• Lime Wire turns the Table, Sue Record Companies
  Lime Wire now charges the record companies with colluding to create a monopoly over the digital distribution of copyrighted music.
• Warner Music Edgar Bronfman calls on EMI investors. He remains focused on the possibility of a deal with EMI.
• Â Apple is waging war against companies that use the word “pod” in product and company names, arguing customers will be confused by what brand they are buying. The action has been fuelled by Podcast Ready company, which has developed software to allow podcasts to be delivered directly to digital music players.
• Barenaked Ladies who have gone indie has topped $970k in gross sales from “intellectual property” during the first week following the release of “Barenaked Ladies Are Me”.
  Netwerk’s Terry McBride has been working hard to lead the industry into a new era, one where it views the big picture of overall sales figures rather than the mypoic view of physical album sales alone.

McBride says, “Generating revenue, especially in the artist-run model, is about selling music in various mediums, selling concert tickets, licensing music to TV, ring tones, packed USB drives, etc. That is how success is measured, not by the physical album sales.”

Howard Stern sounds more like a politician than a shock rocker nowadays as he is trying to rebound from his floundering career. Ad Age reports that Stern’s price tag for commercials on his Sirius Satellite Radio show has fallen to between $5-6,000. Oprah has no such problem. Oprah pointed out that now that she’s Oprah, she has “all these white people” working for her, and that in fact there’s only one black person on the staff. In fact the $55 million, three-year agreement with Oprah is being billed as the most successful channel launch in XM’s five-year history in terms of ad sales.

Ah, the Kingdom of Sweden. I have always heard how wonderful it is to spend the summer in Sweden, but apparently things have changed. It is now the “fantastically cool freculture country of Sweden” according to Professor Lessig, with what the professor describes as the “very interesting” “Piracy Party”.

This is as much a tale of Professor Lessig as it is the Pirate Party. If you cut through the Nutty Professor’s thinking, writing and blogging about his obsessed opposition to copyright laws, at least one core idea is constant throughout: It’s not only morally acceptable to steal, there is a moral mandate to steal. However, since Professor Lessig appears to enjoy his status as a law professor in his madrasah at the Google…sorry…Stanford Law School, he doesn’t quite come out and say that.Â

Law professors are—at least on some level—not supposed to advocate theft. And of course if one is not only a law professor but also a member of the bar, one has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. (By the way, if anyone knows where Professor Lessig is admitted to practice law, please tell me because I’ve never seen him list a bar umber on any of the pleadings he’s filed and I can’t find him listed in the lawyer directories of the California, District of Columbia or New York bar associations.) CONTINUE READING

DC based Hotspur were named one of the top 4 unsigned bands at this year’s SXSW. After extensive touring up and down the east coast, radio play on over 300 college and commercial stations, selling nearly 3k copies of their EP and landing multiple licenses with MTV, Hotspur have released their first full-length album ‘Beta.’ Produced by Chris Grainger and Russ Long (Switchfoot, Wilco, Dropping Daylight), ‘Beta’ comes across as a collection of hits as opposed to a typical album, each track a radio-ready dance rock single. Tales of their guerilla marketing techniques have been making their way into the press, as well as their Snakes on a Plane spoof video circulating on the internet. Currently playing regional dates with further touring plans for later this year. Hotspur will be playing at The Underscore in NY on October 8th. No legal attached. For more information contact Joe Mach

• Have You Seen This Girl
• Get Me Outta Here
• Stream ‘Beta’

The British record industry is calling on the Government to extend its research and development tax-credit scheme to music companies, to try to help it keep the UK at the forefront of the global music scene.

The BPI – record industry’s trade body – argues that the music sector spends a bigger proportion of its profit on R&D than the aerospace, motoring and defense sectors put together. Yet it does not qualify for any of the financial support from the Government like other sectors.

Peter Jamieson the chairman of BPI said the music industry spends 200 million+ a year on developing new talent such as Corinne Bailey Rae, one of the biggest new British acts. He said that such levels of investment were on a par with the pharmaceutical sector.

“We believe the time is right for government, together with industry, to consider closely a tax-credit regime for A&R [artist and repertoire], which is the music business’s research and development,” he said. He also said that the music industry’s £200m a year spend on R&D makes an enormous contribution to the British economy. He said music industry sales generated £300m of VAT revenues alone for the Government last year

It’s worthy a try.