Hello, people. I am in Oslo. So far I have not been killed by any trams or frozen to death (rumours of temperatures dropping to minus 28 degrees have proven unfounded). I have spent an alarming amount of money on not a lot of beer though. So, you know, swings and that. But why am I in Oslo? I am here for the by:Larm festival, which for the last fifteen years has been showcasing the best in Nordic music to an international audience.

Last night I attended the Nordic Music Prize (the Nordic version of the Mercury Prize), which was a crash course in music from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland, with acts we’re all familiar with back in England, like Björk and Lykke Li, up against acts we are less aware of, such as Anna Jarvinen, Siinai and the CMU approved Rubik.

The prize, as it happened, went to one of those lesser known artists, Swedish jazz musician Goran Kajfes for his album ‘XY’. The jury, apparently in unison, said this about the record: “A very distinctive voice unexpectedly united the jury, everybody instantly recognised the love that has gone into the playing and, also, the packaging. It’s an ambitious and warm fusion of sonic elements, from jazz with both African and eastern influences to electronica. This double album really does something that is quite rare: it communicates the pure joy of music”.

After that, I headed out to watch a few bands. Highlights of the evening included the aforementioned Siinai, who put on an impressive show with synth-heavy krautrock-influenced music, and shoegaze outfit Maribel, who rightly packed out the small sweaty basement in which they were playing. From that basement, we then shot up to the eleventh floor of a tower block to catch Gus Gus, but the real high point of the night was catching Iceace playing their loud, angry punk in a church.

This morning I went out on the True Norwegian Black Metal Tour, which was excellent. I’ve read much about the early 90s black metal scene in Norway in numerous articles and the book ‘Lords Of Chaos’, but, having never been to Oslo before, it was often hard to really get a grip on it, or the murders and church burnings it unfortunately became synonymous with.

Piling onto a bus at 9am, we were led by Anders Odden, founder of the band Cadaver and now a member of Satyricon. As someone who was part of that scene, and who counted its leader Øystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth as a friend and personal mentor, the tour was filled with first hand accounts and personal insights.

First stop on the tour was Holmenkollen Chapel, the last church to be destroyed in a spate of arson attacks in 1992, this one carried out by Euronymous, his Mayhem bandmate Varg ‘Count Grishnackh’ Vikernes (who would later kill him) and Emperor drummer Bård ‘Faust’ Eithun. Since rebuilt, the church is right up in the hills overlooking Oslo, next to the Holmenkollbakken ski jump – a major landmark in the city.

The views down over Oslo from that high up are stunning, but it’s also clear that once that church, a wooden structure, went up in flames, it must have been clearly viewable from across the whole city; a beacon for the subsequent largely unwanted (by both the musicians and Norwegian officials) media attention brought upon Norwegian black metal.

The second stop of the morning was the site of the Helvete (Hell, in English) record shop, which was owned and run by Euronymous from 1991 to 1993. Back then a hub of the black metal scene, it’s now a very nice coffee shop. However the basement, where many bands met, rehearsed and recorded, still remains intact, much as it was back when Euronymous held court. Led down a narrow staircase and series of corridors we squashed ourselves into a tiny room where the words “BLACK METAL”, painted there by Euronymous himself (and pictured above), are still clearly visible.

Odden gave great accounts of what it was like to be part of that scene, and how it eventually fell apart with the murder of Euronymous by Vikernes in 1993. His personal conclusion of what went wrong (if I can completely simplify it) seemed to be that many of its protagonists had lost their sense of humour. Black metal was no longer about uniting a group of people who considered themselves outsiders, and instead became something more serious and sinister.

That Norway seems to now embrace this period in its musical history, where once it would perhaps rather not have, is a positive thing, I think. For all its darkness, it isn’t something that can be made to go away. And throughout the tour, Odden continually stressed how much great and influential music came out of that scene, something often overshadowed by the actions of a small number of its members.

These days, Norwegian diplomats all receive training in the history of black metal due to the number of requests for information they receive internationally. Odden also noted the irony that his tour (launched in 2008 at Oslo’s Inferno metal festival) is an official part of by:Larm and the current incarnation of Mayhem are due to perform at the festival on Saturday night. Another Oslo festival was once threatened with being shut down if it did not pull Mayhem from its line-up, and in the early 90s black metal bands rarely played shows because few promoters were willing to book them – if you wanted to see such bands play live back then, says Odden, you generally had to go to their rehearsal room.

It did, at times, feel slightly odd to be travelling around these sites as a tourist, particularly as, for all Odden’s stories of the fun he’d had back then, there were plenty of macabre tales of criminal activity, violence and death – the only time he seemed to hold back was when pushed by one of the group to answer questions about the injuries sustained by Euronymous when Vikernes stabbed him to death, claiming not to know anything about it (perhaps understandably, given that he was close to the former). That said, plenty of people go out on Jack The Ripper themed tours near our office in London, and I guess it’s important to explore the negative as well as the positive parts of history.

It made me wonder, also, if in the internet age it would even be possible for such an insular music scene to develop. As has often been said, in the age of mass communication via the internet, it’s near impossible to maintain a local scene that’s cut off from the rest of the world (until, that is, something major happens that’s impossible to ignore – whether it be a surprise hit single or a series of burnt down churches). Even if a group of musicians completely shunned the internet, would they be able to hide themselves away from bloggers, tweeters, and those weird people who upload grainy videos of gigs to YouTube? Maybe some already do – I guess I wouldn’t know, and even if I did, I presumably wouldn’t be able to tell you about it. Not until someone burned a church down in its honour.

Anyway, back to bands I can tell you about, and I still have one more evening of live music to look forward to before I head back to London. Tonight I’m hoping to catch Team Me, The Field, Thom Hell, Husky Rescue, Loney Dear, Icona Pop and I Break Horses, amongst others. Though I would equally settle for seeing a load of brilliant bands I’ve never heard of before – it’s the nature of these events that you never quite know where you’ll end up, basements, tower blocks or churches, which is, of course, why they are so much fun.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

PODCAST
There is no podcast this week, due to Chris and I being in different countries, but you can still check out last week’s right here. Excitingly, the podcast is currently featured on iTunes, so I presume we’re doing something right. Check out the full back catalogue, and subscribe via iTunes or RSS here. We’ll be back with another edition next week, rounding up major events in music and making bad jokes as normal.

IN THE NEWS
So, the big shock of the week came, of course, with the death of Whitney Houston, who was found dead in the bath of a Beverley Hills hotel room on Saturday night. Unsurprisingly, tributes poured in for the 48 year old singer, including later in the week one from her godmother Aretha Franklin. Her funeral will take place at the Newark Baptist church where she first sang in public as a child on Saturday. While not open to the public, the ceremony will be streamed online.

There was controversy, too, when Sony Music increased the wholesale price of Houston’s greatest hits compilations, only around twelve hours after her death, leading to an automatic price jump on iTunes. Apple later dropped the price again, while Sony issued a statement blaming an employee for the error.

The Grammy Awards was covered heavily in the press this week, following the ceremony on Sunday. Though perhaps not entirely as its organisers would have wished. Nicki Minaj’s performance was much talked about for being very, very odd, but there was much more criticism of Chris Brown’s two performances, which, coming just three years after he beat Rihanna unconscious in the street after a pre-Grammys party, many felt was tasteless and sent out a bad message. This wasn’t helped by a quote from the Grammys beforehand claiming that the ceremony was the real victim of that particular incident of domestic abuse, and afterwards expletive filled, all caps (and later deleted) tweets from Brown himself, claiming his critics were just jealous of him. His mum apparently isn’t too happy about the outburst – I’m not sure if that makes her a jealous hater too.

The latest takedown of a file-sharing website was an interesting one. The UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency shut down RnBXclusive.com, replacing it with a message informing users that they could face unlimited fines and prison sentences of up to ten years if they were found to have downloaded files from the site. As well as that, the user’s IP address was displayed with an extra message amounting to “we know where you live”.

There was much criticism of SOCA’s holding page online, not least because the claims about fines and jail time weren’t true – they only apply to people running copyright infringing services on a commercial scale and for profit. The message was duly removed, though SOCA claimed it was only ever intended to be temporary anyway.

As well as all that excitement, there was a lot of action and discussion around copyright legislation too. The Spanish Supreme Court last week agreed to hear an appeal by the Association Of Web Users which claims that the country’s anti-piracy Sinde Law is unconstitutional. Then another Spanish court ruled that a website called Cinetube, which provides links to illegal content from other sources and is likely to be a hot target if and when the Sinde Law goes live, was not, under existing Spanish laws, infringing copyright itself.

Meanwhile, in the States there’s been talk that the IFPI might be considering litigation to force Google to up anti-piracy measures on its search engine, a date was set for EMI’s civil case against ReDigi, and the US content industries updated their copyright watch lists, naming the countries they are most unhappy with in regard to protecting copyright.

Across Europe last weekend various protests against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement took place, which were followed by the president of the European Parliament expressing concerns about the global intellectual property treaty.

Also in the copyright domain, not specifically a music issue, but one that potentially has implications for all music PR and clippings agencies, the UK Copyright Tribunal this week reaffirmed that a licence is required by any company that emails to paying clients curated lists of links to newspaper or magazine articles – the Newspaper Licensing Agency having previously won a ruling in court that a copyright exists in the headlines of those articles (and any URL made up of the headline). Some worry the principle behind this licence could be extended so that anyone sharing links or accessing newspaper or magazine articles as part of their job would need a licence, though the NLA denies this is so.

So, lots of copyright stuff this week. And then there were some stats. The BPI released its annual review of digital music sales, revealing that digital revenues are up, but, as usual, still aren’t compensating for the fall in physical sales. And if you’re hoping for some more positive news form the music press, you’re going to be disappointed. The latest ABC magazine circulation figures make for pretty gloomy reading.

And finally, Guns N Roses keyboard player Dizzy Reed said that all five original members of the band are now signed up to appear at their Rock N Roll Hall Of Fame induction (though whether they’ll be willing to stand together is another matter), Adele denied that she was planning to take five years off from music, despite saying she would, and Shakira was attacked by a sea lion.

FEATURES AND NEW MUSIC
We had a fine array of features this week. There was an interview with drum n bass star High Contrast, a playlist from the fantastic Team Me, and in his column Eddy Temple-Morris wrote about an amazing sounding live collaboration between Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly, Jehst, and Engine Earz Experiment.

In the Approved column we had 80s influenced cinematic synth-pop trio Selebrities, mysterious LA-based electronic duo Rhye, London-based lo-fi singer-songwriter Keel Her, and producer Magical Mistakes, who comes to us from California via a small Japanese island.

Elsewhere, we had a free EP from Ed Sheeran and Yelawolf, defunct hardcore quintet Throats‘ entire discography for free, an a capella track from The Futureheads, a selection of remixes from We Have Band, plus new videos from Dillinger Escape Plan and iamamiwhoami.

Yesterday afternoon, there was a brief flurry of excitement when it was announced online that Jay-Z and Kanye West were popping around to the CMU office for a cup of tea. We cursed the fact that we had no biscuits and discussed if we should tidy up a bit, before we started to wonder if the cryptic message that had been sent out really signified that the two hip hoppers were on their way to see us.

Here’s what happened: An email was sent out with an image attached to it. The image placed a map of a small square of Shoreditch (which, as it happened, had CMU HQ more or less in its centre) under the banner ‘WATCH THE THRONE 5PM 09.02.2012′. ‘Watch The Throne’, of course, is the title of Jay-Z and Kanye West’s collaborative album, which was released last year. And 09.02.2012 was yesterday’s date. And 5pm was a time that had not, at that point, yet passed. What could it mean?

Twitter got to work. It almost certainly meant that one or both of the rap stars were on their way to Shoreditch. Probably not Jay-Z, not with the baby whose trademark would need caring for. But Kanye was probably hanging out right at that moment in Shoreditch House or (as The Quietus pointed out) Chariots Roman Spa – both of which were within the map’s boundaries. The Village Underground and Old Blue Last venues were on there too – though the latter only just. So, an impromptu performance, maybe?

But then there’s the Boxpark – Shoreditch’s recently opened ‘trendy fashion labels in storage containers’ set up. Why didn’t we think of that sooner? Last year Kanye and Jay opened a pop-up store in New York. Where better than to open another than in East London’s own pop-up shopping mall? Oh God, it’s happening, it’s definitely happening. Let’s get over there now and be first to waste our hard earned cash on some exclusive Kan-Z tat.

