Kate Tucker & the Sons of Sweden hail from the Northwest corner of Seattle Washington amidst the fisherman and sailors of Ballard. For fans of Mazzy Star, Portishead, and Blonde. Sound Magazine named them as one of 10 bands to watch in 2008. Our favorite track is Faster Than Cars Drive.

Check them out at The Annex (NYC) on October 26.

One Down, Dozens More to Go: This week KOAR has been talking about the potential collapse of ad supported models. Music social network Imeem is laying off 25% of its employees and it’s hired investment banker Montgomery to put itself up for sale. Imeem allows streaming and supposably has 30 million users. Yahoo! which relies on advertising for most of its profits plans to fire at least 1,500 workers after a 64 percent drop in its third-quarter profit.

Hells Bells Are Ringing: AC/DC’s new album ‘Black Ice’ which is sold exclusively though Wal-Mart is expected to sell 800k+ copies its first week. This is huge!

Unsigned Omaha rock band Emphatic has been charting for 10 weeks on Billboards West North Central Chart. Check out the track Goodbye Girl.

Ticketmaster will take over Irving Azoff’s music management company and place Azoff as CEO of Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster will change its name to Ticketmaster Entertainment and will become a live entertainment and marketing company. Front Line Management houses artists such as the Eagles, Jimmy Buffett, Neil Diamond, Van Halen, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks, Aerosmith, Steely Dan, Chicago, Journey and Guns N’ Roses.

New Stream: Well it’s about time! Here is a new song from the forthcoming Guns N Roses album ‘Chinese Democracy’. We need to give it a couple of listens…

Ad Supported Companies: In yesterdays post “Lala: A Music Revolution“, we discussed that advertising based sites want to give away music in return for ‘eyeballs’, yet the music business continues to shrink and the advertising market is growing larger. Of course it’s only time when the ad supported model collapses. Yahoo! which relies on advertising for most of its profits plans to fire at least 1,500 workers after a 64 percent drop in its third-quarter profit. What will Myspace look like in the future?

Canada’s unsigned Female band Scarlet Sins has been placed on the Official entry ballot for the 2009 Grammy Awards for Best Rock Album, Best Hard Rock Performance, and Best Rock Song. The band recorded their debut self-titled album with producer/engineer Richard Chycki who has worked with Rush, Aerosmith and Simple Plan. “Anyone that hears the Sins CD can’t believe it’s a bunch of girls,” says Bravewords and Bloody Knuckles writer Carl Begai.

A Lean Music Biz? Coolfer spotted a comment on Twitter, “Seriously shrunken swag at convention. CMJ bag nearly empty and few exhibitors. Lean music biz indeed.

Game Wars: CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr. said he’ll yank music from Guitar Hero if Activision doesn’t agree to pay more for the label’s songs used in the game. Activision CEO Robert Kotick said the labels should feel priviliged that games like Guitar Hero are providing songs exposure that lead into sales spikes. Kotick says,”The bulk of our consumers will tell you they’re not purchasing the products based on the songs that are included, they’re purchasing based on how fun the songs are to play when they’re playing them.” Should labels should pay developers for their music’s inclusion in the games?

The Campaign, a four piece act from Texas recently released a 4 song EP. “We try to be showmen,” said the 22-year-old Crews, a Harlingen native and ex-Austin scenester. “We have three goals: We want to sound as good as we can, we want to act as ridiculous as we can, and we want the audience to leave feeling happy.” “We can all sing,” Crews said. “[Wood] is the lead, definitely, but the three-part harmonies are a centerpiece of our sound. As far as we’re concerned, harmonies are what separate the men from the boys in any band that cares about good music.” Fans of the Fray and Counting Crows may find some gems in The Campaign. Our favorites are The Easy Way and Catch My Life.

Lala, a digital music service, has a new approach to selling music. Consumers will a pay a dime to stream a song, then if you decide buy the song, it will cost .79 cents ( or 89 cents if you never paid dime to stream the song).

Lala is forgoing advertising entirely and is attempting to make money by selling music only. The CEO of Lala criticizes Myspace and Imeem and other sites that force advertising on users which offers a poor listening experience.

To illustrate, advertising based sites want to give away music in return for ‘eyeballs’, yet the music business continues to shrink and the advertising market is growing larger. These ad supported sites are not financial winners, so it’s just a matter of time when this model collapses and companies stop spending money on advertising. I seriously wonder how these ad supported sites (Myspace) will evolve in the future.

No one really knows if Lala’s new approach will connect to consumers. For instance, why pay 10 cents for a stream when one can pony up $10-15 a month for Rhapsody that allows users to stream and unlimited amount of music? Also, how do artists get paid, do they at least make a penny?

Also, I’m not sure if the regular consumer will grasp the concept of paying for a stream. It seems iTunes and Amazon’s ‘stream, click and buy approach’ is the most conventional. At least Lala threw away the ad supported model. As Business Week says, Lala is trying an approach that’s all about selling music. Not iPods, and not ads. Just music.