Today’s culture hasn’t produced as many great artists as it has in the past. Years ago, we couldn’t get to the stores fast enough to get the newest recordings by MANY competitive artists. Who’s on top of the charts now? No one knows. In reality, no one is on top of the charts, they are all in the middle of mediocrity. When great songs are delivered to us in this era, we must cling to it and cherish it.

Great songs simply cannot be ignored, and a great album cannot be ignored. Thriving Ivory has both. Their reflective songwriting and distinct soothing vocals puts them in between Coldplay and U2. Things took off when Music Director Aaron Axelsen of influential San Francisco rock station KITS Live 105 put the track “Angels on the Moon” into full rotation. Check out the official video for ‘Angels on the Moon‘ and listen to Runaway.

“You’re used to paying extra if you use up your cell phone minutes, but will you be willing to pay extra if your home computer goes over its Internet allowance?”

Since internet usage is uneven among subscribers, Time Warner Cable will have monthly allowances for the amount of data users upload and download. Those who go over the limit will be charged $1 per gigabyte. Subscribers in Beaumont, Texas will be the first in the customer trial.

Users who who download movies or TV shows will be the most concerned of metered internet use. A standard-definition movie can take up 1.5 gigabytes, and a high-definition movie can be 6 to 8 gigabytes.

The truth is metered usage is common overseas and someone needs to finance the infrastructure. The metered model is making a comeback because of consumption. This will slowly change the perception of the internet. One may ask himself, “Is the internet a privilege”?

Internet usage is predicted to skyrocket within the next decade and keeping internet usage down by charging more makes sense.

Major CD Distributor Calls It Quits: Major music distributor Handleman Corp. has announced that it is exiting the music business. “The Wal-Mart chain has been Handleman’s biggest CD customer. Handleman president/CEO Albert A. Koch said, “CD music sales have been declining at double-digit rates for several years, both industry wide and at our customers’ stores, resulting in a sharp drop-off in our business.”Unfortunately, even the significant steps we’ve taken over the past two years to reduce our costs have not enabled the company to return to profitability.”

Recommended Listening: Electric Choir by The Hoodies. The band just finished new recordings with producer Mark Trombino (Jimmy Eat World).

Dispute Between Prince and Radiohead? Prince covered Radiohead’s “Creep” at Coachella. Ok? So big deal. Radiohead singer Thom Yorke said he heard about Prince’s performance from a text message and thought it was “hilarious.” Fans went to YouTube to view the live performance of ‘Creep’ performed by the little prince only to find the video was pulled due to a copyright violation. According to news outlets, Prince blocked the video. Whatever…

War on Piracy: “Last week TorrentFreak reported that Cleveland Police had arrested a user of OiNK, who was questioned and later released on police bail”. Oink which was an illegal site, was shut down last October, and was the biggest source for pre-releases.

Interview: Edgar Bronfman CEO of Warner Music Group talks to Chrystia Freeland, US Managing Editor of Financial Times.

Edgar says digital sales are still narrowly focused on ringtones and iTunes but it will eventually grow rapidly and expand beyond those platforms. Edgar doesn’t believe uniform pricing is appropriate for artists. When will the music industry return to growth? (He says) no one knows..

The transformative surge of the internet has every business scratching its head. The general criticism of the music biz is it has been to slow to adapt to technology.

Edgar says even if we were the most ‘forward thinking’ people, no one has shown him yet what we (record industry) could have done. No one showed him a business model that worked that he failed to adapt.

Edgar says once the mp3 file became transferable across every computer in the world there was no technological business model to take advantage of that. We certainly agree to that..

The Bottom Line: When will the music biz return to growth? when we have a resurgence of new interesting artists that will offer a full body of work.

MTV – A New Reality Show: MTV has teamed up with 50 Cent to search for the nation’s next street-smart business mogul. Now that’s original…

Is Warner Excited For the New Metallica Album? ‘Warner Music Group Corp.’s shareholders must be happy to see that Metallica, one of the company’s top-selling acts, is promoting an album that won’t come out for at least four months. The feeling may not last too long’. (Bloomberg)

Metallica who has sold 100+ million albums announced they are writing and recording its new studio album due in fall. This new record fulfills the Warner Contract. Warner has put out its albums since 1984. Some say Metallica’s future with Warner may be short-lived as the band already sells recordings over the internet. Could Metallica walk in the same path as NIN and Radiohead?

Recommended Listening….

Keep The Mood By Empires

Right Time By Negative Space