Fortunately we had a podcast to record, so were far too busy to experience the anti-climax first hand. Because finally the news broke. There’d be no Kanye, no Jay, no hip hop fashions in a metal can, rather the video for Watch The Throne album track ‘Niggas In Paris’ was to be projected somewhere. On the concrete wall of Shoreditch High Street Station, above the aformentioned Boxpark, as it happened. Many did venture out to see it though, and once they’d worked out where they were meant to stand, they found themselves shivering in the cold, squinting at a video they couldn’t really see because the sky was not yet dark enough and it was being projected onto a grey wall. Everyone left disappointed.

So, that was the day that Kanye West didn’t come round for tea. Though the question remains, why did anyone think this promotion was a good idea? Who thought that a cryptic message likely to make people think something very exciting indeed was about to happen would be a good way to promote a new video. True Shoreditchers are a strange breed, but surely even they couldn’t be expected to go home all excitable after being dragged into the cold for half an hour to watch a video they couldn’t quite see play out to music they couldn’t quite hear? A video, mind, that was already streaming on YouTube by the time the wintery open air preview began.

It’s a product, I fear, of an obsession with ‘going viral’. If it’s all over the social networks, then it must be good. Sure, the Kan-Z stunt made people aware of the video, but it also resulted in a load of fans and media types being totally underwhelmed. People who then tweeted that fact prolifically shortly after the stunt, complete with links not to the official Watch The Thone promo on YouTube, but to photographs demonstrating just how shit the Shoreditch video preview really was. Perhaps Jay-Z is trying to lose all his cool kid fans now he’s a responsible father.

The Good Suns, though, are presumably trying to attract the cool kids to their party. And while their video stunt this week wasn’t quite the anti-climax of the Kan-Z promotion, I’m not sure it will deliver much better results.

True, this new indie pop outfit from London did score a minor viral hit with the video for their song ‘Pop Wound’, which in just under a week has scored over 40,000 hits on YouTube (which is pretty good for a relatively unknown indie band, and in some ways more impressive than Jay-Z and Kanye getting 650,000 views for their new video in 24 hours, given the difference in the two outfit’s resources and fanbase). But there’s a problem. And the problem is the star of their promo.

I first watched ‘Pop Wound’ because someone tweeted that Lembit Opik had released a music video. Given he attempted to launch himself as a stand-up comedian last year, I wasn’t entirely surprised to hear that the former Lib Dem MP was now having a go at singing. I clicked. I watched. I cringed. I suspected that he might not actually be the singer of this song. But not enough to really digest the fact this was actually a track from a new band that I might want to investigate further.

Everyone else seemed to have the same response as well, so the video quickly became Lembit Opik’s rather than the band’s. The overwhelming majority of the coverage has focussed on the politician, rather than The Good Suns. And in The Evening Standard’s coverage, they weren’t helped by a quote from Opik saying that ‘Pop Wound’ is “a cracking song”. For a new band, the thumbs up from any politician in his 40s is pretty much the equivalent of your mum sending you a Valentine’s Day card.

And it’s notable that despite the flurry of YouTube hits and media coverage, The Good Suns followers on Facebook and Twitter – those profiles linked to from the video’s YouTube page – have not risen to any great degree. And as they weren’t collecting any other data, such as email addresses, it may mean that ultimately the video serves little purpose for the band.

I suppose having videos that overshadow your music isn’t always a bad thing. OK Go, of course, have made a good living out of producing highly innovative videos for their completely forgettable songs. There is genuine excitement whenever they release a new video, people flock in their hundreds of thousands to watch them – the latest, ‘Needing/Getting’, has pulled in nearly eleven million views in four days – but I think I’d struggle to find someone who could hum one of their songs, so I’m not sure how that translates to gigging and such like. YouTube revenue alone, coupled with any sponsorship, might be enough to keep one band going, and OK Go can rightly feel proud of their videos (and they’ve never made anyone stand in the cold to watch them). But I’m still not convinced this is a winning strategy for every or any new band.

It seems to me that if you want a real viral hit, you have to do it by accident. This week’s surprise internet phenomenon (for him as much as anyone else) was Tommy Jordan. He’s not a musician, he has no music in his video, but he does have a daughter, her laptop, a cowboy hat and a gun. This, apparently, is parenting in the digital age.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

PODCAST
This week on the podcast Chris and I talk about BitTorrent search engine BTjunkie’s voluntary shutdown, MP3 resale service ReDigi’s ongoing legal battle with EMI, Black Sabbath’s increasingly controversial reunion, and the week’s Madonna news. You’ll be able to listen or download here.

IN THE NEWS
If you’ve been disappointed at the list of celebrities settling out of court with News International over phone hacking (yes you, Steve Coogan), then let’s have three cheers for Charlotte Church, who is so far refusing to back down. Currently it’s looking like she will be the only celebrity hacking victim to go to court (in the near future anyway), and the date is set for later this month (despite NI’s attempts to delay it). Fun, fun.

Also exciting this week was the official confirmation that Warner Music will oppose Universal’s purchase of the EMI record labels. This confirms rumours which began circulating last month and comments made by outgoing WMG chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr last week that the major label would be joining with indie labels in an attempt to block the deal.

Also this week, the RIAA’s chief exec hit back at Wikipedia over its SOPA protest, it was decided that EMI’s case against MP3 reseller ReDigi will go to a full trial, research showed that Amazon is now a bigger entertainment retailer in the UK that HMV, HMV disputed the research, and BitTorrent search engine BTjunkie turned itself off. Many now wonder if others will do the same, following the recent arrests of MegaUpload’s executives and the failure of the Pirate Bay founders’ final appeal.

FEATURES AND NEW MUSIC
This week is Tinnitus Awareness Week, something which, as a tinnitus sufferer, I find slightly bittersweet. After all, I’m aware of tinnitus most of the time. My personal experience of getting help for this condition from my GP, while not 100%, was nowhere near as bad as some others have found. That’s why this year’s TAW focus is on raising awareness of tinnitus amongst GPs. Fellow tinnitus sufferer Eddy Temple-Morris wrote about this in his column this week.

If you’re looking for some music to listen to, FOE picked ten of her favourite songs for our playlist this week. As well as that, we had some great new music from Julia Holter, Kindness, Amplify Dot, and Sleep Party People in the Approved column. You should listen to all of them.

As well as that, we had the new videos from Madonna and MIA, a new track from previously AWOL (and rumoured to have been incarcerated in Samoa) Odd Future member Earl Sweatshirt, a Shabazz Palaces remix of Battles, plus new more music from Perfume Genius, Death Grips, Here We Go Magic, oOoOO, and Letters. Oh, and Graham Coxon wants you to be in his new video.

Musicians! You’re all making loads of money off your live shows now, right? I mean, that’s how it works these days isn’t it? People keep saying so on blogs and in newspapers so it must be true. And look at Madonna, she’s well and truly raking it in from her live work, and she hardly ever tours. Sure, her gig tickets are really, really expensive, but that doesn’t mean she has any real advantage over you surely? For starters, you probably have fewer costume changes. And it’s not her fault that her fans are all stupid enough to pay any random ticket price she pulls out of a hat is it?

Though, perhaps not all of them are that stupid. Madonna is concerned that when she tours the US to promote her forthcoming new album, ‘MDNA’, some people might think that $300 per ticket is a bit much. These people, she says, don’t know a good thing when they see it. Her last tour was the highest grossing for a solo artist ever, bringing in $408 million by the time it had made its way around the world. And imagine if she brought in less than that next time, people would talk.

Asked by Newsweek if she’d be offering more affordable prices on her next tour, Madge huffed: “People spend $300 on crazy things all the time, things like handbags. So work all year, scrape the money together, and come to my show. I’m worth it”.

I haven’t seen Madonna play live in nearly 20 years, but I’m pretty sure she isn’t worth $300. I don’t think anyone’s worth that sort of money for one evening’s entertainment. I wouldn’t spend that sort of money on a bag either, but if I did, at least I could carry things around in it.

Of course, Madonna doesn’t need the cash, she’s really just keeping up appearances. This is something pretty much all artists at the top level of the industry do these days. There’s no need for their ticket prices to be so high, it’s just posturing to prove how big they are, so they can carry on appearing at the tops of lists in Forbes. Hence Madonna’s apparently genuine belief that she deserves to only play to people who have forked out a significant portion of their pay packet for the privilege.

But here’s the thing. When Madonna fans decide to spend $300 on one of her tickets they make a decision. It’s a decision similar to that anyone would make when spending a similar amount on a hand bag. “How long will this last me?” Or, in the case of the Madonna ticket, “How many gigs do I need to go to this year?” For most consumers, for whom going to gigs is a special event (and for whom buying an album is a twice yearly activity), there’s a finite amount of expendable income that will be set aside for music. So one night with Madge at $300 may well have to be instead of three nights seeing three other acts at $100 each. So the a-listers charging unnecessarily high prices for their tickets inhibits the spread of wealth amongst all other artists.

OK, so my maths here may be a little simplistic, but there’s an argument that a few big name artists absorbing so much consumer spend through their live shows (this doesn’t happen in the recordings market, because the retailers control price point) is having a direct negative impact on musicians further down the food chain. Forget about piracy, Madonna is to blame for everyone’s woes. Well, her and U2.

Proof of this, perhaps, is that at the other end of the supposedly booming live market ticket prices are falling as promoters try to tempt in bigger audiences to drink the beer that funds that part of the industry. But, with grass roots artists’ already meagre performance fees often linked to ticket price, that means while Madonna’s fees rocket, other musicians are playing for less. Or so says Chris T-T, in a blog post on his website this week. He argues that the rising prevalence of gigs charging £3-5 on the door is harming artists’ ability to play gigs regularly, and devaluing the grass roots live scene as a whole.

Certainly it’s true that those artists playing small gigs, especially if they are away from home, often find that they lose money once they’ve hired a van, bought petrol, fed themselves and found somewhere to stay. But Chris also says that the danger of the lower door price – if it works and attracts more beer drinkers – is that the people attracted by the three pound entry fee often aren’t really that interested in the music, meaning a worse experience for both artists and the genuine fans. He makes his points very convincingly, and I urge you to go and read his post in full, here.

So, playing live isn’t necessarily the great solution for the file-sharing age so many commentators claim. Though, maybe if everyone paid a bit more to get into small shows and a lot less to see Madonna, live would be a genuinely useful revenue stream for many more musicians.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

PODCAST
Once again, we’ve recorded a podcast for you to listen to, which is very nice of us. This week it features analysis and discussion of The Pirate Bay founders having their appeal knocked back for the final time, the fight to save the legitimate files that were stored on MegaUpload’s servers, U2 manager Paul McGuinness and former Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr’s outbursts against Google, and music’s most rebellious rebels, The Ting Tings. Sign up on or bookmark this page, so you’re all primed to tune in as soon as it goes live.

IN THE NEWS
So, two of The Pirate Bay’s three founders and their main funder went to Sweden’s Supreme Court this week to demand that their case be reheard. The Supreme Court said no. This means all four men behind the site should now technically pay their fines and go to jail, though it remains to be seen if either will actually happen. One co-founder, Peter Sunde, said that he was perfectly prepared to go to prison, as he still had the moral high ground.

Meanwhile, U2′s manager Paul McGuinness was telling MIDEM that the new enemy of music is Google; something echoed by Edgar Bronfman Jr at another content industry conference, that one in California, who also said that his soon to be former employer Warner Music will oppose Universal’s purchase of the EMI record labels, as we suspected.

Also this week, it was feared that the legitimate files stored on MegaUpload, which were taken down with no warning along with everything else on the controversial file-transfer website last month, would be deleted by the two hosting companies storing them this week. Mega’s lawyers negotiated a two week reprieve, and then one hosting company said it was working to ensure the files were kept for longer. Meanwhile, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is working on getting people’s files back, as well as preparing to sue on behalf of affected users if necessary. Elsewhere, Mega boss Kim Dotcom failed in a second attempt to be granted bail in New Zealand.

The battle for the funniest quote given to the press was fierce this week. There was Bebo‘s assertation that the reason the mostly forgotten social network was offline earlier in the week was down to a “technical clusterfuck”, plus The Ting Ting‘s claim that they would rather be sick on their shoes than be played on the radio next to David Guetta, Nicki Minaj‘s announcement that she was “queen of London” in a former life, or Mani‘s quite possibly made up quote about finding an extra £2 million in his bank account one day. But I think the award has to go to Diana Meltzer, the ex-wife of late Wind-Up Records founder Alan Meltzer, after he left part of his fortune to a chauffeur and a doorman rather than her.

