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Silicon Valley’s annual coming-out season for tech start-ups is about to turn into a stampede.

The race to find the Valley’s hottest new idea has become a new trend among investors. This new race was triggered by the high prices paid for recent internet start-ups such as YouTube — as well as the increasing fierce competition among newcomers to get noticed.

The large number of companies formed around hot trends such as web search, social networking and online video has added spice to the importance of the autumn events, according to entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

“At this stage of the frothiness, it’s extremely difficult to get attention,” says Munjal Shah, founder of Like.com, an image search engine.

“The capital cost of starting a business today is very low,” says Chris Shipley, producer of Demo, one of the first tech events. “We’re seeing a lot of ideas make it from the spare bedroom to a showcase or the marketplace very quickly.”

Other events that hope to unveil hot companies and products in the coming weeks include the Web 2.0 conference.

The scramble for attention is another symptom of Silicon Valley’s latest start-up boom. The amount of venture capital being invested in the US is at its highest level since 2001 and it has led to a rash of “me-too” companies.

The flood of copycat companies is a sign of the over-heated phase of the investment cycle, according to observers.

Bottom Line: Music labels need to create this positive vibe. They need to have this mentality even though the NEXT BIG THING may not exist yet. Music labels need to arm themselves with a team of hungry warriors searching for those artists’ who are a cut above the rest. Hire producers and songwriters to develop the artist. Work with artists who want to be guided and yearn for success. Music labels cannot abandon their CORE and act like a silicone valley start-up — it will fail miserably. Hire a strong department that focuses on technology and new business opportunities and a music department specializing in building great content. This department would replace the traditional kiddie ‘pretend to know music’ A&R department and would consist of a real think tank including up and coming producers, songwriters, and real music critics with a developed ear with a keen sense of marketing — This would increase the batting average. A music label cannot just sit and wait for an artist to break themselves — you will wait yourself out of business….

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Apple and Starbucks have formed an exclusive partnership that lets customers wirelessly browse, search for, preview, buy and download music from the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store at Starbucks onto their iPod.

When a customer enters Starbucks, their device will automatically recognize the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store using a high-speed Wi-Fi wireless network with no connection fee or hotspot login.

Customers will be able to browse, search and freely preview millions of songs, including a new “Now Playing” service which displays the name of the song playing in the Starbucks store at that moment, then easily buy and download songs or albums directly to their device.

Starbucks customers are going to get online and download songs while drinking coffee? Novelty…

CEO of Apple Steve Jobs unveiled new iPod models on Wednesday including an iPod nano, which stores songs and photos on flash memory chips instead of a hard drive, that now will play video and games.

The company, which faces renewed attacks from rivals, will refresh or replace the entire iPod music player product line, Jobs said at a product announcement event.

Nickelback who has been on the charts for 100 weeks continues to shock the skeptics by selling 39k a week with a tally of 5,857,555. Nickelback and management has the last laugh.

Carrie Underwood’s new single, ‘So Small’, debuted on the Soundscan singles chart in the U.S. this week coming in at #6.

Pink’s Who Knew climbed six spots from 25 to #19 this week.

Disney’s High School Musical 2 has already hit platinum status.

Fergie’s ‘Dutchess’ sold 50k this week. Her single ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ is #2 on the top 40 charts.

Universal Music Group has decided to close Sanctuary’s UK recorded music division.

Live Nation U.K. Music managing director Stuart Galbraith has been dismissed from the live music powerhouse due to “breach of contract.”

BMI posts record-setting royalty distributions and revenues. The rise in revenues is attributed to the company’s music catalog, successful licensing of music across a diverse range of media, and revenue growth in foreign markets

Almost 100% of music downloaded from the Net is stolen, according to the IFPI.

One may ask Why? How?

Because China’s most popular search engines Baidu.com and Yahoo China help users find and download songs quickly and illegally.

These search engines provide “deep search” services that allow listeners to download free MP3s from the databases of other sites without ever having to go to those sites themselves.

Artists will never make a dime in China because the culture does not respect intellectual property.

Google China can’t even compete against the search engine Baidu — which has an edge thanks to its free music downloads.

Young and hungry kids who love music can’t even successfully launch local startups trying to build a business around selling music because of piracy.

The IFPI has filed about 300 lawsuits in Chinese courts and has won 90% of them. The IFPI estimates it spends some $13,000 per case — yet the damages awarded average just $130 per suit. Suing isn’t really worth it.

On August 13th, the US asked the World Trade Organization asking it to take action against China’s alleged piracy of music, movies, and software. (Business Week)