Business mogul Damon Dash, former head and co-founder of Roc-A-Fella Records, says he no longer has time for the music industry, and instead will focus on the fashion world and other enterprises.

“The music business isn’t so profitable, especially not hip-hop,â€? Dash recently told Contact Music. “I couldn’t buy what I wanted to buy. I’m talking cooks and drivers. I got into clothes to make money.â€? “The people in this business all think they’ve made it because they’re in charge of their little record labels. I’m like, this isn’t even my main source of income. I already did this business – and I made movies and I designed clothes and I got my own vodka and my own Swiss watch maker.

Damon Dash is known for his Roc-A-Fella/Rocawear venture with partners Jay-Z Kareem “Biggs� Burke. (Read full article)

You can thank the oil companies (price gouging) for killing the touring artists. Many artists are unable to tour due to the high gas prices. Brett Holman who manages the Allman Brothers has estimated that gas is costing the group at least $50,000 more this year than last year and at the end of the day it’s coming out of the band’s pocket. It cost’s Dashboard Confessional 90,000k to fuel up three tractor trailers and three buses. The cost will eventually be passed down to the consumer. (Rolling Stone)

We would like to retract our post that claimed Hawthorne Heights bragged about the #1 position on the top 200. It wasn’t them who created this “tacky” campaign around their release of “If You Were Only Lonely”. We forgot for one moment that Victory Records releases their records.

–EU court overturned the European Commission’s approval of the merger between the music units of Sony and Bertelsmann AG on Thursday, forcing the companies to request clearance for the deal again.

It was a bad week for record sales with no big releases. Johnny Cash entered the top 200 with sales of 88,336. Hmmmm….
Let’s pick on Hawthorne Heights who broke the rock n roll code by bragging about the possibility of entering the top 200 with the #1 position. Victory shipped 850K and they sold less than 400k. Learning lesson? Be humble and thankful for every record bought in today’s climate.

According to Coolfer Clive Davis signed fourth-place “American Idol” finisher Chris Doughtry. His record is due out by years end.

Nielsen Soundscan numbers for the first half of 2006 came out last week and much of the press focused on the upward slope of the digital sales curve and the downward slope of CD sales. Album sales went down from 282.6 million this time last year to 270.6 million for the midpoint of 2006, while downloaded tracks soared 77% to 281 million in the first 26 weeks of 2006.

The new Deftones album will be titled Saturday Night Wrist and will be out in October.

Goodbye Tomorrow, who features former Terminal frontman, Travis Bryant, has inked a deal with Equal Vision. (Decoy)

Quick: Name the biggest star in prime-time television.

Now: Name a star created by the Internet

I suggest you read “The Extinction of Mass Culture” by Senior Fortune writer Marc Gunther.

The advent of 300 channels and the Internet has fragmented audiences – and the explosion of choice has left us poorer.
According to Gunther TV’s biggest stars are Oprah Winfrey and Katie Couric, but they don’t appear in prime time and they’ve been around for years – before the 300-channel universe fragmented audiences and damaged broadcast TV’s hit-making machinery. The Internet is by nature a niche medium so it has not created any stars, and probably won’t.

All we have here is an infinite number of choices and a long trail of confusion. Can we expect less and less blockbusters? Absolutely

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According to Reuters, Online teen social hangout MySpace.com ranked as the No. 1 U.S. Web site last week, displacing Yahoo Inc.’s top-rated e-mail gateway and Google Inc.’s search site. News Corp.’s MySpace accounted for 4.46 percent of all U.S. Internet visits for the week ending July 8, pushing it past Yahoo Mail for the first time and outpacing the home pages for Yahoo, Google and Microsoft’s MSN Hotmail.

News Corp purchased MySpace for $580 million last year as part of a strategy to rapidly build up the media conglomerate’s Internet presence.

The EMI/Warner Merger has been this month’s heated industry news. We posted Trim Costs + Increase Efficiency = Lay Offs Many and already a top EMI executive was forced out of the company. Insiders expect an acquisition to happen by the end of the month.

I had a band walk in this week with what may end up being either insight of cataclysmic proportions or the rantings of a loser. �We don’t want to be on freaking myspace, they said. Don’t say that name around me. Every band we know is on myspace, and they like add 10,000 friends a day with some friend-bot and by the way they suck, and the Arctic Munkees suck like they should be in a bad remake of the Pink Panther they so suck, and it’s all like 2005. Over.
Did you know there are moms who have myspace pages, dude? Moms more…

Modern rockers Return To Self from Nashville, TN recently signed a management deal with John Warren of 12 Rounds Management, and legal rep. Kent Marcus of Zumwalt, Almon, and Hayes. The band has signed with Overtone Music Group headed by A&R Scott Frazier and Joshua Aaron

Be sure to check out B Sharp Indie Showcase that will be held at the Living Room (NYC) Tuesday July 18th.

Check out the LA Times article We aren’t all Pirates. The internet and digital technology have been both a blessing and a curse for the entertainment industry, opening new opportunities for selling music and video but also fueling rampant global piracy. According the Times the music industry is seeking in this year’s proposals isn’t merely protection from piracy; it’s after increased leverage to protect its business models.