Training notes: Boskovic making strides

RELIEF FROM THE HEAT

D.C. United resumed training on Tuesday morning ahead of this weekend's trip to Salt Lake City. Unlike the heat and humidity of last week, the team enjoyed the sunny 75-degree weather in Washington.

"It's a lot easier to play in this [weather] than it is the heat and humidity," said midfielder Chris Pontius.

Source: http://feeds.dcunited.com/~r/DCUnited/all/~3/qXJwST7JJGo/training-notes-boskovic-making-strides

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Lady Gaga's Born This Way Holds On To #1 Billboard Spot

BTW sales drop 84 percent, while Death Cab for Cutie debut at #3 with Codes and Keys.
By Gil Kaufman


Lady Gaga
Photo: Credit KCSPresse / Splash News

What a difference a week — and a price higher than 99 cents — makes. While Lady Gaga will hold on to the #1 spot on the Billboard 200 albums chart this week, sales for Born This Way were down a whopping 84 percent in its second go-round, according to figures provided by Nielsen SoundScan, plummeting from more than 1.1 million to just over 174,000. That put Mother Monster within sight of the 1.3 million mark, while the unstoppable Adele held the #2 spot with 21, which moved another 121,000 to push over the 2 million mark.

There are plenty of other new faces in the top 10, with Death Cab for Cutie crashing in at #3 with Codes and Keys (102,000), Eddie Vedder just behind with his sedate solo effort Ukulele Songs (71,000) and Kentucky rockers My Morning Jacket notching their highest debut yet at #5 with Circuital (55,000). The other newbie in the mix is Flogging Molly's Speed of Darkness, which lands at #9 thanks to sales of 25,000.

The rest of the top 10: Brad Paisley's This Is Country Music (#6, 53,000), NOW 38 (#7, 39,000), Jason Aldean's My Kinda Party (#8, 33,000) and "Glee": The Music, Volume 6 (#10, 25,000).

A number of hyped albums suffer double-digit dips including the self-titled boy band supergroup's NKOTBSB (down 15 spots and 63 percent, #22), the Beastie Boys' Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 (down 12 spots and 29 percent) and Lonely Island's Turtleneck & Chain (down 14 spots and 30 percent).

Gaga couldn't knock Adele off the top of the iTunes singles and albums charts, with 21 holding the top spot above Born This Way, followed by Death Cab, Vedder, My Morning Jacket, Paisley, Mumford & Sons' Sigh No More, "American Idol" champ Scotty McCreery's season 10 digital highlights album, buzz band Foster the People's Torches and Flogging Molly.

While Gaga has already released a blizzard of singles to date, Adele's first, and so far only, single, "Rolling in the Deep," continues to sit atop the iTunes singles tally, holding off Pitbull's "Give Me Everything," Gaga's "The Edge of Glory," LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem" and Lil Wayne's "How to Love." Another Young Money member, Nicki Minaj, is in the #6 slot with "Super Bass," outpacing Bruno Mars' "The Lazy Song," DJ Khaled's "I'm the One," Jennifer Lopez's "On the Floor" and Lupe Fiasco's "The Show Goes On."

Things are likely to stay static at the top next week as the major new releases include albums from Britain's Arctic Monkeys, country singer Ronnie Dunn and underground rapper Tech N9ne.

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1665374/lady-gaga-born-this-way-billboard.jhtml

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Coldplay, Led Zeppelin Album Covers Featured On New British Stamps

Album art from Pink Floyd, Blur and David Bowie also included.
By James Montgomery


Coldplay's new British stamps
Photo: Royal Mail

On Thursday (January 7), the U.K.'s Royal Mail unveiled a series of 10 new stamps, honoring the most iconic album covers of the past 40 years.

The albums featured in the new series are the Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed, Led Zeppelin's IV, David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, The Clash's London Calling, New Order's Power, Corruption and Lies, Primal Scream's Screamadelica, Pink Floyd's The Division Bell, Blur's Parklife and — the most recent album on to make the cut — Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head.

