XM Satellite Close To 10 Million Subscribers: XM Satellite Radio says it ended the second quarter with 9.7 million subscribers, up 17 percent from a year ago.

Do We Need Another indie Band?: Read the article that discusses the current state of the indie world.

“These days the term ‘indie’ is little more than a generic sonic description for any band that plays guitars and probably wears skinny ties, skinny jeans, and skinny cardigans”

“John Niven was an indie fan in the 1980s, an A&R man in the Britpopping 1990s, and is now the author of Kill Your Friends, a sadistic satire of the record industry of which he was once an enthusiastic member. “I was in Gap a few weeks ago and there was some sort of generic indie music playing,” he says. “I was with a friend who’s a promoter and a bit younger than me. After about three or four tracks I asked him: ‘Whose LP is this?’ And he said, ‘No, it’s a compilation.’ Every track sounded identical. The guitars, the production; all these bands sound like they’re made in the same studio with the same producer. It’s such a ball-less, soulless, generic whitewashed indie sound. You could probably take a member from each band and throw them together in a new group and no one would be able to tell the difference. They’re completely interchangeable. Scouting for Girls are like the sound of Satan’s scrotum emptying. They’re abysmal.”

Have you listened to the music that is being spun in Starbucks? This is what Jon Niven is talking about.

Making Noise On YouTube: Boyce Avenue is pop rock band based out a Florida that built up their following by covering songs by Coldplay and Rihanna and posting clips on Youtube. Boyce Avenue has seven of the top 25 songs on the TuneCore song chart. In fact, the band covered the Jordan Sparks track Tattoo which landed on Sparks myspace page after she found the song on Youtube. Listen to the track Not Enough.

Kid Rock Will Take Record Sales Over iTunes: Kid Rock responds to the lefsetz emailer with this statement…

“Why sell a million downloads (at a dickweed penny rate) that u say equals a 100,000 records when I’m selling well over a hundrend thousand records every 2 weeks? And I’m helping my heros sell records too???? Sounds like I’m winning, if this were the olympics I would definatley be receiving the gold medal, but that’s a lot like itunes, a lot of glory, no money!!!!

i only wanna sell my album. i made a great album. itunes said “no”, i dont like being told “no”. thier just as guilty. ps, i have a ton of apple stock, pretty ironic eh? lol