FEATURES AND NEW MUSIC
This week’s CMU interview was with Rodrigo Sanchez of Rodrigo y Gabriela, as they prepared to tour with the thirteen piece Cuban orchestra they worked with on their latest album, ‘Area 52′. Our playlist, meanwhile, took us through ten of the artists were very excited about seeing at this year’s Great Escape, following the festival’s first line-up announcement. And in his column, Eddy Temple-Morris asked one of life’s more important questions – ‘Terminator’ or ‘Predator’?

The Approved column this week features Battles, who managed to win over a CMU writer previously less than enamoured with them, David’s Lyre, who provided us with a full stream of his debut album, Bernholz, whose debut single is a quite timely ode to Madonna and poverty, and Saint Etienne, who are back after seven years.

As well as that, there was the exciting news that folklorist Alan Lomax‘s entire audio archive is to be made available online, and new music from Jack White, Rolo Tomassi, Fixers, A Place To Bury Strangers, Cate Le Bon, The Darkness and CMU favourite Mallard The Wonderdog.

Hello. How has your week been? I hope it’s been as good as mine, because mine’s been brilliant. Even after I factor in suffering with a cold for much of it. Firstly, there was lots of news to write about (which is the benchmark for any good week), and then last night I saw Giana Factory and Philco Fiction perform at monthly Nordic music showcase Ja Ja Ja.

And this morning I learned of the existence of a place in Warwickshire called Bishop’s Itchington. And it would have been a great week with just that one on its own.

Also, I was finally allowed to tell people about something I’ve been excited about for weeks. Because this week we made our first announcement about this year’s Great Escape music business convention in Brighton, which I’m sure you know by now is programmed by the team here at CMU.

This year, Xfm is celebrating its 20th year on air, having first launched with a series of month-long RSL broadcasts in 1992, before launching fully in 1997. As part of this, the station’s longest serving DJ, John Kennedy, will be interviewed on stage at TGE by fellow radio presenter Jon Hillcock about his 22 years supporting new bands on the radio, and his thirteen years fronting Xfm’s ‘X-posure’ show.

Anyone with an interest in new music knows who John Kennedy is, and most likely feels inadequate next to him. He listens to an enormous amount of music every week, programming twelve hours of radio on ‘X-posure’ each week, and regularly unearths artists who go on to find fame – Adele, The xx and Kate Nash are just a few artists whose demos he’s played before anyone else. His enthusiasm for music is both infectious and inspiring, and he’s a thoroughly lovely person as well.

Also thoroughly lovely and completely dedicated to promoting new music is Jon Hillcock, who started his career in radio when he did work experience on ‘X-posure’. He’s gone on to present his own shows on Xfm and NME Radio, and these days regularly appears on BBC 6music, as well as producing his weekly ‘New Noise’ podcast, which is essential listening.

I hope this doesn’t come across too much as cynical plugging of something I’m involved in. Obviously I’m mentioning it partly because of CMU’s involvement in The Great Escape, but I am completely genuine when I say that I think John Kennedy and Jon Hillcock are two of the best presenters on radio today, and to have them sat on stage talking to each other is a very exciting prospect. And, as I said, being barred from telling everyone I see about all this prior to the official announcement this week has been killing me.

You can find more information on this and the rest of our announcement earlier this week here, or you could just head over to www.escapegreat.com and buy your tickets (which also gets you access to shows by more 300 bands over the course of three days, as well as the entire conference).

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

PODCAST
On this week’s podcast, we discuss the MegaUpload shutdown and arrests, the passing of the Live Music Bill through the House Of Commons, a little bit of silver lining for HMV, Simon Cowell’s DJ search, and Disney’s Joy Division inspired t-shirt. You should listen to it, for sure. You will be able to do just that this weekend here.

IN THE NEWS
It has been a fantastically busy week in the world of MegaUpload. After the site was shut down last week and several of its execs arrested, the drama has continued. The company quickly hired a top lawyer – who has previously represented the likes of Bill Clinton and Enron – but just as quickly he pulled out citing a conflict of interests. Whether he would have been able to get Mega founder Kim ‘Dotcom’ Schmitz out of prison on bail we’ll never know, but Dotcom is still locked up, amid fears he would escape New Zealand back to his home country Germany where extradition would be more difficult.

Perhaps more interesting was the reaction from other file-transfer sites, some of whom limited their services and deleted unlicensed content. Whether the Mega shutdown was pushing users to legitimate sites or over to other illegal services that carried on as normal is in dispute (it’s probably a bit of both), meanwhile an unlikely conspiracy theory that plans by MegaUpload to launch a direct-to-fan service for artists had prompted the entertainment industries to push for last week’s shutdown was put about too. For more on the goings on with the MegaUpload team this week, look here.

With SOPA and PIPA seemingly put on the back burner, another important anti-piracy document, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, was signed by most European Union countries with little opposition this week. However, while the EU itself helped negotiate the agreement and signed it, the European Parliament is still to approve it, and there are growing attempts to rally larger protests against it.

Elsewhere in digital news, the Digital Music News blog responded to Grooveshark‘s attempt to force it to hand over information about an alleged whistleblower, failed digital music service Beyond Oblivion applied for bankruptcy protection admitting to debts of anything up to $500 million, Rhapsody formally took over Napster in Europe, Perfume Genius had an advert rejected by YouTube because it found two men standing still to be a bit too racy, and the IFPI said digital music revenues are growing but piracy is still an issue.

The Live Music Bill was passed by the House Of Commons last Friday, with some final amendments approved by the House Of Lords earlier today, which is good news for people who like small gigs, because the hope is there will now be more of them. The Local Government Association welcomed the passing of the Bill, which they had originally opposed, but then backed following some tweaks made last Autumn, though they said they still have one concern about gigs where audience members can bring their own alchohol.

As well as that, HMV announced new deals with its suppliers and the bank, Mick Jagger got angry about being drawn into politics, Tulisa Contostavlos’ arm was allowed to continue waving, Radio 1 announced new multi-media aspects to its chart show, Truck Festival announced it will return this year after financial problems in 2011, Simon Cowell revealed he’s on the look out for DJs, and Disney stopped selling a Joy Division-inspired t-shirt.

FEATURES AND NEW MUSIC
I interviewed Busdriver this week, which was very exciting as his album ‘Fear Of A Black Tangent’ is one of my favourites. I managed to play it cool and not ask “WHY ARE YOU SO AWESOME?” though. As well as that, Eddy Temple-Morris wrote about last week’s interviewees Enter Shikari and how he came to love them. Plus, Pulled Apart By Horses put together a great playlist for us.

In the Approved column this week we had a new track by Miike Snow featuring Lykke Li, a song from Frankie Rose‘s utterly brilliant new album, two tracks from Jesse Ruins‘ new EP, and some cinematic loveliness from A Whisper In The Noise.

Elsewhere on theCMUwebsite.com, we posted a whole load more new music, including tracks by Cypress Hill and Rusko, Saint Etienne, Ladyhawke, Blood Red Shoes, Fair Ohs, The Icarus Line, Sea Of Bees, Poliça, The Doors and Skrillex (you don’t have to click on that one), plus a sampler from Portishead man Geoff Barrow’s label.

The chances that you’ve missed the clash of opposing sides in the ongoing debate about web blocking this week, I would guess, are precisely zero.

The proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (or SOPA) which would introduce web blocks in America, and which has been working its way through US Congress for sometime, was the subject of a mass protest led by Wikipedia, which took its English language pages offline for 24 hours on Wednesday, with sites such as Google, Wired.com and The Cheezburger Network also joining in to varying degrees.

Wikipedia’s protest got its point across very well (even if not everyone quite understood it), laying out the online encyclopaedia’s reservations about the legislation on a black shroud over any page accessed. And the fact that, despite the apparent black-out, it was actually still very easy to gain access to the site made the point that, actually, web blocking measures aren’t generally that difficult to circumvent. (In this case, accessing the site via the mobile web, using cached copies of pages in Google search, or simply hitting the escape key before the page was blocked did the trick).

By the time the protest began, support for SOPA was already wavering in US political circles afterthe White House announced that it would block certain measures within it, and Congressmen continued to drop support as Wednesday’s protests spread throughout the web. Then earlier today it was announced that any vote on both SOPA and its cousin, the seperate but very similar Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), would be postponed indefinitely, but only so those behind the bills can rework their proposals to address the specific objections the protestors raised.

So SOPA and PIPA, or at least the key aims they set out to achieve, are not dead. The music and movie industries will continue to lobby on the matter of web blocking, both in the US and elsewhere – Spain’s SOPA-esque Sinde Law is already in place, the Irish government is expected to launch some sort of anti-piracy measure later this month (though the major labels are already suing because they think it won’t go far enough), and in the UK one injunction to force ISPs to block a specific copyright infringing website based in another country has already been sought and granted (though rights owners would like a cheaper-to-use fast track system too).

And, of course, we had proof just yesterday that US rights owners can already make dramatic strikes against companies they believe are operating commercial operations based on piracy, when American authorities shut down MegaUpload completely and arrested several key execs. Given the severity of the US action against the Mega companies some have wondered why exactly the content companies need SOPA or PIPA in the first place, though the US authorities could only target MegaUpload in the way they did because – although a Hong Kong based company – most of Mega’s servers were in Virginia, within the juridiction of the US courts. SOPA and PIPA specifically deal with sites based abroad, where such dramatic swoops are not possible.

It’s also worth noting that the seemingly major scale of the operation against MegaUpload – including extraditions from New Zealand – is in part due to the other serious charges made against the Mega companies, including racketeering and money laundering, and it is those allegations which, if proven, would mean the company’s execs could be in prison for 20 years (the maximum sentence for copyright infringement in the US being five years).

And reading the charges against Mega, and its founders, including Kim ‘Dotcom’ Schmitz, you can’t help thinking this is exactly the sort of company over which content owners should have powers to act, wherever they may be based. The Anonymous group would clearly disagree with me, of course, having moved yesterday to take down the US Department Of Justice, RIAA and Universal Music websites in retaliation for the Mega arrests. Presumably that’s because they view anyone who dishes out free content to people online without permission as Robin Hood type characters, the good guys helping the little people against the big copyright owning conglomarates. But that viewpoint is to see everything in black and white with no shades of grey whatsoever.

Remember, this is a company that has, if the court papers filed against it are to be believed, made millions of dollars in profits from content it does not own, boosted its video service by downloading and re-uploading files from YouTube, and looked into incentivising users who upload large amounts of illegal content. Meanwhile, Kim Dotcom, who already has various convictions for fraud and embezzlement, has been driving around in a fleet of expensive cars with numberplates such as HACKER, MAFIA, and, er, POLICE. Surely even the most cynical major-label-hater can see why Schmitz et al have pissed the music and movie industries off? And we’ve not even mentioned the ‘Mega Song’ yet.

The attack on MegaUpload will have given the music and movie companies something to smile about in an otherwise tricky week in their long running fight against piracy. In the ideal world they’d like to see more dramatic attacks against those websites that prolifically infringe copyright. But such largescale actions won’t always be appropriate, partly for the aforementioned jurisdiction reasons, partly because the level of the charges against other sites may not be so severe. And it’s in these cases where the rights owners would say web blocking can come in – an easier less dramatic solution, which is less effective too (remember web blocks can always be circumvented), but at least makes a stand against those building businesses on infringement.

So, as I say, the campaign for web-blocking measures isn’t going to go away. Though nor will the opponents, who proved this week they are a major force to be reckoned with. There was much talk about defending the “free and open internet” amongst said opponents this week, which is something it’s easy to get behind, though I suspect many of us aren’t really sure what that means exactly.

I mean, just how free is the internet anyway? Most of us are concerned about fraud and viruses, and the distribution of pictures of abuse, and concede our online freedoms may be curtailed a little to tackle those issues. Millions of us use Google and Facebook to help us navigate the web, but in return we give up elements of our privacy to these major conglomerates. And how free and open is an internet where hacktivists can block an organisation’s ability to speak to the world just because they disagree with what that organisation says?