Meant to honor "the most potent graphic images of modern times, many of which have provided a visual soundtrack to people's lives," the series is the end result of a lengthy research process by the Royal Mail, who looked through thousands of album covers by British artists before deciding on the final list. And, during a Wednesday night BBC Radio broadcast, it was revealed that the queen herself actually approved each design.

Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page — who helped design the cover for IV — was on hand to celebrate the release of the stamps and recalled the mysterious nature of the album's iconic imagery.

"Almost 40 years after the album came out, nobody knows the old man who featured on the cover, nor the artist who painted him," he said. "That sort of sums up what we wanted to achieve with the album cover, which has remained both anonymous and enigmatic at the same time."

Of course, any great honor is befitting of an equally great contest, so, on the same day the stamps were made available to the general public, Coldplay decided to give one of their Rush of Blood stamps away. In a message on their official site, the band held a contest to send one lucky fan "a letter using a Coldplay stamp, postmarked with today's issue date."

"We visited our local post office earlier today and bought some of the Coldplay stamps," the message read. "Very nice they are too."

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1629227/coldplay-led-zeppelin-album-covers-featured-on-new-british-stamps.jhtml

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Justin Bieber: I'm A Country Boy

The newly minted CMT Music Award winner says he shares his mother's love of the country sound.
By Jocelyn Vena


Photo: The Insider

Before he took home the trophy for Collaborative Video of the Year at the CMT Music Awards on Wednesday night, Justin Bieber professed his love for all things country on the red carpet.

"I'm really glad to be here," he told CMT, with the guys of Rascal Flatts by his side. "It's great."

It wasn't just an exciting night for him, but also for Mama Bieber, who happens to be a big country music aficionado. "It's great; it's so many people my mother admires, 'cause she loves country music, and I do too," he continued. "So it's really great to be here with Rascal Flatts."

It was on the set for his winning video, "That Should Be Me," that Bieber first cut his hair. In the end, the sacrifice of his trademark locks seemed worth it.

"Some of the fans liked it; some of the fans didn't. They were just upset he cut it," Bieber joked, nodding to Rascal Flatts' Gary LeVox.

The video for "That Should Be Me," a Never Say Never - The Remixes track (which was a reworked version of the song that first appeared on My World 2.0) is a lo-fi, behind-the-scenes, "making of the video" performance clip. But it was good enough to beat out the likes of country music superstars like Jason Aldean with Kelly Clarkson; Kid Rock featuring Sheryl Crow; Loretta Lynn, Miranda Lambert and Sheryl Crow, as well as Aaron Lewis featuring George Jones and Charlie Daniels.

"First of all, I just want to say how honored I am to be here ... with Rascal Flatts," Bieber said while accepting his first country award. "How amazing are Rascal Flatts, everybody? I want to thank my mom. I want to thank my family. And I want to thank Rascal Flatts for even jumping on the song with me."

Would you like to see Justin Bieber try out other genres of music? Talk about it in the comments!

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Lady Gaga Says Born This Way Is 'Absolutely' Not Worth More Than 99 Cents

'I applaud a company like Amazon for equating the value of digital versus the physical copy,' Gaga tells The Wall Street Journal.
By James Montgomery


Lady Gaga
Photo: Getty Images

Ever since Lady Gaga's Born This Way was released on May 23, much has been made of its pricing and promotion, a multi-tiered plan that included partnerships with everyone from the folks behind "FarmVille" to Best Buy ... and, of course, Amazon.com, which decided to price the album at 99 cents on the day of release to promote its Cloud Drive service (and when the download demand subsequently sank the site, they extended the deal for a second day).

According to some estimates, downloads through Amazon accounted for nearly half of Born This Way's 1.1 million sales — which certainly proved that it worked — but at the same time, it also sparked genuine debate about the inherent worth of an album ... and whether the Amazon model may have fundamentally changed the way new releases are promoted and priced.

