News

News coming to us from different directions that Tonos is shutting down this week. As pedigrees go, that site had one of the best, but they couldn’t make the thing make money.

An insightful commentary from Slate, which points out that the new Billboard digital download chart could be toppled with only 1,500 paid downloads. Who’s gonna mobilize their fan base to make that happen?

Folks, here is a textbook way to do this. Build up your database, then send a simple pre-order announcement with a little “somethin’ extra” to make the register pop. I can’t wait to see how this works… Natalie Merchant –…

Discovered this great write-up of Maria McKee’s new project. I remember recording her for World Cafe when her last album came out, and how her handlers at the label had NO idea what they were gonna do to make the…

There’s a new sheriffSharman in town. Rather, KaZaA 2.5 is out, and it contains a number of compelling tools for content providers. Me, I’m still to virus-and-spyware-phobic to run the thing on my own desktop, but it’s good to see…

Our friends over at Buy Indie Music have posted a great short list of the artists they’ve featured throughout June.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is taking a step toward a middle ground on file sharing with this new hub page.

UK site IntoMusic just relaunched with a clever new subscription model that splits revenues 50/50 with artists. They’re doing a great job using the front of their site to promote artists instead of technology, and for about five bucks a…

In all of last week’s commotion, I failed to notice that Best Buy finally unloaded Musicland. How long will the chain limp along on $18.98 list price disc sales?

I love this business model. DJs cut licensing deals directly with independent musicians and labels, load up iPods with custom mixes, and rent the iPods to cafes and stores for a fraction of what it might cost for them to…

Apply soon for one of seven $3,000 grants sponsored by Heineken and administered by ASCAP.

…it will always work the other way around. Seriously, even if every musician on the planet had their music on iTunes or KaZaA, the only way an audience member would even think to download them would be if they heard…