• EMI Group will sell historic Capitol Records tower. The company’s shares were down marginally on the London Stock Exchange
• Check out Kill The Alarm tonight 8:00PM at Arlenes Grocery.
• Geffen Said ‘Confident’ Of Los Angeles Times Purchase…
• Section 115 Reform Act is Withdrawn By Chris Castle

After a long and winding road that’s too much to go into here, the Section 115 Reform Act a/k/a SIRA (or the “Copyright Modernization Act� as it came to be called) has been withdrawn by Representative Lamar Smith.  Although there were some major warts that developed in the form of amendments to the bill, it’s a real shame that this issue couldn’t get resolved and another session of Congress will pass without songwriters getting paid monies that are accruing at all the online subscription services. CONTINUE READING

Warner Music who just struck a deal with YouTube yanked it’s videos from Yahoo Music according to the Wall Street Journal. According to reports Warner became concerned that Yahoo was not promoting its videos heavily enough. Earlier this month, Universal Music yanked its content from Fuse, a cable and internet outlet that mostly features music videos.

Unsigned John Vesely who adopted the name Secondhand Serenade is a singer songwriter that hails from Menlo Park, California. He is in the similar realm of Dashboard Confessional – American acoustic/electric guitar driven indie rock. His online following and numbers have surpassed most unknown artists on majors and indies. You can thank the self promotion tool Myspace. He is the #1 unsigned artist on myspace for months now, with over 9 million plays and he’s been in the top 100 alternative albums on itunes for months as well. Plus, he’s the number 1 selling artist on Tunecore, the digital distribution service and has a top 10 song on the Yahoo Launch’s adult alternative station. You can also find his song “Vulnerable” on the current itunes compilation “Back To School” on the Sk8ters list, along with AFI, New Found Glory and Simple Plan. Yes, he has accomplished more than many artists that signed 400k record contracts. What does this mean? It means some artists are better self promoters these days. For more information contact manager Chris Maltese. 
 

• 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.
•  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.