“Neil Young has gone on the record in support of music publishing powerhouse Warner Bros. Reprise’s policy deleting and muting its artists’ videos on YouTube, after negotiations between Google and Warner broke down.”

Young’s music was removed from YouTube along with a countless of other artists.

“According to Young, the underlying reason for this is that no strong industry standard exists for paying artists and copyright holders exists for online videos. Everything has to be renegotiated each time,and when these negotiations fail, it hurts fans and artists in addition to the companies doing the negotiating.” (Wired)

“YouTube has a responsibility to respect the artists it facilitates and resist punishing them to make a business point,” wrote Young. “It is time for industry-wide standards of artist compensation on the web.”

The Rise of Science is BMI’s pick of the month and will be perform at Arlene’s Grocery in NYC on March 3rd. They will also performing in Austin, Texas at the Red Gorilla on March 18th – the same week as SXSW. Our favorite track is Shortcomings Can Be Incomplete. For more information email theriseofscience@yahoo.com

“The six-unit Virgin Megastore chain will close two more stores, the Union Square location in New York City at the end of May and the Market St. store in San Francisco at the end of April, sources say.” The Times Square location will close in April

“In August 2007, the Virgin Entertainment Group North America was acquired by two real estate companies – the Related Cos. and Vornado. Since then, the chain has been reduced from 11 units – with the industry awaiting word of the fate of the three remaining stores in Denver, Los Angeles, and Orlando, Fla. ” (Billboard)

Who is Otto Sharp? She is a singer songwriter who rebelliously picked up the guitar and a synthesizer. And by the young age of fourteen, she began writing music of her own. Over the next four years, she wrote notebooks full of ideas and melodies, and during her first year of college she would find herself teaming up with Producer/Songwriter Dustin Burnett and the results are fantastic. The track Creature of Habit is a must listen. For more information email octoberdustin@gmail.com

The Radiohead marketing stunt has been debated and scrutinized for almost 2 years now and there is no end in sight.

Just recently, The Cure’s frontman Robert Smith said this:

“You can’t allow other people to put a price on what you do, otherwise you don’t consider what you do to have any value at all and that’s nonsense”

“If I put a value on my music and no one’s prepared to pay that, then more fool me, but the idea that the value is created by the consumer is an idiot plan, it can’t work.” (Music Radar)

Regardless, Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ achieved significant success despite the controversial marketing plan.