The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced on Thursday that they will be including on-demand audio and/or video song streams to it’s gold & platinum certification program. With the launch of this new rule, the RIAA announced that “Bad Romance” has now reached Diamond certification status (10x platinum). Other titles that earned a new certification include Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”, Kanye West’s “Stronger”, Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games” and Calvin Harris and Rihanna’s “We Found Love”.

Comedy supergroup, The Lonely Island announced this week that their 2011 collaboration with Lady Gaga, titled “3-Way (The Golden Rule)” will be featured on the group’s upcoming LP, due out June 11th.

The viral track which also includes frequent Lonely Island collaborator, Justin Timberlake, originally made it’s debut in May 2011, when Gaga was a musical guest on Saturday Night Live.

Our friend, Emil had the opportunity to attended Richard Jackson’s (Gaga’s choreographer) Dance Down class in Houston a couple weeks back, and sent us the details about the class and little bit of what went on during the Q&A session afterwards. Check it out:

When the class started, Richy gave a little pep talk, followed by the chorus choreography to “Telephone” with Asiel and Montana. After that, we spent about two hours learning a 1.5 min routine to a “Judas/Schieße”. It was hard as hell, even just watching them go through it had me out of breath.

Afterwards, Richy spoke about Gaga’s journey for about 10 minutes. One of the stories he told was how when Gaga first showed up to rehearsals in 2008, he laughed at her and told her the industry was going to have a real problem with her (in a good way!).

Finally, the dancers sat us down and opened the floor up to questions. Some boring questions were asked at first, but things got interesting when somebody asked Richy and the dancers if they had heard ARTPOP, or if they had started choreographing and working with Gaga at all. Richy smiled and said they had been working on a few things, but that it was secret and we would find out “sooner than you think.”

Richard swiftly moved onto the next question, which was if he was still friends with Laurieann Gibson, or Boomkack, as we’ve all grown to know her as. The entire room, including Richy and the dancers, laughed and he finally said that we all probably knew the answer to that already.

Richy also mentioned that the Born This Way Ball is about Gaga’s life before The Fame. We asked if that meant ARTPOP was her first album and he smiled and proceeded to the next question. We knew he wasn’t able to talk much about ARTPOP, so we asked him about the video of Gaga allegedly tearing her hip while performing “Scheiße” in Montreal, the week the tour was postponed and eventually canceled. He explained that over time, muscles don’t cooperate the way we want them to and that’s what happened with Gaga. He said that fans were saying that she tore her hip in that performance, but that wasn’t the case at all. He said as the tour progressed, the existing injury got worse and she was in a lot of pain, which forced Gaga to cancel “everything.”

After the open floor questions ended, everybody else took photos, while I spoke to Montana and Asiel about if they have normal lives until Gaga decides to call them up to fly out and work on ARTPOP. They simply looked at each other and smiled.

“Next question!”

Richard Jackson’s Dance Down has two more stops left: one in Washington, D.C. on June 1st and the final date in Seattle on May 4th. Ticket and registration info can be found at richysquirrel.com/tour.

Photos and text Courtesy of Emil Jraissati.

While on her sold out Born This Way Ball tour, Lady Gaga told monsters backstage that she was looking for female artists to feature on her upcoming album, ARTPOP. At the time, Gaga only had two songs with rapper Azealia Banks, but a series of recent and unfortunate events have led us fans to believe that the “Esta Noche” songstress will no longer have any involvement on the highly anticipated LP.

Which brings us to this post. Word broke last week that Gaga and Britney Spears have been working on their respective projects at the same recording studio in California, which left us buzzing. Fans have been begging for a track between these two ever since their collaboration for “Telephone” fell through in 2009. The conversation blew up once again when photos surfaced Tuesday afternoon of Britney leaving the same recording studio Gaga was seen at all last week.

Britney and Gaga have a short (but sporadically sweet) history together together dating back to 2008, when Gaga wrote and provided backing vocals on “Quicksand,” featured on Britney’s comeback album Circus.

The two reportedly finally met for the first time in 2010, when Britney attended Gaga’s Los Angeles concert as part of the Monster Ball Tour. One year later, in Atlantic City, Gaga was spotted at Britney’s Femme Fatale Tour. Britney has stated that she finds Gaga to be an interesting artist, while it’s no secret that Britney is one of the only contemporary pop stars (next to Beyoncé) that you will consistently see Lady Gaga praising. Most recently at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Gaga presented Britney with the Video Vanguard Award. The two almost locked lips in a slightly awkward moment which inevitably stole the show.

With all this history, we’ve have been wondering: How come a proper collaboration hasn’t happened yet?

Do you guys think the two should finally release some musical tension and finally collaborate, or do you think they should each just stay on their own records? Let us know on Twitter!

Update: Atom Factory have confirmed that they are not involved with Spacebar.

Lady Gaga and other artists, including Kanye West and John legend have all signed up to stream live shows via Spacebar this year. Spacebar is an app created by Gregory Miller, one of the co-founders of Google.org. The app’s mission is to “help musicians broadcast their live performances to the world and allow fans to support the artists they love in an inexpensive and convenient way.”

Here are some excerpts about the app via TechCrunch:

“I wish I could have gone to that concert” is a common refrain amongst music fans. Spacebar can’t teleport you to the venue, but it can stream the audio to your mobile device so you can listen along for a dollar or two. Launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt NY with 15 local clubs and musicians like Kanye West on board, Spacebar’s app could give bands a new revenue stream they desperately need.

With music so easy to pirate or access for free, performers are having trouble selling it. That means little bands have trouble paying rent while more popular musicians have to turn to merchandise or licensing their songs for ads to really make it big.

The idea with Spacebar is to let artists earn more money off of what they’re already doing — playing concerts. Musicians sign up with Spacebar’s iOS app, connect their mobile device to the soundboard at their concert, and stream the show in real-time to their fans. They can give the show away for free, or offer free five-minute previews before asking listeners to pay one or a few dollars. Spacebar has a partnership with Lady Gaga’s management label, and Kanye West and John Legend are signed up to stream shows this year as well. Their clout could help Spacebar surpass more established but clumsier competitors.

Artists can also stream straight from the studio, their tour bus, a garage, or a house party to up their cut. Fans can also tip the band some extra digital cash if they’re really impressed with the sound. Plus, Spacebar hooks up artists with data about who streamed their shows. That means artists could book a show in some little town if they found out lots of people were streaming them from there.

You might wonder why there’s no video in Spacebar. Well, that would require videographers, cameras, and editors that might cost more money than they’d earn. Plus, Miller tells me “we’re using some of the wide pipes on the Internet [that are designed to support video] to up the audio quality. We’re streaming at 256kbs and 328kbs.” Since there’s no recordings or additional distribution, and artists opt in, Spacebar doesn’t need any expensive music licenses.

The full article is available to read over at TechCrunch!