The content industries have to except there are limits to what can be achieved in combatting piracy, and that even justifiable systems for taking down genuine rogue operations (like MegaUpload, if current allegations are true) must not take out legitimate or even ‘grey area’ platforms as collatoral damage. And to that end naming your proposals Stop Online Piracy – as if an all out abolition of piracy whatever the cost is achievable and/or desirable – is probably unwise. But likewise, those who oppose SOPA should accept the internet can only by free and open to a point.

SOPA itself is clearly flawed – though not necessarily in all the ways opponents have claimed – there has been quite a bit of misrepresentation, either deliberate or due to laziness. Some people say uploading a video to YouTube could send you to prison under new laws, which is wrong on numerous levels – the proposed new laws would attack websites not individuals, YouTube is US based so would not be targeted via SOPA, and anyway the Google video platform is licensed and operates a takedown system assuring protection under the DMCA.

But – misinformation aside – SOPA was badly written, not least because it was far too vague as to what kind of websites, and what kinds of infringement, would be targeted, and failed to explain how websites that are fundamentally legit – even if some infringing content routinely appears – could ensure they were not suddenly hit with high speed web blocks.

As much as The Pirate Bay claims to be just like Google, there is clearly a difference between what the two sites do, even though both do link to unlicensed content. What we need is an anti-piracy system capable of applying common sense and distinguishing between such sites, and one which then introduces blocks that stop casual access to the infringing service without hindering other platforms that are basically, if not 100%, legit. SOPA was clearly not that system.

But that doesn’t mean said system cannot exist, it’s just that both sides in this debate need to be willing to budge a little. And actually, the content industries do seem willing to do some budging just now, even if that’s because they are suddenly on the defensive. But much of the anti brigade need to do some budging too, or at least give some serious and realistic thought as to what a “free and open” internet really means. A little bit of work, and perhaps that workable fairer system can be identified.

So there you go, that was almost an optimistic conclusion to all this, wasn’t it? Though record company people, please do remember that even if we find the more balanced solution to allow some moderate web blocking, this does not mean your traditional CD business – or even the digital equivalent (ie iTunes) – is suddenly going to spring back into life and carry on as before.

Going after rogue players making millions by infringing your rights is a justifiable thing to do – but it’s not a solution to the record industry’s woes. Ensuring legitimate music services are better than illegal ones, offering added value to core fans, and better integrating the various strands of the wider music business are all key to the successful future I still believe this industry can achieve. Things have moved on massively in recent years in this domain, but we’re not there yet, and there are still stumbling blocks – reluctant individuals and relic processes – which are hindering growth. You can have every web block you’d ever want, but without addressing those issues, we’re going nowhere.

Anyway, I didn’t even mean to write about the web block debate again this week – and I realise some of this is old ground well trodden before, both here and elsewhere in CMU, and beyond. But there’s been a lot to talk and think about regards piracy this week. So let’s talk and think about it, find better solutions for tackling this problem, but then get back to the business of pursuing new ways of developing, distributing and selling great artists and great music. If only because – if I can be selfish for one minute – artistic and commercial innovations in music are much more fun to write about than lawsuits and lobbyists.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for some recommended reading while you think and talk about all this, here are some articles from this week, arguing on both sides, that it’s well worth checking out.

Wired UK: Sopa 101 – a guide to the USA’s proposed anti-piracy legislation
BBC News: Viewpoints – sites go offline in US piracy protest
Index On Censorship: Why is Wikipedia down?
Wikipedia: The Wikipedia blackout is over – and you have spoken
Billboard: SOPA anti-piracy controversy exposes Hollywood-Silicon Valley divide
Mashable: SOPA and PIPA won’t stop piracy
Stop The Wall: An open letter to Washington from artists and creators
The Register: White House shelves SOPA… now what?
The Guardian: What if the culture industry shut down for a day?

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

Elsewhere on CMU this week…

PODCAST
This week’s podcast was recorded just before news of the MegaUpload shutdown and arrests broke, but Chris Cooke and I did discuss SOPA, the EMI sale opposition, the cancellation of the Big Chill and Big Day Out festivals, Michael Jackson’s musical based on the life and works of eighteenth century Scottish poet Robert Burns (really), and Alex James’ amazing investigation into the fast food industry. Look out for it all, ready to download here later this weekend.

IN THE NEWS
We’ve always known there would be opposition to the sale of EMI’s recordings and publishing divisions to Universal and Sony/ATV respectively, with pan-Europe indie label trade body IMPALA announcing it would call on European regulators to block the deals almost as soon as they had been announced. This week the UK’s Association Of Independent Music asked its members to write to their MPs opposing both deals, but perhaps more interestingly, Warner Music in the US hired a law firm that specialises in anti-trust cases, suggesting that it too might be preparing to launch an attempt to block one or both of the deals, presumably in the US.

Grooveshark was busy this week, launching an HTML5 web-based mobile app, which will allow it to get around the problem of having its conventional apps blocked from the Android and Apple app stores. Then it issued a subpoena to Digital Music News demanding information on the person who claimed in a comment on the blog that staff at the streaming service routinely upload unlicensed content to its servers. Then the Groovesharkers rounded off the week by withdrawing the service from Germany, claiming that the country’s publishing collection agency GEMA was demanding too much in royalties. GEMA responded by saying that there had been no negotiations about royalties whatsoever.

In the world of festivals, it was announced that this year’s New Zealand leg of the Big Day Out, which took place today, would be the last, as ticket sales drop and costs prove too high. Closer to home, this year’s Big Chill was cancelled, with organisers claiming that its proximity to the Olympics was making it difficult to book acts (because most musicians also complete in sport at an international level, presumably).

Not really news, but my favourite thing to appear in a newspaper this week was Blur bassist Alex James’ latest food column in The Sun. Heading down to the “beefy docks”, he examined how fast food is made, deducing that the manufacturing processes of companies like McDonald’s are brilliant and amazing. Also, McDonald’s food, it turns out, is almost exactly the same as you’d find in a Michelin-starred restaurant. Almost exactly.

FEATURES AND NEW MUSIC
This week, I spoke to Enter Shikari frontman Rou Reynolds as his band’s third album appeared at the top of the midweek charts. As well as that, we discussed politics (and his distaste for the term), the pros and cons of major labels, and the future of rock music. Porcelain Raft, whose debut album is out next week, put together a ten track playlist for us, which is wonderful. You should listen to it right away. And in his column this week, Eddy TM broke down the difficulties he’d had trying to select his favourite album of 2011.

In the Approved column, we had a full stream of Porcelain Raft‘s album (which like his playlist is wonderful), plus new tracks from New York techno producer Nicolas Jaar, Danish pop star Asbjørn, and London indie troupe Colours.

Elsewhere, we also brought you a full stream of Wiley‘s new album ‘Evolve Or Be Extinct’ (via The Guardian), new videos from Rusko and Stooshe, and new tracks from Sleigh Bells and Oberhofer.

Hello. Happy new year. It’s a little bit late to be saying that now really, but as this is my first Editor’s Letter of 2012 I think such pleasantries are still allowed. I hope you’ve had a very good year so far and continue to do so for the next eleven and a half months.

And during those eleven and a half months, what are we going to talk about? Well, fingers crossed we’ll mainly be talking about artists making great new music and delivering it to their fans in innovative new ways that are mutually beneficial for all involved. We probably won’t though, because we’re going to have to spend quite a lot of time discussing web blocking.

For the last couple of years (in the UK at least), we’ve mainly talked about three-strikes as the preferred method of stopping those bloody music fans from trying to listen to music in the easiest (or certainly the cheapest) way possible. Now it’s court injunctions forcing ISPs to block access to websites that infringe copyrights.

Of course, in some countries a fast track court process for obtaining such injunctions has always been higher up the agenda, but as the three-strikes system seemingly flounders in the UK and the US attempts to pass the web block enabling Stop Online Piracy Act, the blocking method has come to the fore even more in recent months.

And the injunction route does seem more likely to succeed than three-strikes. It’s potentially a lot less costly (well, it would be if a fast track system was created), allows content owners to react more quickly, relies less on extremely unreliable web monitoring software, and acts as a deterrent to casual file-sharers without completely alienating them. Of course it also sets the content industries up as potential web censors, and means we have to rely on them not to abuse the system.

Which is something those who oppose simpler copyright injunctions are very worried about, and in the US where SOPA is very much on the agenda those concerns are helping the opponents gain more support. All of which makes last year’s ‘Mega Song’ debacle all the more problematic for the content industries, busy, as they are, trying to convince the public and Congress they will use any web blocking system responsibly.

But if we assume that those campaigning against web blocking in the US and elsewhere are ultimately unsuccessful, and simpler, faster but responsible web blocking systems become the norm, we might finally be able to get on with creating great music and great products that people will want to pay for, rather than wasting so much time on the ‘file-sharing problem’. And the industry’s PR people, rather than talking up and justifying tougher copyright laws, can put more effort into educating the public about why paying for music is a good thing to do – and hopefully come up with something a damn site better than the still lacklustre Music Matters campaign.

Talking of great – or at least interesting – new music services, much as I’ve been disparaging about Facebook’s ‘frictionless sharing’ offer in the past, the latest part of that initiative was launched this week and I really think it could go a long way to drawing people over to legal music platforms. The ability to listen in real time with friends was promised back at the f8 conference last year, but has only now gone live.

The feature allows people to listen to music in real time with their friends and discuss it on Facebook’s instant messenger. When users click play on a track, Facebook simply loads the song in whatever they’ve named their streaming service of choice. There are other services that do similar things – such as Turntable.fm and Soundrop – but no one makes it this universal and simple. Not even MySpace, which announced almost the same thing this week, but confused it by talking it up as a ‘second screen’ TV service and locking it within the MySpace system.

Of course, if this does take off then it’s going to be even harder for artists to justify not having their music on streaming services – and all streaming services at that. And not just at some point down the line, but on the original release date. Or even before the official release date. Deliver your music to streaming services at the same time as radio, try to organise all of your fans to listen to the same track at the same time when the track premieres, build a buzz. We’ve all spent so long saying that the music industry needs to “harness the internet”. Well it’s been harnessed, you just need to stop fucking about and lead it out of the stable.

There’s so much potential in what’s on offer technology wise right now, and even more will become available in the coming months, so let’s please make 2012 the year that we stop debating whether or not what is already happening (and can’t be stopped anyway) should be ‘allowed’ to happen.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

And now, check out what else we’ve been up to at CMU this week…

PODCAST
For more discussion of web blocking, check out the first CMU podcast of the year, in which CMU Business Editor Chris Cooke and I also discuss the continued decline of HMV, the rebirth of MySpace (the social network that refuses to die), Meat Loaf’s new rap collaborations, Jay-Z and Beyonce’s daughter Blue Ivy Carter, and the BRITs nominations (which hadn’t actually been announced when we recorded it). Listen, download and/or subscribe at www.thecmuwebsite.com/podcast.

IN THE NEWS
Still on the subject of web blocking, the major labels decided this week that they were so displeased with the new anti-file-sharing proposals the Irish government hasn’t actually announced yet that they would sue for breach of European law. EMI Ireland boss Willie Kavanagh said that he thinks the soon to be announced measures are “unlikely to satisfy the music industry’s requirement for injunctive relief”.

Over at HMV, the new year brought more doom and gloom, as it was announced that Christmas sales had been disappointing again, and this time there was no snow to blame it on. In order to save the flagging retail business and stay on top of its loans, HMV decided to sell off its profitable live division, the MAMA Group, with numerous interested parties apparently already lined up to take it.

The nominations for this year’s BRIT Awards were announced at the Savoy hotel in London yesterday (just after we recorded our podcast), with Ed Sheeran picking up the most nominations. Emeli Sandé was also named one of the best artists who broke through into the mainstream last year (to go with her prize for being the artist music critics think is most likely to break through into the mainstream this year). The BRITs ceremony itself will take place next month.

Over in the world of rock, it was sadly announced that Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi has been diagnosed with cancer. However, his lymphoma having been caught in the early stages, it seems the prognosis is good. He and the band’s original line-up will continue to work on their first album together for 33 years while he receives treatment.

Iommi’s illness reportedly meant that Sabbath were forced to pull out of this year’s Coachella festival. However, the line-up for that festival does feature a number of other reunions. Both At The Drive-In and Refused delighted fans by announcing that they would play at the Californian fest.

There was another reunion in the news this week too, with Popjustice claiming that the original line-up of The Sugababes are in the process of recording new material. The Guardian promptly published an article saying they weren’t, though as that was based on one fairly non-committal tweet from Mutya Buena and a misreading of the Popjustice article, the odds still look pretty good that it is on.

