• Check out this week music releases here.
• Digital sales increasing rapidly.
  “I certainly think that more than half of music revenues will be digital in a relatively short period of time,” Warner Music chairman and chief executive Edgar Bronfman Jr. said during a conference call. “I don’t know whether that’s three years or five years, but it’s coming and it’s coming rapidly.”
• Sirius not solely reliant on Stern (King of All Media)
  “How are we reliant (on Stern)?” Karmazin said at the Reuters Media Summit in New York. “I don’t think we’re reliant in any shape or form. We have 135 channels.”
• Dallas based alternative rock band Kessler have signed to the Your Music America (YMA) label (distributed by ADA); Legal rep: Ben McLane; Mgmt: Albert Smith.
• BBC ‘damaging music industry’- UK
  A stinging attack on the music industry was launched, with the BBC accused of contributing to the mass manufacture of boy and girl bands. Think-tank the Economic Research Council, blames record companies for failing to break UK acts in the highly-prized US market. It says many of the music industry’s problems over recent years, which have seen sliding sales, have been “entirely self inflicted”.

Warner Music home to artists including Madonna and James Blunt, reported a fourth-
quarter profit on a gain from a legal settlement. Revenue fell as album sales declined. New releases from groups including Danity Kane and Mana failed to match last year’s recordings from Blunt and Faith Hill. CEO Edgar Bronfman boosted more profitable digital sales, which almost doubled to 12.2 percent of revenue. Music companies look to sales from downloads, cell phones and online videos to make up for falling CD revenue.

“Revenue was a little lighter than expected,” said Eric Handler, a Lehman Bros. analyst who rates the stock “neutral” and doesn’t own it. “Digital was quite strong — they’re outpacing the market on that,” Handler said. He said CD sales were “quite weak.”

Without the $13 million gain from a lawsuit against online file-sharing service Kazaa, the company lost $1 million

(reporter, Don Jeffrey )