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Soul Searching at Sony Nashville

Chris Lewis from Nashville’s City Paper elicits one of the most compelling and honest interviews with a sitting label president I have read. John Grady, president of Sony Music Nashville, comments openly about the havoc that consolidation has wrought on…

Independently Classical

One of the compelling threads bubbling up from MIDEM: Major labels have become so obsessed with “classical crossover” (think Josh Groban, Charlotte Church, et al) that they are abandoning traditional classical releases and throwing their budget to these pop-style recording…

Gnutella Developer Justin Frankel in Rolling Stone

Essential reading… “When Hail to the Thief leaked on the Internet,” Frankel says, “I was like, ‘Right on!’ But I still bought the CD. I think it’s wrong to download music and never give anything to the artist. But if…

No Dopes In Dope

Another example of a band that got burned by a major label, lived to tell the tale, and do better now that they’re on their own.

Vital Mailing List Info

Double-check your e-mail list this month — if you have anyone on the list that hasn’t specifically opted in, get ’em off! (It’s why we asked our newsletter readers to verify/update their info in January). Read this essential article from…

Fitehouse v. RIAA = Free Publicity!

The band Fitehouse combines their stand against the RIAA with a cleverly executed guerilla marketing ploy to get some column inches. This is a really good example of what Dave Hooper likes to call time-release press kits — the initial…

File Swapping: You Get What You Measure

This keeps coming up. The major labels are falling over each other to release P.R. claiming that the RIAA’s lawsuits are working — that file swapping is down. Trouble is, file swapping’s not down — it’s just moving to networks…

Match Point for File Sharing

Like a volley at Wimbledon, here’s another report that shows file sharing really is UP… P.S.: I swear I’m going to bed after this. Too much news today to pass up all these mini-posts!

Sonnyboo

Here’s a team that’s developing an open-source solution to film placement…

Sanctuary Records

Great news from our friends at Sanctuary in the UK, who report a profit in a year when so many other music companies lost their shirts. (I’m looking at you, Antonio.)

See CBC 3

I sure as heck didn’t know what Radio CBC 3 was until I saw this report from a Toronto paper. What a delightfully subversive use of tax dollars — the state-funded CBC has a Skunk Works building new web and…