• Hardcore metal act The Warriors signed with Victory Records. (Decoy)
• North Carolina based hardcore metal band Bloodjinn have signed to Pluto Records (distributed by East West/Warner); Legal rep is Ben McLane, Esq.
• The Wall Street Journal drama critic, Terry Teachout, calls out Doug Morris, CEO, Universal Music Group, for short sighted paranoia when he claimed YouTube video-sharing Web site “owes his conglomerate ‘tens of millions of dollars’ for allowing copyrighted music videos to be posted without permission.”
  Teachout backs up his dissing of Universal Music, by proclaiming Warner Music, “Universal’s smarter competitorâ€? because it was able to come to terms on a future “dealâ€? with YouTube. Teachout believes he has come up with a better business model: “Disseminating high-culture TV and radio programming for free via the Webâ€? because it is “among the simplest and most cost-effective ways to expand the audience for the fine arts.â€?
• Mindless violence for profit
  DVD Series ‘Ghetto Fights 2’ which features cameos by hip-hop artists 50 Cent and Method Man deliver the horrors of the streets showcasing pimp beatings, gang warfare, backyard brawls and female slug-outs caught on tape.

“I watch ‘Ghetto Brawls’ when I’m driving,” Method Man told GQ Magazine last summer when asked about his favorite viewing while in the car. “It’s a DVD of people just having fights in the hood.”

Scenes include A shoeless, elderly drunk who is tormented by a group of thugs who laugh hysterically as they douse his head with antifreeze, drop his personal belongings into a storm sewer and knock him to his knees with a milk crate. In another scene, a young man is dragged from his parked car and beaten repeatedly outside a liquor store; his head stomped into the pavement until he loses consciousness. One of his attackers steals cash from his pocket as he lies lifeless in a parking lot.

Valerie Smith, a Toronto-based anti-violence crusader “For someone like Universal to be peddling this, that’s outrageous,” she said. “If you take the footage of the homeless person, that’s a crime. That’s assault. And this is most definitely going to encourage kids to videotape stuff like this and submit it.” “It’s like we’ve gone back to the gladiator age and we’re at the coliseum. We’re supposed to be becoming more civilized. Instead we’re kind of rocketing backward.”

Universal Music Canada and its partner, Navarre Canada, distribute Ghetto Fights and Wildest Street Brawls in this country.

• The new Killers record “Sam’s Town” is getting a beat down from critics. The once beloved critic band seems to be the most hated now.Â