Also in the news this week, Graham Coxon accidentally launched an online archive of Britain’s worst indie bands, the 100 Club was denied Grade II listed status on the grounds that granting it wouldn’t be in the punk spirit, and Wu-Tang rapper Ol’ Dirty Bastard‘s lengthy FBI file appeared online.

FEATURES AND NEW MUSIC
This week we spoke to The Big Pink’s Milo Cordell about the duo’s new album and his day job as head of Merok Records. We also got London quartet Trailer Trash Tracys to put together a ten track playlist of some of their favourite songs. And in his column this week Eddy Temple-Morris launched a search to find a singer to guest on a new track by Hervé.

In the CMU Approved column this week we had some great new music, with Jay-Z endorsed Gayngs spin-off Poliça, new 4AD signing Grimes, Norwegian pop types Philco Fiction, and a Mogwai remix of downbeat electronic outfit Laki Mera.

We also heard new music from Jay-Z himself, as he rushed down from the hospital to the studio to record his thoughts on new daughter Blue Ivy Carter. She also appears on the track, and became the youngest person to appear in the US Billboard chart – it’s been quite a busy first week for her.

As well as that, the trailer for LCD Soundsystem’s swansong documentary ‘Shut Up And Play The Hits’ appeared online, Grinderman released a Nick Zinner remix from their forthcoming remix album, plus Andrew Bird, Prinzhorn Dance School, Olafur Arnalds, Of Montreal, and Amateur Best all previewed tracks from new releases.

This is it then, the end of the year. Well, it is for my Editor’s Letter, anyway. There’s actually quite a bit more to come from CMU before we all rush off for Christmas. But this will be my last Friday afternoon missive until 2012, when I promise to return with more opinions, analysis and general moaning.

It’s been quite a year for music. Not one but two major labels were sold off, in the case of Warner Music quite unexpectedly, EMI not so much. Yet more streaming services launched, while Spotify’s dominance became more ingrained, leading it to a very close relationship with Facebook, and making it a target for increased amounts of criticism over the amount of money such services pay to artists.

Spotify wasn’t the only service to draw fire though, the Grooveshark controversey grew as Universal stepped up its campaign of litigation in a bid to to drive it offline. Though the most vocal critics were actually in the artist community, as an increasing number of self-releasing artists claimed that it was impossible to get their music taken out of the user-uploaded Grooveshark catalogue, even when they asked for tracks to be removed again and again. Patronising form emails saying that “your fans” must have re-uploaded tracks didn’t help.

As Grooveshark’s supposed takedown system is what theoretically protects it from liability for copyright infringement, frequent exposure of just how shoddy that system is doesn’t help their case. Though this is a grey area, and arguably even a shoddy takedown system allows protection under American’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act – a fact that is increasingly pissing off both artists and labels, both in the context of Grooveshark, and more generally.

Major mergers, the growth of streaming music, and digital copyright debates, they all continued this year, though the music story that 2011 will probably most be remembered for is the sad death of Amy Winehouse in July. It was news that was hugely shocking when it happened and that has continued to dominate in the subsequent five months. For someone whose career in music was relatively short, she certainly made a strong impact on the world, for good or bad.

You can hear more discussion about this year’s biggest music news stories on this week’s CMU podcast alongside a little chatter about this weeks events, look out for it at www.theCMUwebsite.com/podcast over the weekend. And, if retrospectives are what you want, keep an eye on your inbox next Friday when, in place of your usual CMU Daily, you’ll receive our annual Review Of The Year.

Though it’s not all over just yet – there are still four more editions of CMU Daily to come this year, with all the latest news, gossip and information from the music industry, plus our final three Artists Of The Year. But as this is the last Editor’s Letter, have a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Normal CMU service will then resume in January.

IN THE NEWS
Nothing says Christmas like a bitter legal battle, so it’s lucky there are a few of them about. In ongoing litigation news, it was announced that Sony Music and Warner Music had joined Universal’s latest lawsuit against Grooveshark, in which they accuse the streaming service’s staff (rather than users) of uploading large amounts of unlicensed music to the website.

But the big legal news of the week was altogether more bizarre. File transfer service MegaUpload last weekend released the video for a song which featured various big name artists (including Will.i.am, Chris Brown and Macy Gray) singing the virtues of the website. Shortly afterwards, it was replaced on YouTube with a message saying that it had been removed due to a copyright infringement claim by Universal. MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom (not his real name) responded angrily, insisting his company had permission from all artists involved and owned all copyright in the track. He promptly launched a lawsuit against Universal for improper use of the aforementioned Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

It makes a change, a file-sharing company suing a major, but when Universal was asked to justify its actions by a judge, the plot thickened further. Universal said it had not improperly used the DMCA, because it had not used the DMCA at all. Rather, it had asked YouTube to remove the video under a separate contract it has with the video site, allowing it to have any video it doesn’t like removed. Whether or not this actually gets Universal off the hook remains to be seen, but claims of allowing large companies to censor the internet could be more embarrassing for YouTube and its parent company Google.

Elsewhere, Madonna signed a new deal with Universal/Interscope to release albums recorded under her 360 degree deal with Live Nation, iTunes Match quietly launched outside the US, and former music industry exec John Atterberry died after a man began randomly shooting pedestrians in LA.

FEATURES AND NEW MUSIC
We continued our Artists Of The Year rundown this week, unveiling Beyonce, Wiley and Emika at three more of our favourite artists of 2011. Meanwhile, CMU clubbing columnist Vigsy picked the third of his tips for New Year’s Eve parties, this time The Vinyl Touch at London’s Rhythm Factory.

One of those artists of the year, Wiley, released a Christmas song this week, which is a bit of a standout amongst the deluge of such things we’ve had recently. From the song we also learnt that Wiley doesn’t eat raisin cake on the grounds that it’s all hassle. He would also like you to dance with Shirley.

Less Christmassy, but still new, we heard two new songs from The National, plus watched new videos from Major Lazer, Fucked Up, and The Darcys, the latter of which is a sci-fi epic in three minutes. Featuring members of Coldplay, Mew and A-ha, Apparatjik also announced that they would collaborate with fans to complete their second album.

PODCAST
I already mentioned it further up, but it can’t hurt to do so again. This week’s podcast sees Chris and I discuss MegaUpload’s silly song and Madonna’s new record deal. Plus, we look back through some of the big stories of 2011. You’ll be able to stream and download that here at some point over the weekend.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

So, this is the music industry’s second biggest complaining week of the year, after Mercury Nominations Week in July. Though this one makes up for just falling short of the top spot in the complaining stakes by being a double-header, with not only the announcement of the BBC Sound Of longlist, but also the nominations for the BRITs Critics’ Choice award.

I’m sure everyone realises the utter pointlessness of complaining about a list of names, but still they do it. Possibly because it sometimes feels like these particular lists originate with some shadowy group of self-important media types who get together and decide who deserves to be popular in secret, without the need to justify their viewpoints. Though the BBC does actually list all the people on its voting panel (hello!).

And, in reality, everyone votes in isolation, everyone would happily justify their opinions if asked, and most voters probably throw in a few surprises and outsiders into the pot. It’s just that once you start taking votes from just tens of people the more well known, and therefore more widely tipped, stuff naturally bubbles to the top. That applies to any sort of list selected in this way. The same would happen if you asked people for a group decision on whether they wanted to eat cake or sushi, even if the cake turned out to then be a bit stale.

The hate for these polls is disproportionate to what they actually represent. Especially given you’d get the same list of bands if you asked journalists “whose albums do you really hope won’t be as disappointing as you fear they might be?” Don’t get me wrong, I can see how the apparent announcement that a bunch of critics have decided what will be popular next year before anyone else has had a chance to decide whether they actually like that music or not rubs so many up the wrong way. But it is just a list though, chill out.

In fact, why not use these lists as a springboard to complain about something else instead? That’s way more fun. And that’s what I’m going to do now. Because Michael Kiwanuka, who appears on both the BBC Sound Of 2012 and BRITs Critics’ Choice lists, as well as MTV’s Brand New For 2012 shortlist, represents something that has been increasingly bugging me of late – the painstaking recreation of old production sounds in contemporary music.

It’s not that I don’t think people shouldn’t reference the past in their new work, every artist does in some way. But it’s becoming more and more popular these days for artists to make their music actually sound like it comes from an exact point in the past. I always thought the point of looking back during the music-making process was to take inspiration from your influences and then make it your own, but a number of artists now seem to be doing it the other way round, taking their own thing and then trying to insert their influences into what they’ve made, after the fact.

Mostly it seems to be early 80s soft rock sounds that are re-emerging in this way (yeah, I’m looking at you Bon Iver, with your Phil Collins clone ‘Beth/Rest’). However, in the case of Kiwanuka, everything about him is designed to look and sound like he’s a long lost soul musician from the 70s somehow transported forward to now. His artwork, his videos and, most importantly, his production all create this illusion. Take ‘Tell Me A Tale’, for example:

That’s a good song, a really good song. But it sounds like countless recordings that were made back in the 70s. Exactly like them. I don’t need any more of them thank you very much. There was a time when that sound was cutting edge and pushed studios to their limits. Now it’s a relic, a marker for a point in time. The only reason I can think of for creating the same sound identically now is in some attempt to become more informed and skilled as a producer, to learn how to more creatively use the technology on offer today. In fact, I used to know a producer who did exactly that. But he didn’t then go around releasing those recordings, they were just for practice.

People often describe new artists to me by saying things like: “He sounds like a 70s soul singer”. That’s fine. But I don’t expect those artists to then sound so much like a 70s soul singer that you have to double take. At the very least I expect them to be a pale imitation of Sly Stone. And I’d hope they were doing something new with that sound, or at least trying to. Even just a little bit.

Maybe I’m way off the zeitgeist here. Maybe we really have run out of new sounds, and will now have to regurgitate the past wholesale ad nauseum. But I’m pretty sure there are better ways to direct creativity. And to use creative energy. In fact, I don’t think this trend would annoy me as much if so much work hadn’t clearly gone into it.

IN THE NEWS
Outside the world of polls, it was all about Warner Music this week. Chairman and former CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr stepped down, as expected really, once it became clear that his long held wish to merge the company with EMI was not going to come off. He will still hold a place on WMG’s board of directors. Meanwhile, current Warner Music CEO Stephen Cooper was being upbeat amid speculation that new owner Access Industries was experiencing disappointment with its purchase, and news that the company had made a loss in the fourth quarter of their last financial year.

Elsewhere, a scandal blew up surrounding Dutch collection agency BUMA/STEMRA, Metallica’s manager revealed that the financial crisis in the Eurozone had caused the band to bring forward their plans to tour Europe by a year in case there was no money left by the time 2013 came around, and there was much hilarity as Deezer announced plans to launch in considerably more countries than actually exist.

FEATURES AND NEW MUSIC
We continued to announce our ten Artists Of The Year this week (more lists, yay!), this week covering rnb enigma The Weeknd, rock experimentalist EMA, and controversial hip hop collective Odd Future. Plus, Vigsy had another suggestion of where you might like to spend New Year’s Eve, this time selecting the Lost techno night at Plastic People.

And just because we’re getting towards the end of the year doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of new music to entertain yourself with. Amongst the fresh tacks and videos that appeared on theCMUwebsite.com this week we had a new song from Lana Del Rey, a six track sampler of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross‘ soundtrack for ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the trailer for The Chemical Brothers‘ concert film, a collaboration between Air and Beach House singer Victoria Legrand, a teaser trailer for Sleigh Bells‘ second album, a new track from Of Montreal, a video and remix from techno duo Blondes, a new video from indie trio Tennis as they announced their signing to ATP Recordings, and a mix from electronic troupe Breton.

As well as that, we saw Justin Bieber informing worried fathers that they’d do much better to buy their teenage daughters his perfume than risk them having sex with the boy next door, and the amazing unveiling of Bon Iver’s fitness regime.

PODCAST
After claiming that it was pointless to get all worked up about lists, we devoted quite a lot of time on this week’s podcast to the BBC Sound Of 2012 poll, and I did do a little bit of moaning about some of the artists on it. Not because they were on it, mind. Just because I don’t like them. I’m quite prepared for people to like stuff I don’t. It happens. We also discussed Warner Music and Deezer, and got all sporty with Underworld’s Olympic plans and Bon Iver’s exercise tips. Not only that, but I ate some fish. Chris was not impressed. It will all be going online here later today.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

I have spent more time than I would like watching press conferences of late. Any time spent watching a press conference is rather more than I’d like really, but recently several hours of my life have gone by while tech firms take an hour each to announce the latest way in which they’re somehow going to save the music industry.