So, in a new interview with The Wall Street Journal, Gaga was asked whether she believed that Born This Way was worth more than 99 cents. And her answer was somewhat surprising.

"No. I absolutely do not, especially for MP3s and digital music. It's invisible. It's in space. If anything, I applaud a company like Amazon for equating the value of digital versus the physical copy, and giving the opportunity to everyone to buy music," she said. "It also wasn't really 99 cents, because Amazon paid the difference on all of those purchases as part of their promotional campaign for one of their new services. I think it's amazing and it was a really nice surprise and I felt honored that they chose my record to be part of it."

Amazon would be paying the difference on all those 99-cent purchases to Interscope/ Universal Music Group — a tab that could run as high $3.2 million, according to Billboard.biz — but in the long run, that loss might actually be viewed as a win, since it drove traffic to the site and raised awareness of its fledgling Cloud Drive service. And Gaga is the first to admit that the plan isn't for everyone ... it's up to individual artists (and their labels) to determine a price point. But she's happy with the results this time out.

"I don't know if other artists or other companies would want to adopt the same model," she told the WSJ. "Everyone always has the opportunity to sell their music at any price they want to. This sort of happened this way and it's very exciting."

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1664978/lady-gaga-born-this-way.jhtml

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Andy Najar named Lenkersdorfer Fine Jewelers Man of the Match

Andy Najar was named Lenkersdorfer Fine Jewelers Man of the Match for Matchday 13 of the MLS Regular Season today based on fan voting conducted on dcunited.com. Najar scored his first goal of the season in a 4-2 loss to the San Jose Earthquakes.

BID ON AN AUTOGRAPHED JERSEY

Source: http://feeds.dcunited.com/~r/DCUnited/all/~3/SmQq6wk7VJ0/andy-najar-named-lenkersdorfer-fine-jewelers-man-of-the-match-0

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Michael Jackson Estate Rakes In $310 Million To Date

Singer left behind more than $400 million in debt.


Michael Jackson
Photo: Time Life Pictures/DMI/Time Life Pictures/Getty Im

Between album sales, movie profits, licensing arrangements and lucrative deals for Cirque du Soleil shows, the estate of late King of Pop Michael Jackson has raked in more than $300 million since the singer's shocking death in June 2009.

According to TMZ, legal documents released on Thursday reveal that executors of MJ's estate have managed to make a major dent in the more than $400 million in debt that Jackson owed at the time of his death.

The first accounting from the executors shows that they have already spent around $159 million paying back various debts, income taxes and other expenses, which include providing support for the pop star's mother, Katherine Jackson, as well as his three young children.

"Although there remain unresolved creditor claims, pending litigation and additional challenging business, tax and legal issues, and the estate is not yet in a condition to be closed, the executors have made substantial progress in reducing the estate's debt," the documents state, according to a Reuters report. Two of Jackson's longtime confidants, attorney John Branca and music executive John McClain, were named as administrators in a will sign by the pop icon.

In addition to paying to make "substantial improvements" to the Jackson family's Havenhurst estate in Encino, California, the executors also spent an undetermined amount of money on "last illness and funeral and memorial service expenses." Those costs included a $900,000 payment to the Forest Lawn Memorial cemetery where Jackson is buried and $35,000 on expenses described as "costume for memorial."

TMZ reported that not only did the famously cash-strapped Jackson have more than $400 million in debt, but his estate also owed more than $40 million to concert promoter AEG tied to the scuttled This Is It Tour, for which MJ was rehearsing when he died unexpectedly. They've also paid $27.2 million in taxes and $4 million in mortgage payments on Jackson's properties.

Despite the solid sales of the Michael album and millions of units of the singer's back catalog being sold, as well as the box office of the "This Is It" movie and DVD sales, the estate is not nearly out of the woods. TMZ noted that the administrators have received more than 65 creditors' claims, some of which are subject to "extremely high" interest rates, and there are several outstanding lawsuits against the estate in several countries.

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1658290/michael-jackson-estate.jhtml

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