Study finds kids justify illegal downloads…according to a major European Commission survey, children in Europe are aware of the risks of illegal downloading, but often rationalize their act by saying that everyone — including their parents — is doing it. Almost all of the children surveyed in the 27 European Union member countries as well as in Norway and Iceland said they expect to continue downloading. They also said the risk of downloading a virus was far more dissuasive than the risk of legal proceedings.

Speaking about illegal downloading, KOAR recently posted “Songs at Stake on Myspace“. Why aren’t the artists, major music labels, and myspace fuming over myspacemp3.org? Myspacemp3.org is an illegal website that allows users to hack into myspace and convert song streams into mp3’s. This is theft ladies and gentlemen in its purist form. If these problems aren’t solved, its only time when the United States Government will regulate the internet because of criminal abuse.

Virgin Megastore flexes it’s creative muscles: The Virgin Megastore chain will host its first annual Battle of the Bands contest.Submissions can be made at all 11 Virgin Megastores from Aug. 20 – Aug. 31, and the winners will battle it out with live performances in seven of the stores, including the New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco locations. Fans will be able to vote on the contestants at the Virgin Megastores and online at virginmegamashup.com from Sept. 10 – 21. The grand prize winner, which will be announced Oct. 1, will win travel and accommodations to meet with A&R representatives from Immergent Records and an evening with Virgin executives. (Billboard)

Universal Music Group will incorporate watermarks into its upcoming, DRM-free download experiment. Watermarks will be used to track the path of files after a transactional purchase

Check out the new act on The Last Goodnight. Their new release titled ‘Poison Kiss’ will be released August 28th on Virgin Records. Check out the track Poison Kiss.

Artists to check out: Alternative band My Favorite Highway has sold 4500 more singles on iTunes. 26,000 + for the year to date. Also, Making April will be playing at Pianos (NYC) for Atlantic Records on Wednesday at 9 and Suburban Legends will be performing at the Knitting Factory on Thursday night. For more information contact Dan Friedman.

How do the kiddie anthems beat rock and hip-hop to the top of the charts without the support from mainstream radio?

The Disney Machine is quite interesting. Matthew Gerard has written more than 200 songs for Disney Music Publishing which has turned Disney’s tween pop into the shrinking record industry’s grown area. Gerrard and a few partners write the candy coated, controversy-free songs while the Disney Channel and more than fifty Disney Radio Stations promote it.

David Agnew, President of Walt Disney Records tells Rolling Stone that the Disney Channel plays more music than MTV and VH1 combined.”

With no support from mainstream radio, the formula works…

The Cheetah Girls 2 TV-movie sountrack went platinum while Hanna Montana went 3 million.

Gerard sees the phenomenon as an echo of the teen-pop boom of 1998-2002, except “younger and cleaner”. “We live in a tough world,” adds Agnew. “People want wholesome family entertainment”.

Rap Wars: 50 Cent I’ll Quit if Outsold by Kanye!…..
50 Cent believes his new album will outsell Kanye West’s upcoming disc, and he’s betting his solo career on it. Both 50 Cent and West have albums due out Sept. 11. 50 Cent, who has sold better than West, has been riled by forecasts that sales of West’s “Graduation” could rival those for his “Curtis” CD. “If Kanye West sells more records than 50 Cent on September 11, I’ll no longer write music” — 50 cent.

Epic teams up with Koch: Being that Epic Records lacks a staff to market urban songs specifically to hip-hop/ R&B radio stations and music video outlets has hired New York-based Koch Records to market rappers. The question was: how do we be in the urban business without having to rebuild an entire team and being delayed a year or two,” Walk said. “A lot of what we are doing now as a label is outsourcing to the best people in certain areas. (NYPOST)

Universal to buy V2 Music: Universal Music Group will buy V2 Music Group for about 14 million in a deal that would add artists Paul Weller and Stereophonics to the Universal portfolio.

Apple is now offering iTunes-related widgets for social-networking profile, websites and blogs.

It seems there is no end in sight when it comes to piracy.

In November, Universal Music filed a lawsuit against MySpace, accusing the largest social-networking site of copyright infringement. At issue are the thousands of music videos uploaded by MySpace users.

Songs being uploaded are no longer the real issue, but songs being stolen.

While MySpace is kind enough to let artists select which songs they would like to have available for download, it seems they don’t really have a choice at all. Backdoor sites are cropping up which allow anyone to download any song from MySpace instantly in MP3 format, despite the status thats been chosen by the artist.

This web site allows individuals an illegal hack into Myspace and others.

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New Music and Recommended Listening…

Stop By Delorentos

Guarantees by PooPan

Maybe Dead at 27 by Overview

That Aint Me by the Love Willows

I Wonder Why by Maggie Mcclure