And there’s the real problem. In the post-Jobs world, tech firms seem to have got it into their heads that every minor change to their business requires an expensive, live-streamed announcement, and a prior announcement to announce how truly groundbreaking the thing they’re going to announce is going to be.

Trouble is, not only are none of these ‘things’ particularly groundbreaking, but the people presenting them are generally not good enough public speakers to bring back their audience from the stinging disappointment of discovering that they’re just launching, well, a thing.

Take this week’s Spotify announcement. Spotify’s new app platform is actually quite exciting. You don’t need to play around with the few apps that are available in its beta period for very long to see that the potential is great. For one thing, after the seven years I’ve been using last.fm, its Spotify app is the first thing to convince me that its recommendations are of any use at all.

But watching Daniel Ek standing on a stage in New York via a Ustream feed that stalled every few seconds failed to impart any of what was exciting about this new development. All I could do was sit there and wonder where the “new direction” the announcement of the announcement had promised me was. Spotify’s direction hasn’t changed at all. It’s still a music streaming service that allows you to play music on demand. Just with some extra editorial content and recommendations thrown in.

So why build it up so much? OK, I can see the attraction of having a physical press conference and then pre-empting it with hype. You build up excitement (or at least intrigue), and then put on a big enough of a show so that every journalist feels they have to write about it, no matter how disappointed they may be with what was actually announced. And I get that it’s good to show journalists and consumers a demo of your new product.

But actually, I didn’t get a sense of what Spotify had added to its service until I started using it. In fact, the first draft of my report on the announcement – based just on Ek’s presentation – was almost wholly negative in tone. It wasn’t until a press email arrived later with a link through which meant I could try out the new apps myself, that I got anywhere near excited. Enough to revise my write up, in fact. So, why not just send out the press shot without the big event? In fact the staging of the press conference suggested a lack of confidence in the new product (“it needs hyping, it doesn’t stand up on its own”) or worries about the intelligence of music and tech journalists and Spotify users (“they’ll never figure this out unless Daniel does a demo”). Actually, the apps are totally intiutive, and totally sell themselves.

Anyway, I’ll not go on about this for too long – I already spoke about it enough on this week’s podcast (online here later today) – but as we’re heading towards the end of the year, let me make a plea for 2012: If you’re thinking about holding a press conference for some new music-focused technology, stop and ask yourself if, rather than spending all your investors’ cash on a glitzy press event, an email might not do the job as well or better? Because I will still feel duty bound to watch any press conference you put on, but, as you might of sensed, I’m a bit bored of them. Why not spend that money placating all the indie labels and artists who are going around saying you’re all evil?

IN THE NEWS THIS WEEK
Remarkably, some things managed to make it into the news this week without being announced via a press conference.

The continuing saga of Universal’s attempt to sue Grooveshark out of business took a new turn this week, after details of internal emails sent by Grooveshark Chairman Sina Simantob, included in Universal’s latest lawsuit against the streaming platform, showed that it has apparently been company policy for some time to build scale by filling the streaming website with unlicensed music. It’s not the smoking gun that proves Universal’s claim that Grooveshark executives and staff (rather than users) are responsible for illegally uploading tens of thousands of songs to the service’s catalogue, but it won’t win them many friends in the label or artist communities either.

Also this week, as Grooveshark battles on, another former controversial music service, turned legal damp squib, Napster, was closed down in the US market, as its users were merged with those of its new owner Rhapsody. Many remarked that that switch meant that the brand so often blamed for the decline of music industry revenues was now all but dead after twelve years in existence, though that would suggest that the Napster of now has any real relationship with the Napster of then beyond its name. Which is doesn’t.

Also this week, a musician finally appeared to give evidence to Lord Leveson’s inquiry into the operations of the British press. Charlotte Church, who has been a regular feature in the tabloids since childhood gave a long statement detailing exactly how she felt when she and her family had been maltreated by the papers.

Elsewhere in the pop courts, the doctor convicted of killing Michael Jackson, Conrad Murray, was sentenced on Tuesday. The lengthy hearing resulted in Murray being locked away for four years (the maximum sentence allowed) and ordered to pay restitution to Jackson’s family, with the exact amount payable to be decided at a later date. The judge also had stern words for Murray about his decision to twice refuse to give testimony in court, but instead tell his story via a TV documentary.

FEATURES AND NEW MUSIC
For our interview this week, the last of the year, I spoke to Memphis Industries co-founder Ollie Jacob ahead of the indie label’s thirteenth birthday gig at Koko in London. Eddy Temple-Morris, meanwhile, used his column to look back at some of his favourite music of 2011. Although not as much as he would like, as he’d just suffered a major hard drive failure.

Elsewhere, we unveiled our first of ten CMU Artists Of The Year, kicking off with the brilliant Three Trapped Tigers, and resident club tipper Vigsy selected the first of three tips for New Year’s Eve parties, with the amazing sounding Brazilian double new year celebration at Guanabara in London.

We also approved of Austra’s cover of ‘Crying’ by Roy Orbison, Japanese hybrid punk duo 0.8syooogeki, and a collection of songs written to order by Jack Cooper of Mazes.

Elsewhere on the music front, Fugazi launched their long awaited online gig archive, with 130 shows available to download – a number that will eventually rise to over 800 performances. And we also brought you a new EP from Odd Future’s Mike G, a remix from alt-pop duo AlunaGeorge, a brand new track by indie pop sextet Team Me, brilliant videos from Halls, Bleeding Heart Narrative, and St Spirit, and a Lana Del Rey cover as part of David Lyre‘s Advent giveaway.

PODCAST
And don’t forget that previously mentioned CMU podcast, which this week features discussion of Spotify’s appy announcement, Grooveshark’s legal battle with Universal, Charlotte Church speaking to the Leveson Inquiry, Dizzee Rascal’s new deal with Universal/Island, Conrad Murray’s sentencing, and Korn’s claims to have invented dubstep. And once again, I am forced to drink some horrible fizzy beverage as we do it.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

There have always been musicians who have tried to push the limits of what live performance is and can be, from The Grateful Dead pumping their audiences full of LSD to Pink Floyd performing behind a wall. But over the last eighteen months there seems to have been a real leap forward in the amount of effort some artists have been putting in.

Riz MC’s ‘MICroscope’ show, which I saw in June last year, and which mixed live music, theatre and audience interaction to create a new kind of performance, was a particular highlight of my 2010 gigging calendar. But this year I’ve been most enthralled by advances in projection technology. I will concede that’s is not the most thrilling sentence I have ever written, but stick with me.

Live projections have been a staple of live music for some time now, of course. Electronic producers like the Chemical Brothers and Orbital have long used them as a means of dressing up what might otherwise be a visually uninspiring performance, and it’s almost a decade since I first saw Mew using short films as a backdrop to their songs in a way I still see as the benchmark for such things. And as such backdrops become increasingly prevalent, thrown in as a matter of course more than an artistic accoutrement, it’s a benchmark I see not being met with increasing frequency at gigs of all sizes.

But now, as well as all that, some people have started bringing the visuals to the front of the stage and doing amazing things with them. At the Great Escape festival in Brighton this year, DJ Shadow performed his ‘Shadowsphere’ show, which sees him perform inside a sphere onto which are projected various images. In the CMU-programmed convention section of TGE, Shadow explained the inspiration behind the show and some of the technical difficulties involved in projecting images onto a surface that isn’t flat. It’s very clever stuff, and was mind-boggling to watch and try to understand. And then a month later Amon Tobin premiered his ‘ISAM’ show in Montreal and took things to a whole new level.

Like Shadow, Tobin performs inside a structure, appearing at various points in the show, but mostly allowing the visuals to fill the audience’s view. However, Tobin’s structure is more than just a sphere; it’s a huge arrangement of cubes, which through the magic of technology and design appear to move and change shape, become machinery, become filled with smoke, and become a surface on which a virtual Tobin manipulates streams of light, all locked into the precise, industrial sounds of the real Tobin’s ‘ISAM’ album.

At times it looks like it’s not actually there, just something you imagined, thanks to the incredible precision of the projections and the amazing skill that has gone into creating them.

Watching the show at The Forum in London last night, the second of two shows at the venue this week, was a jaw-dropping experience. Jaw-dropping as in my jaw actually dropped on several occasions. It was one of the most visually amazing performances I have ever seen. And that it fits so perfectly with Tobin’s music, ensuring a kind of overstimulation from bass that will knock the breath out of you, makes it almost unbelievable that the two weren’t created in unison.

For some sort of idea of what I’m trying to get across, take a look at this trailer, and also check out this behind the scenes video looking at how it was all put together. Then cross your fingers and hope that he’ll be back soon (rest assured, we’ll alert you to future UK shows in the Daily as soon as they are confirmed).

Now, I mentioned The Great Escape (and our involvement in it) back up there somewhere. We were very pleased to officially announce this week that we will be back to programme the convention again in 2012. Last year, as well as DJ Shadow, we had speakers including BRIT Award winning producer Paul Epworth, Topspin founder Ian Rogers, BPI chairman Tony Wadsworth, industry veteran Seymour Stein and singer songwriter Frank Turner. Next year we hope to match and exceed everything we achieved this year. We’re already talking to some exciting people, so you’ll be wanting to head over to www.escapegreat.com right now to get your early bird tickets. That’s what I reckon anyway.

There will, of course, no doubt be much discussion – on stage and between delegates – about the future of the music industry at The Great Escape in May, and we’ll look at some of the emerging technologies that will continue to allow artists and music companies to make money from their work. Some think that Grooveshark is the future of the industry. Mainly the people who work at Grooveshark admittedly, and certainly not the people who work at Universal Music. The people over at Universal don’t like Grooveshark one bit, and this week they launched a second lawsuit in their continued attempts to sue the streaming service out of business.

Universal says it has evidence that Grooveshark’s founders uploaded unlicensed content – thousands of songs – to the streaming service themselves, which would consitute more straight forward copyright infringement, arguably stopping them from saying safe harbour provisions in the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act make their service legitimate even if they are providing access to tracks (supposedly uploaded by users) that belong to artists or labels who have no deals in place with the web company. Grooveshark, however, hasn’t taken kindly to those allegations, saying that Universal’s claims are a “gross miscategorisation” of the facts.

That war of words was certainly the big music industry news story of the week, but what else has been occurring on theCMUwebsite.com in the last seven days I hear you cry. Unless that was the wind or something. Well, anyway, Hospital Records co-founder Tony Colman (aka London Elektricity) compiled his ten favourite tracks from the label’s back catalogue into a playlist to mark its fifteenth anniversary. We also spoke to Angular Records co-founder Joe Daniel about the upcoming Independent Label Market, which will take place in London next month, and Eddy Temple-Morris wrote about former Southern Death Cult drummer, label owner and activist Aki Nawaz.

In the CMU Approved column, we approved of Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Histoire De Melody Nelson’ album, which has just been re-issued, mysterious Californian indie sorts Tashaki Miyaki, techno producer Throwing Snow, and UK rapper Cappo.

Elsewhere, we also brought you new music from the likes of Kid Cudi, Gruff Rhys, Sharon Van Etten, Wrongtom, First Aid Kid, Paul Thomas Saunders, Foxes, Outfit, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Ital Tek, and contemporary classical composer Leah Kardos, who I’m off to see launch her debut album at The Wilmington Arms in London later on tonight.

And don’t forget the CMU podcast. Imagine if you did forget it, you’d miss out on chat about the Record of The Day Awards, The Great Escape, Grooveshark, Johnny Vaughan, the Gallagher Brothers, and Bruce Dickinson’s attempts to save a commercial airline from administration.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

There’s a debate rolling on at the moment.It’s one I’ve touched on here before, and it’s one that is seemingly going to continue to roll on and on for some time: Are streaming services good for the music business?

This week, Dorset-based distributor STHoldings announced that it was pulling all content owned by 234 of the 238 labels it represents off Spotify, Napster, Simfy and Rdio, claiming that “these services cannibalise the revenues of more traditional digital services”. It also quoted one of the departing labels who, when asked if they wanted to remove their music, said “Let’s keep the music special, fuck Spotify”.

