Blog Posts by Steve Knopper

In the old days, it was much easier for pop stars to keep up with how
much they were getting paid. Somebody would buy a CD at a Tower Records
for $15 and a few dollars would appear months later on the star's
royalty sheet. Then iTunes took over the record business, and it was
even easier (if not more profitable) - every time somebody bought a
99-cent track, a few pennies went into the artist's bank account.

Those were such simple times. Today, music fans play free music
videos on YouTube, stream songs for free on Spotify, MOG or Rdio,
customize Internet radio stations on Pandora or Slacker and consume
music a zillion different ways. The fractions of pennies artists make
for each of these services are nearly impossible to track - at least for
now. "People like to simplify this and say, 'There's no money in it,'"
says Jeff Price, founder of TuneCore, which charges artists to place
songs directly into iTunes, Spotify and others. "But it's complex, it's
complicated and it's still being

It had been 100 degrees all day when the Flaming Lips prepared to take the stage Sunday evening at Tulsa's Brady Block Party in their home state. When the sun abruptly gave way to rain torrents, and winds pummeled the stage at 70 to 80 miles per hour, the band and its roadies immediately cut off the electricity. A tarp blew off the top of the stage, and bassist Michael Ivins, like everybody else, began to cover his amplifier. Suddenly, the band's 15-foot video screen toppled over the back of the stage, prompting gasps from the audience and pushing Ivins to leap out of the way to avoid a catastrophic injury. (Watch below.)

"We were all on stage thinking, 'What are we actually going to do, here?' It was just pouring down rain," Ivins told Rolling Stone this morning by phone from Oklahoma City. "Then the screen started moving. There wasn't a lot of space between the screen and an eight-foot drop. I basically had to leap over one of the legs [of the screen] to get out of the way. It was

Fortunately, U2 was prepared for the end of the world. "Sounds like fun to me!" Bono told a crowd of 70,000 at Denver's Invesco Field at Mile High, after breaking out, appropriately, "Until the End of the World." The Rapture was no match for opening night on the final leg of U2's 360 Tour - with its massive, metallic, green-and-orange claw structure and tornado-shaped video cylinder suspended above the band - which returned to the U.S. Saturday after a year-long delay. Even two years after the tour's debut, its sensory overload impact remains thrillingly undimmed, with lights everywhere, from LEDs flashing on U2's jackets to the neon-target microphone from which Bono swung during "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" and "With Or Without You."

The two-and-a-half-hour show was delayed gratification for the Denver crowd, which had bought tickets for the concert last summer, before Bono had emergency back surgery and had to postpone the entire last U.S. leg of U2's tour. "Things could

Beyoncé, Mariah Carey, Usher and 50 Cent are facing industry calls to give back the money they earned performing at lavish parties thrown by family members of Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi. "If it were me, it would go to charity," says Buck Williams, agent for R.E.M. and Widespread Panic. Adds David T. Viecelli, agent for Arcade Fire, "Hopefully donate it to a charity that somehow assists some of the people who have suffered at the hands of that regime."

Carey accepted $1 million to perform for Qaddafi's son, Muatassim, Libya's national-security adviser, at a lavish New Year's Eve party on the Caribbean island of St. Barts in 2008; Beyoncé and Usher performed for an undisclosed sum on the island the following year. 50 Cent gave a performance before Muatassim at a 2005 film festival in Venice. Managers for Usher, 50 Cent and Carey declined comment, and Beyoncé's management, run by her father, Mathew Knowles, did not return phone calls. "They've done it for tons of artists," says a

Over the past few years, some of music's biggest names, including Mariah Carey, Usher and Beyoncé, have taken millions of dollars to play private shows for the family of Libya's brutal dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi - a man who this week ordered security forces to open fire on citizens protesting his rule, killing as many as "thousands," according to a UN official. During New Year's Eve events on the Caribbean island of St. Barts in 2009, Carey received $1 million to sing four songs for one of Colonel Qaddafi's sons, according to news reports and music-business sources, while Beyoncé and Usher played for an undisclosed fee the following year.

But now that Qaddafi's security forces have brutally cracked down on protesters throughout Libya, many in the music business are stepping up their public criticisms of the participating stars. "When I saw Beyoncé and Usher and whoever else was out partying with these Libyan criminals ... these are people who have stolen tens of billions of