Coldplay’s Viva la Vida: The new Coldplay track Viva la Vida is simply incredible. If you lost your faith in music, this band just may restore it.

Microsoft May Build a Copyright Cop Into Every Zune: A future update of the software for Microsoft’s portable media player may well include a feature that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on it according to The New York Times. ‘Microsoft, which suffers from its own piracy problems, is sympathetic to Hollywood’s concerns’.

MTV’s New Pitch To Advertisers: Being that traditional media is losing influence and with MTV being no exception to the rule – MTV Networks is pitching a new way of advertising called ‘podbusting‘. Podbusting breaks up commercial pods with content that is almost indistinguishable from the entertainment programming’. The company is promoting podbusting as a way to persuade viewers not to skip over or drift away from the advertising that interrupts the programs. This is all fine and dandy until the viewer realizes he is being sold.

New Music: Check out the band Something To Burn who hails from la-la land. We attended their live show at The Whisky in Los Angeles last month and it was nothing short of bad ass. Regarding their live show, they will throw most acts under the rug. Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland was so convinced of the band that he signed them to his indie label called Soft Drive. We are still not completely sure of the label situation but this is a must see band. Listen to the tracks Stories Better Left Untold, Below, and
Say Goodbye. More information about the band can be found here.

TVT’s Credit Crunch: Here is a list of TVT’s unsecured creditors. You will even find Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger in the list.The indie lable filed chapter 11 several months ago.

Coldplay Reaches 2 Million: Coldplay’s new single ‘Violet Hill’ has been downloaded over 2 million times which was made available only 7 days ago. “A spokesman for the band said demand was “staggering,” adding Violet Hill would have outsold the whole of last week’s top 40 singles four times over”. Listen to the track here, it grows on you with each listen. It definitely has a Floyd vibe. Coldplay is the one of the few bands that broke in the last decade that mean anything.

Buzznet Still Buzzing: Buzznet who just grabbed Stereogum and Idolator are now putting their eggs in the basket with AbsolutePunk. Buzznet is a media network that focuses on music discovery and discussion. Universal Music also recently invested into Buzznet.

The Radio Airwaves: Weezer’s track ‘Pork and Beans‘ is #1 on the Alternative Rock Format while Disturbed’s new single ‘Inside The Fire‘ is #1 on the active rock format.

Recommended Listening: Listen to Broken Sky by Copper. The band is consistently building their base and just finished writing some killer new tracks that could potentially take them to the next level. We will post soon…

KOARs favorite My Favorite Highway will be releasing a new record scheduled for a July release date. We have been pimping this band for a while, and if you’re not familiar with the band, check them out and listen to
Murder On The Radio and They Tried To Kill Chivalry. Truly a cut above the rest!

Signings:The four piece pop punk band, The Years Gone By, has signed to Rise Records.

Universal Republic has signed the Nasvilled based singer/songwriter
Erin McCarley. It also appears that Republic also struck a deal with the band
State of Shock. Their track “Money Honey” was a top 10 single at three formats including Rock, CHR and Hot AC, and is #1 on this weeks Sirius Hits #1 Countdown.

A Change in Direction? Bill Gates, the granddaddy of technology says their will be a massive change in internet technology. Lets hope he is right. “The Internet has been operating now for 10 years,” Gates said. “The second 10 years will be very different.”

New Music = Tips@Kingsofar.com

12,000 of the world’s independent record labels have joined together to create a virtual fifth major.

“80 percent of the world’s music releases come not from the majors but from independent labels. Getting access to this music is a hassle for stores like iTunes and webcasters like Last.fm, since it takes an incredible amount of effort to do thousands of different (and small) deals. It’s not a great situation for the indies, either, which individually don’t possess the clout needed to get the best deals.”

A little over a year ago, the indies launched Merlin, a one stop rights clearinghouse for indie artists. More importantly and according to Ars Technica, “Merlin has announced that it is working on deals with several soon-to-be-launched services, including the highly-anticipated music service from MySpace.” Read the rest here..

NIN Releases Another New Album: Trent Reznor has been on a writing binge lately. Trent announced that he released another album titled ‘The Slip‘ and is giving it away for free. ‘We are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com says Trent’. ‘For those of you interested in physical products, fear not. we plan to make a version of this release available on CD and vinyl in july. details coming soon.

Fueled By Success: The New York Times has a piece titled ‘An Alternative Approach To Marketing Rock Bands‘ which discusses the indie label Fueled By Ramen. The people at the label instill a hard work ethic for the bands they sign. ‘When Mr. Janick signs bands, he tells them how hard they will work, not how rich they will become’. Regardless, hard work and blogging until your fingers fall off doesn’t guarantee success. For instance, “The last album from the Academy Is sold half of what its previous release did, and the new album from Cobra Starship, another of the label’s bands, may not sell 100,000”. It’s all about the songs…

Recommended Listening: Save The Day By Mayday