The mass withdrawal seems partly based on the distributor having seen iTunes revenues drop by 24% in the first full three months it was delivering music to these streaming services, and also on Digital Music News’ interpretation of some research carried about by the US-based National Association Of Recording Merchandisers. An interpretation that both Spotify and NARM say is incorrect.

That the term “traditional services” and “let’s keep music special” are being used in relation to iTunes does suggest that the debate on digital music has started to move on a bit. It wasn’t that long ago that people would scream similar things in arguments about why iTunes and other digital retailers shouldn’t be allowed to compete with high street record shops. But this new phase of the debate shows that some in the music industry, and in particular the record industry, remain distrustful of new digital developments, and fearful of what new business models will do to old revenue streams.

It’s understandable that people fear the risk of the ‘new way’ destroying the ‘old way’ (or in this case the ‘old new way’), but being in business is all about taking risks. And besides, I suspect those withdrawing from Spotify et al are failing to really appreciate the risks of not participating in the new subscription-based and ad-funded business models. Because the music industry doesn’t control – and never really did – the way music fans acquire music. If enough music fans embrace them, the new ways are going to take off, and by resisting those ways now, artists, labels and distributors risk having to play catch up down the line.

People who download music from iTunes do so because for them it is the most convenient way to get music. People who use Spotify do so because for them that’s the most convenient way. People who download music illegally are also often attracted by the shear convenience of file-sharing. This isn’t new. Some people used to use their local record shop because for them that was most convenient way to get music, while others relied on Woolworths or WH Smiths, and others still bought most of their records from the Britannia Music Club so their cassettes and CDs arrived in the post. As a record label it wasnt your job to dictate how customers got your music, you put your records in as many of those places as you could. The good news is that, because there is infinite storage space in the digital domain, smaller labels aren’t locked out of the more mainstream routes to market like they were back in the heyday of the CD.

Of course the difference today is that the different ways of selling music operate different business models, whereas in the physical product era everyone worked to the same system, if on different terms. But that’s not a problem for the music fan. They don’t really care if and how the label and artist get paid – partly because of the received widsom that all labels are evil corporates who screw over their artists, and partly because they are more concerned with, hey, look, music! Which means these new routes to market are going to grow whatever, and it’s the job of the labels, distributors and digital service providers to figure out how to make things work behind the scenes.

Now, some labels may say that the payment structures of Spotify et al have been forced on them, that they get a poor deal compared to the majors, and that they simply can’t afford to take part on the current terms. Any of those claims may be true, it depends on the terms digital services are offering different rights owners, and most of those deals are shrouded in secrecy. Said secrecy is a problem in itself, but that’s really a different debate.

And I think there are four weaknesses to the arguments of those bailing on the subscription model right now.

First, yes some of the people clicking on Spotify tracks may be doing so instead of buying downloads – hence the hit to iTunes revenue – but a lot of Spotify users are not former iTunes customers. There’s a Venn diagram to be drawn somewhere, though I’ve not got the time or data to do it, but it’s certain that Spotify et al are in many cases generating revenue where previously there was none (ie Spotify users are not former iTunes customers).

Second, even if Spotify users are listening to tracks via the streaming service INSTEAD of buying them on iTunes, you can’t equate the per-play royalties you earn in one quarter to the wholesale price of a download. As streaming services grow, we need to increasingly start thinking more long term even on new content – ie the royalties that can be generated from one user throughout the lifetime of a song. Someone might only listen to a song once or twice, or it might become entwined with their personality and be played hundreds of times. In the latter case, the Spotify pay out in its totality would exceed that one-time download fee. And maybe in those terms streaming services force artists to try to be better. Only those who write songs that people take to heart will be truly successful.

In fact there are all sorts of problems with equating new style royalties with old style royalties in a simplistic way. Which I’m calling point three. Mercury-nominated producer Jon Hopkins said via Twitter this week: “[I] got paid £8 for 90,000 plays. Fuck Spotify … Radio 1 pay about £50 for each play”. At a glance that might look like a considerable disparity, but let’s say a million people hear that track on Radio 1 (and likely many more than that will), then that’s only £4.50 for 90,000 listeners. Comparing streaming service royalties with radio royalties actually makes more sense that comparing Spotify revenue with iTunes revenue, but only if number of listeners is taken into account.

And four, evidence shows that Spotify revenues improve with time, and I suspect many of the doubters simply haven’t stuck with it long enough. For proof of this I’d point you in the direction of a blog by another distributor, Kudos, whose experience of the streaming services seems dramatically different to ST’s, despite both companies being of a similar size. Managing Director Danny Ryan put his positive experience down to the length of time his labels had been available on the service – since its launch in 2008, rather than the three months ST stuck it out this summer.

On his blog post he wrote: “Streaming services are very ‘long tail’. It takes time for consumers to discover your music, add it to playlists, favourite it, and share it with friends. The longer a label is on a streaming platform, the more established they become, and the more time users will have had to discover their music … Currently, Spotify is our number two digital account in most of the territories where it exists in terms of actual turnover”.

Don’t get me wrong, if you are an artist or label or distributor, it’s not for me to tell you where to sell and distribute your music. For the time being – while ‘ownership’ model digital services still dominant, perhaps it does make sense for labels and artists with more niche or older audiences to exploit the iTunes and HMVs of this world as fully as possible, and to avoid newer competing approaches in the interim. And with legit services like Spotify, chosing not to participate is a luxury they offer.

But remember, we are not in control. The consumers are. Convenience is king, and for some Spotify style platforms are proving more convenient than anything else – including illegal file-sharing. Ignore the new way in the long term and you’ll almost certainly lose out – so the risk-free route of non-participation may actually turn out to be the riskiest decision of them all. And, of course, if too many rights owners bailed on the subscription services, they would cease to be so convenient for many, and those illegal platforms would start to look rather attractive all over again.

That’s a bit doom and gloom isn’t it? Well, don’t worry, because Google is going to save the music industry, just like every other tech company that has ever launched something vaguely musical. Actually, to be fair, unlike when Facebook announced its tie-up with Spotify, I don’t think anyone at the big Google Music launch announcement on Wednesday uttered those precise words. They were thinking it, though.

Now, you might remember me previously saying I wasn’t especially excited about Google doing music. So I was one of the few not to be disappointed by Google’s rather lacklustre announcement. Hooray for my low expectations. OK, one element of Google Music – now live in the US – was a bit interesting, but we’ll come to that in a second.

In the main what Google announced was fairly standard – a ‘traditional’ digital service, you might say (so, good news for Team ST) – bringing together various services already run perfectly well by other companies. The main download store is very much like iTunes, and your purchases are added to your Google digital locker, just like Amazon’s equivalent service already does. You can also give your Google+ followers a free play each of anything you buy, a bit like mflow, and the store does ‘direct-to-fan’ like Bandcamp.

And in case you wondered, that’s the interesting bit. Google may not be innovating, but its move into the direct-to-fan space is rather interesting. No one has really taken that mainstream yet, and none of Google Music’s direct competitors offer such a service. And if Google can get it right, the company’s size and online dominance means that self-releasing artists could find themselves promoted alongside mainstream artists. So it really does have the potential to set DIY and major label releases on more of a level playing field.

But, like I say, that’s IF Google gets it right, and I’m reserving judgement on that for now.

So, what else happened this week? Of course, since my last letter, there have been more developments in the sale of EMI, with Sony/ATV announcing its purchase of EMI Music Publishing late last Friday night UK time. EMI CEO Roger Faxon confirmed the sale in letters to his staff, adding that it would take some time to legally separate the company’s two divisions, and providing a list of answers to some of the pertinent questions relating to the immediate future. Though plenty of questions remain unanswered.

This week I also spoke to Chromeo’s Dave 1 ahead of the duo’s upcoming London show, and Real Estate put together a playlist for us. In his column, Eddy Temple-Morris announced an event to promote suicide prevention charity CALM, which will see a string of top DJs playing in Topman’s flagship Oxford Street store later this month.

In the CMU Approved column, we featured popstress Sky Ferreira, who might actually be getting around to releasing her debut album soon, the amazing John Maus, indie duo Crushed Beaks, and Dutch electronic producer Krampfhaft.

We also bought you new music from The Big Pink, Little Boots, Salem, The Maccabees, 120 Days, and a free download compilation from Nordic showcase night Ja Ja Ja.

And if you want more music talk, you can find it on the latest CMU podcast, in which Chris and I cover the EMI sale, the Google Music launch, the streaming debate, Justin Bieber’s continuing (or not) paternity suit, and The Clash’s Paul Simonon cooking in prison. I also drank another drink that I didn’t like, so that’s something look forward to. Download or stream it later today here.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

Waiting’s a funny thing, isn’t it? I spent most of today waiting for the sale of EMI’s recordings division to be announced, trying to second guess what time an announcement would arrive.

Midday, as Wall Street wakes up and the first US newswires go out (ie 7am there)? Nope, we were pretty sure it was Universal Music Group getting the EMI labels, and that it would be them making the announcement, and its parent company Vivendi isn’t listed in New York so Wall Street’s not relevant. But would it come from UMG’s New York office? In which case nothing was likely to be said before 9am their time, giving me time to go and grab lunch. But then wouldn’t UMG’s owner Vivendi actually make the announcement, and it’s in Paris an hour ahead of us. I wonder what time French people go for lunch.

The day was speeding by and nothing was happening. Was the press release actually going to come from UMG CEO Lucian Grainge’s HQ in LA? In which case, what time would I have to stick around til? But not to worry, because just before 3.30pm UK time Vivendi HQ did the honours, telling us that Universal Music Group had agreed to purchase EMI Music for £1.2 billion.

Phones rang, statuses were updated, a story was written and posted, suddenly the CMU office was alive with activity, where previously all had been calm. It’s quite exciting when that happens. Now I’m sat here writing this in the aftermath.

Although the sale of its publishing division has still not been formally announced, this nonetheless confirms that EMI is definitely being split up, and the music world’s fourth major label is set to become no label at all. Its recordings will be absorbed into Universal’s catalogue, and most likely Sony/ATV will grab the publishing division – insiders say that’s a done deal, though our sources tell us the formal announcement may now not come until next week.

Announcing the deal, UMG Chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge said: “This is an historic acquisition for UMG and an important step in preserving the legacy of EMI Music. For me, as an Englishman, EMI was the pre-eminent music company that I grew up with. Its artists and their music provided the soundtrack to my teenage years. Therefore, UMG is committed to both preserving EMI’s cultural heritage and artistic diversity and also investing in its artists and people to grow the company’s assets for the future. As a result, we will be better positioned to fully capitalise on the many new and exciting opportunities in the current marketplace, and also able to better serve our artists, songwriters and business partners, while offering fans even more choice”.

All of this, of course, depends on the deal getting through the various hurdles now facing it. Pan-European indie labels trade body IMPALA had already said it would oppose any Universal/EMI deal, and confirmed that again following Vivendi’s announcement. With Universal already the world’s biggest music company, IMPALA and others feel it absorbing EMI’s record labels will give it an unfair control of the music market.

IMPALA similarly opposed the merger of the Sony and BMG record labels back in 2004, and although it did not succeed in completely blocking the two companies from joining, it did slow down the process and force certain concessions to be made. Even more so when Universal merged its publishing division with BMG Music Publishing in 2007. UK indie label trade body AIM is also likely to react negatively to the news, and it’s expected that competition regulators will launch an investigation in the not too distant future.

However, Universal seems confident that it can get the deal approved, possibly by selling off some of its existing catalogue – it has already confirmed that it will sell off up to half a billion euros worth of “non-core assets” just to finance the takeover. Presumably, so long as it ends up with the Beatles, Coldplay, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Beach Boys and Radiohead recordings, the company will be happy to lose whatever it takes.

Still, after all this excitement, it’s a shame that this means that EMI will all but disappear. Following the rocky years the company spent owned by equity firm Terra Firma, it emerged leaner, fitter and more forward thinking. The strategy of encouraging a closer relationship between the publishing and recording divisions was both sensible and starting to show signs of paying off. And EMI has launched other interesting initiatives in the last eighteen months, most recently an API giving app developers access to content. What will happen to all of that remains to be seen, but it seems certain that much of the work done by current CEO Roger Faxon will be sadly lost.

Meanwhile we’ll have to get used to referring to the major labels as ‘the big three’. It’s not that long ago that we were saying ‘the big five’. And some of us can remember ‘the big six’. Times are definitely changing.

