OiNK Raid Raises The Question: What Risks Are You Really Taking When Downloading Music? Experts say OiNK and other illegal-download site users may not need a lawyer yet, but legal consequences can be quite severe. Read the full article.

Microsoft to Pay $240 Million for Stake in Facebook: Microsoft has won the battle with Google and Yahoo to invest in the social networking upstart Facebook. Microsoft would invest $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook. The investment values the three-year-old Facebook, which will bring in about $150 million in revenue this year, at $15 billion.

According to Hits, Coheed and Cambria’s ‘No World For Tomorrow’ will sell around 60-65k copies in its first week, J Records Say Anything’s ‘In Defense Of The Genre’ could sell around 25-30k and Carrie Underwood will sell 450k.

Knoxville Tennessee rapper Mr. Mack has signed to Universal Republic. (coolfer)

Trent Reznor announced today that he’d be distributing an album by Saul Williams, an outside project via the Internet. Trent says, ‘One thing that IS very different in our situation is that Saul’s not the household name (yet!) that Radiohead is, and that means we need your support on this more than ever. If you like what you hear, spread the word.’

The model is similar to Radiohead, ‘Pay What You Want’.

If you choose to pay for the record, your download will be available in the following formats:

192Kbps MP3
320Kbps MP3
FLAC lossless audio

If you choose not to pay for the record, you will receive it in 192Kbps MP3 format.

All versions include a PDF with artwork and lyrics, and all files are 100% DRM free, and can be played on any device. MP3s are encoded with LAME v3.97 and love.

The Bottom Line: Rather than setting up the record through a middleman, Trent decided to sell the record directly to consumers. Trent is right in the fact that Saul is not a household name and support is needed. Would a middleman be more effective in spreading the word for a lesser known artist and contributing to the bottom line? Time will tell….

Do consumers blame artist for overblown hype leaving them hopeless? Check out this column that discusses instant stars like CMJ acts Black Kids, Vampire Weekend aren’t given the chance to evolve into greater bands.

You can now stream Avenged Sevenfold’s new self-titled and self produced album in its entirety. The album will hit streets next Tuesday.

After listening to Coheed’s latest album, ‘No World For Tomorrow,’ we believe this could put them on the map. Coheed has always been slightly left of mainstream but this time they trimmed the fat and delivered well crafted choruses without abandoning the prog rock. The dreadful rock format needs a boost of creativity and Coheed could be part of the solution of getting consumers excited about rock again. Time will tell….

Radiohead is on the verge of signing a deal to release the CD version of the album in the US with ATO Records, which is headed by Coran Capshaw, Dave Matthews Band’s manager. Major labels including Warner Brothers, Columbia and Starbucks were engaged in a bidding war but the band decided to embrace the indie model. (NYT)

This Week Sales….

Springsteen (77k)
Kid Rock (77k)
Jimmy Eat World (62k)
Santana (56k)
Cobie Caillat (50k)
Foo Fighters (29k)
Thrice (27k)
J Lo (18k)
James Blunt (16k)
Paramore (14k)
Atreyu (5k)

Business Week is getting all text book on us with the column “Leaving Record Labels Behind” Musicians are looking for an alternative, Their managers may be the answer…They tell us to keep an eye on the relationship between a band and its management. Business Week cites Madonna and Radiohead as indicators of a possible future trend.

The Bottom Line: Lets stop the madness. Madonna is living in the old system but pretending to live in the new system. She is use to big cash advances and wont have it any other way. If Toys ‘R’ Us would have guaranteed Madonna a 200 million dollar advance we would be reading a press release the next day that may have looked liked this..

Who knows how my albums will be distributed in the future? That’s what’s exciting about this Toys ‘R’ Us deal…everything is possible. Toys ‘R’ Us has offered me a true partnership and after 25 years in the business, I feel that I deserve that.” – Madonna

Crimes that have crippled the music industry are now be taken serious by authories. Hundreds of illegal sites could be threatened with the ‘Global antipiracy treaty’ in works.

Global counterfeiting and piracy steal billions of dollars from workers, artists and entrepreneurs and the U.S. Government plans to strengthen the legal framework of intellectual property rights enforcement.

Now that the government has finally acknowledged this is a serious problem, the next step is to combat this global problem. Countries taking part in the negotiations include Canada, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Switzerland and the 27 member states of the European Union.

The new treaty is intended to complement the existing Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual-Property Rights — the so-called TRIPS agreement established by the World Trade Organization.

“It will not involve any changes to the TRIPS agreement,” the USTR said. “Rather, the goal is to set a new, higher benchmark for enforcement that countries can join on a voluntary basis.”

The Bottom Line: This is good news for anyone who is in the copyright industry. They may finally see the silver lining along the edge of the cloud.

Coheed & Cambria new album, No World for Tomorrow, hit the streets today.

Meese has signed to Atlantic Records, you can find them in KOARs New Music column.

The President of CD Baby talks about the failed relationship with SnoCap. Its a must read. CD Baby made a total of $1080 in the course of 8 months.

My Getaway will be performing 10/30 in NYC at the ANNEX at 7pm. The central Florida based pop punk band is the BMI Artist of the month for October. The band recorded with producer Marc McClusky (Powerspace, Hit The Lights, Ludo).

Comcast blocks some internet traffic: Comcast actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally. If widely applied by other ISPs, the technology Comcast is using would be a crippling blow to the BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella file-sharing networks. Could this be the beginning of the end of file sharing?