sold this week. He won’t offer his album on iTunes and his fans don’t care. Rock act Seether went GOLD with their album ‘Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces’. Madonna’s ‘Hard Candy’ continues to disappoint quickly falling off the charts, can we finally say the Timbaland produced dance beats are dead? I think so.

New Music: Unknown Grand Rapids rock act Pop Evil is charting on the active rock charts. The band will release their debut via independent label, Pazzo Music.

Are The Thieves Relocating To Hollywood? In France, illegally-downloaded films outpaced ticket sales in May, says digital music news. Anti-piracy group ALPA noted that 13.5 million films were illegally downloaded in May, a massive figure. “This is a major phenomenon that could endanger the cinema and audiovisual industry,” ALPA representative Frederic Delacroix warned.

Signings: The Mission District signed with Relentless Records in the UK and EMI in Canada. Artist Vs. Poet have signed to Fearless Records.

We Want Truthful Meaningful Lyrics: 90 percent of music fans feel that lyrics provide a deeper appreciation of music, though 50 percent feel that less lyrics are easily accessible than five years ago says the consortium via digital music news. In fact, “consumers want more lyrics layered into their music-related purchases, according to a recent survey.” “The artists who write lyrics have something to say and our survey shows that audiences want to be able to read and appreciate them properly,” said campaign director Honor Wilson-Fletcher.”

What artists today have something to say? we would love to hear it. Tips@kingsofar.com