Selling Out: Once upon a time artists refuse to sellout or refused to sacrifice his morals, values or people close to him purely for personal gain. Careers were built by saying NO, not YES to things. Indie rockers prided themselves by railing against the corporate machine. Today, no such thing exists. It’s impossible to sellout. Because of illegal downloading, indie rock group Band of Horses licensed a song for a Wal-Mart online campaign only to reverse their decision after they experienced a fan backlash.

Pop stars now embrace “Nascar-style,” logo-splattering sponsorships and must get used to promoting their favorite boxer briefs to help make up for the industry’s shortfall says Advertising Age. “For new artists, it’s become nearly impossible to develop a major following without a branded tie-in. Many of the major breakout music stars of the past year, from Paramore to Sara Bareilles to Feist, have benefited from corporate tie-ins or licensing of their songs via ads. “All brands have become music-promotion houses,”
Mr. McQuivey said.

Spitzer Has 48 Hours to Leave Town: If music biz nemesis Gov. Eliot Spitzer who cracked down on record labels opts to roll the dice and not resign, state Republican leadership will force him to go all-in and call for his impeachment from office, according to a state Assemblyman. The clock is ticking, resign now!

Universal Holds Up Myspace Deal: CEO of Universal, Doug Morris always knows how to crash a party, but sometimes that’s a good thing. MySpace has accelerated discussions with the major music labels about creating an online music service, but Universal Music is holding out, which is insisting that MySpace first resolve a lawsuit that it filed against the site over alleged copyright violation says Financial Times. “One person familiar with the talks said that MySpace was considering launching the service without Universal”.

FCC Chairman Tips Hand On Comcast’s Net Neutrality: FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said that he may find Comcast guilty of violating the agency’s network neutrality principles. Net Neutrality is a principle that says a broadband network must not restrict content, sites, or platforms and where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams would be considered neutral by most observers.

Martin said that he found it troubling that Comcast had initially denied it was slowing or blocking its broadband Internet customers’ access to a file- sharing peer-to-peer software application.

Both myself and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin are both deeply troubled. We both feel a principle has been violated, except he is talking about net neutrality and I’m talking about illegal filesharing. So where does the rubber meet the road? How can we be friends? He doesn’t want to discriminate against filesharing sites and I don’t want artists’ discriminated against. Maybe Kevin Martin can reach in his deep pockets and pay for the loss of music sales.

Cheapskate: Apple paid a total of $80,000 for master and sync rights for Feist’s “1234” and another 80,000 for Ms. Naim’s song. Some say the exposure is well worth the lower fees.

An ear attuned to sounds of greatness: “In the morning of last month’s Grammy Awards, Tom Whalley, chief executive of Warner Brothers Records, seemed to have everything going his way. Warner Brothers had just finished 2007 in first place in the US market, the second time it had done so in the last three years. Its holiday album, Josh Groban’s Noël, was still topping the charts long after the Christmas lights had come down”. “Yet Mr Whalley, dressed in jeans and a fitted blazer, was hardly celebrating. Such is the mood of record mogul these days.” Check out the full article written by Joshua Chaffin, it’s a must read.

New Music: Who wants to weed through 100,000 new record releases and 200 million videos on Youtube? You don’t, but we will. With that said, check out the video and song titled ‘Morphine‘ from Tupelo Honey which is currently making its rounds at Canadian rock radio. The vocalist belts like Chris Cornell, although his voice is a bit thinner…. That’s ok, he pulls it off nicely. What the heck is Tupelo Honey? Tupelo Honey is an album by singer-songwriter Van Morrison, released in 1971. For more information contact here.

Recommened Listening: New Low by Middle Class Rut. Sounds like Refused and Jane’s Addiction. The band’s first major tour was in Fall 2007 with Receiving End Of Sirens and Envy On The Coast. Sacramento’s Live 105 & KWOD have been playing “New Low”.