In other news this week, the government announced that it will close the Channel Islands VAT loophole, which has allowed companies based in the English Channel to exploit the Low Value Consignment Relief system, which means mail-order companies based in Jersey and Guernsey (and, as it turns out, Alderney) can send goods (often CDs and DVDs) with a retail value of less than £15 (and until recently £18) back to the mainland without having to charge VAT. This automatically gave these companies an advantage of between 15% and 20% over the years, and many have blamed this in part for the closure of many of the UK’s independent record shops.

While campaigners against LVCR, such as Retailers Against VAT Avoidance Schemes, one of whose members Richard Allen recently gave an interview to CMU, have been in celebratory mood, some of those businesses based on the Channel Islands have not, one suggesting he will challenge the government’s decision in court. Meanwhile the Entertainment Retailer’s Association welcomed the decision but with some caution.

Elsewhere this week, and following the Motion Picture Association’s success in getting the courts to force BT to block access to file-sharing website Newzbin earlier this year, the BPI led a consortium of trade bodies in asking the telco to also stop its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay. BT has said it is considering its response, but may agree in order to avoid another costly legal battle and also to help gain licences for its rumoured new music service.

And, of course, on Monday, Conrad Murray was found guilty of the involuntary manslaughter of Michael Jackson. A jury decided that he had acted negligently prior to the singer’s death. He will be sentenced later this month. Though first, you can watch a Channel 4 documentary following him through the trial - it’s on 4OD now.

CMU features this week reflected, somewhat, the huge number of music award ceremonies there are going on this month. First, we spoke to Festival Awards boss James Drury, who told us about the history of his awards (which take place next week) and the challenges facing the festival industry. Then I put together a playlist featuring some of the artists nominated at the inaugural Independent Music Awards. Organised by the Association Of Independent Music, the winners were announced at a ceremony in London last night.

In his column this week, Eddy Temple-Morris took a break from rants and anecdotes about the music and radio industries to indulge his other passion, food, giving us a tour of his favourite eateries in London.

Over in the CMU Approved column, between us Aly and I selected music from garage rockers White Denim, French indie troupe FAMY, Russian producer Vagina Vangi, plus we streamed the debut solo LP from former Plans & Apologies frontman Mallard The Wonderdog, a concept album about trying to cope with being an atheist who finds himself in Heaven.

And there was more new music beyond that too, including new tracks from Speech Debelle, Lindstrøm, Field Music, Nneka, Factory Floor and MJ Hibbett, who continues the theme of indie concept albums by announcing the release of his lo-fi rock opera ‘Dinosaur Planet’.

On top of that little lot, should you want more from Team CMU, then book a slot this weekend to listen to this week’s podcast, going online soon. You’ll find discussion on the closure of that VAT loophole, the EMI sale (prior to today’s developments, as we record on Thursday), the BPI calling on BT to block access to The Pirate Bay, the RIAA’s increasing distaste for how US courts are interpreting online copyright laws, the Conrad Murray trial’s conclusion, plus the collapse of Alex James’ festival.

And that’s it. Have yourself a lovely weekend!

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

This week Pete Townshend gave the very first John Peel Lecture at the radio industry’s big annual conference, the Radio Festival in Salford. As you might guess, talk at this event tends to be fairly media focused, but this new strand will allow issues relating to the music industry to be discussed, whilst also commemorating John Peel, the anniversary of his death falling just before the Festival.

Whenever you’re looking for someone to give a keynote talk, you want to go for a big name. Someone who people will have heard of, and who lots of people will want to come and listen to. But all too often this means some aging rocker (quite often a member of The Who, actually) wandering up to the lectern to talk at length about how it’s not like it used to be, and that life for musicians these days is just awful.

This is something which, when programming the convention side of The Great Escape, we here at CMU are very keen to avoid. Everyone loves hearing a veteran artist’s stories, and there can be a place for that kind of thing at industry conferences. And some old timers have new projects that mean they can offer some genuine insights into current debates. But just because someone has been earning their crust from music for 40 years doesn’t automatically qualify them to talk about the future of the industry. There’s a real danger these speeches lack optimism and ideas, and instead lament that the glory days are gone and everything’s fucked.

To be fair to Pete Townshend, he did his best (though he did admit it was he who decided to shun talking about the music making process – something he’s much more qualified to discuss – in favour of polemicising on the state of the industry). He didn’t simply sit down in the “everything’s fucked” camp and moan for an hour. And he did bring with him some ideas. It’s just that the ideas weren’t very good. Or, rather, they just weren’t that well informed.

The guitarist mainly focused on iTunes in his speech, basically suggesting that as the record industry is now all but dead (we’ll skirt over that point for now), Apple – with its well documented profits – should pick up the slack, and provide guidance, investment, marketing and distribution for new bands. “Is there really any good reason why”, he asked, “just because iTunes exists in the wild west internet land of Facebook and Twitter, it can’t provide some aspect of these services to the artists whose work it bleeds like a digital vampire Northern Rock for its enormous commission?”

Well, yes. There are several good reasons. For one, as industry analyst Mark Mulligan notes, “iTunes and other digital stores might be guilty of many things but [taking an] ‘enormous commission’ is not one of them”. iTunes may have most of the digital music retail market, but it does not bring in especially huge profits for Apple, and it was never designed to. Its raison d’être was originally to sell more iPods, and feeding i-devices remains its main objective, though, of course, these days it provides much more than just music.

And that leads us nicely to point two. Assuming Apple did decide to use some of its profits to invest in emerging talent, would it really be good for artists or the industry if the big new talent investor of the future was a technology company? As I said, iTunes is simply an added value service for Apple, it’s not core to what the company does. Apple makes gadgets. Anything Apple does other than making gadgets is ultimately expendable. If Apple decided tomorrow that iTunes wasn’t worth it, it could drop it and move on quite happily. A record label type operation even more so, because that would be even further removed from the world of selling gadgets.

There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about artists working with tech companies, or consumer brands, instead of traditional record companies. Given the undeniable incompetancies, at times, of the major labels, which have been more obvious since the arrival of downloading, you can see why such an idea might be attractive, and isolated artist/tech company/brand partnerships have worked really well. But as the default investors in new talent? Remember, anything that isn’t core business for these companies will always be dispensible.

Remember Starbucks? Remember how it wanted to be a record company? The coffee chain (a company that exists solely to sell coffee-based beverages) launched its own record label, Hear Music, in 2007. It insisted that this was not a cynical marketing exercise, the company was in it for the long haul, and they duly signed up some big names to grab headlines while pledging to invest in new talent. Then, not much more than a year later, and almost overnight, the plug was all but pulled, which wasn’t great news for Carly Simon who was in the process of releasing an album though the label.

Now, it’s not unknown for record companies to lose interest in certain artists even after pumping in loads of investment, and sometimes just before a big record release, but at least you know Universal Music will never lose interest in the concept of releasing music. And if your records sell well, generally labels remain good allies. But go the other route and, however well you records are received, if they aren’t also selling iPhones or cappuccinos, then you might be out the door.

Another strand of Townshend’s speech bemoaned that there is no one out there providing new artists with platforms to get themselves out into the world – in the internet age, he said, all artists must rely on the “wolves of Blogland where it seems to me a lot of the vilest bile comes from people who could be drunk, or just nuts”. But of course there are a huge number of online tools out there to help artists promote themselves, communicate with fans and sell their wares. In fact it was the existence of so many such tools that made one of the keynotes at this year’s Great Escape incredibly optimistic.

As Brighton-based musician, and advocate of DIY methods, Chris T-T said in a piece on his blog following Townshend’s talk: “Basically everything he suggested is already in place on the Internet, independently of iTunes. And funnily enough, service providers that get nearest his vision are the most exploitative … Meanwhile the good online tools for artists are plethora and you pick and choose. If Apple turned around tomorrow and offered exactly what Townshend asked for, it wouldn’t add a single USP beyond what’s competing online already, built by small, highly competitive companies fighting to build their own roster or corner a bit of the market”.

Townshend made more sense when he talked about his “inner artist”, noting the struggle between creating music and dealing with the business side of things, and how these often conflict. “A creative person would prefer their music to be stolen and enjoyed than ignored”, he said. “This is the dilemma for every creative soul: he or she would prefer to starve and be heard, than to eat well and be ignored”. It’s a dilemma pretty much every artist will recognise, and those at the grass roots will be reassured someone as successful and experienced as Townshend feels the same way. But to suggest that having the warm hand of a multi-national tech firm on their back is the only way to keep future artists on track, and well fed, is nonsensical.

Read the full text of Pete Townshend’s speech here.

In other news this week, Warner followed Universal in dropping out of the bidding for EMI’s record labels, which means there are no more buyers lined up for that side of the company. Whether Warner can be coaxed back (this possibly being an attempt to push Citigroup to accept a lower price) or if the publishing side of EMI will be sold on its own remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, a class action lawsuit in the US led by Rob Zombie and the estate of Rick James demanding a higher share of digital royalties was allowed to proceed. And it was suggested that an amendment to the ruling on EMI’s failed case against digital locker service MP3tunes might affect the outcome of Universal’s lawsuit against Grooveshark.

Over in the Conrad Murray trial, the jury began deliberating, although not before the defence’s star witness had been accused of being in contempt of court.

And in yet more legal news, Justin Bieber’s lawyers issued a cease and desist letter against a campaign using his name and image to falsely claim that new artists trying to get ahead by uploading cover versions of songs to YouTube would land themselves in jail if a new bit of proposed US copyright legislation goes through. Then Bieber received a legal letter of his own, telling him that he is being sued by a woman who claims he is the father of her newborn child. As outlandish as it sounds, her lawyers insist that she has “credible evidence”. But they would, wouldn’t they?

From legal news to the CMU tax desk, where, as the price of products that benefit from that much previously documented VAT loophole in the Channel Islands was officially reduced from £18 to £15, rumours started to circulate that the whole tax relief system was about to be phased out. There was speculation an announcement to that effect could come within days, and that might still be the case. Though, even if not, everyone now seems certain the VAT dodge will be axed sooner rather than later. To find out how exactly this VAT loophole works, why it is relevant to music retail, and what good might come out of it being axed, CMU’s Chris Cooke interviewed a long time campaigner against the Channel Islands tax relief system, Richard Allen, earlier this week.

Elsewhere in CMU land, Los Campesinos! guitarist Neil Beale put together a great playlist for us, and Eddy Temple-Morris wrote a piece defending Coldplay.

Over in the CMU Approved column, we brought you new music from brilliant electronic producers Torgny and Doldrums, US indie types Gardens And Villa, plus a comic/music combo from Amateur Best (aka Primary 1′s Joe Flory). We also have The Flaming Lips‘ 24 hour song, a track from French singer-songwriter Soko‘s long-awaited debut album, a trailer for Esben And The Witch‘s upcoming online cinema event, and a new video from Zulu Winter.

Also before I go, I should point you in the direction of the CMU supported student categories at this year’s Record Of The Day Awards. If you’re a student journalist or photographer (or know someone who is) head over here for details of how to submit work to be considered for the award. Previous winners have gone on to work for a variety of publications, and this year’s winners will be invited to cover The Great Escape for CMU.

And finally, as ever, we can’t go without a mention for this week’s CMU podcast. This week, Chris and I discussed Universal’s digital royalties lawsuit, the Conrad Murray trial, Pete Townshend’s John Peel Lecture, Justin Bieber’s paternity case (in more detail than was perhaps necessary) and fans of the Insane Clown Posse’s classification by the FBI as a street gang.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

This week BT was finally served with the injunction that forces it to block its customers from accessing file-sharing website Newzbin. It’s not really news that would normally be worth reporting in any detail, the case having actually been concluded in July, but the wording of this injunction is interesting.

The UK music industry, despite what many think, has actually been fairly hesitant to launch legal action against file-sharers or those who run websites that help with the file-sharing process.

Aside from a small number of test case lawsuits against a bunch of prolific file-sharers, and some subsequent industry-backed criminal proceedings (most prominently the admittedly unwise action against the operators of the Oink communty), things have been reasonably quiet on that front over here.

Certainly we’ve never seen anything like the mass suing of individual file-sharers we did in the US, or Germany for that matter, nor any major legal actions against the operators of file-sharing networks. True that was partly because none of the major file-sharing companies were based in the UK, but it was also because record label trade body the BPI – to its credit – recognised early on how futile excessive litigation was. It focused its efforts, instead, on lobbying for new laws to force the internet service providers to help combat piracy. And whatever you think of the various file-sharing measures in the Digital Economy Act, they are all surely better than suing 30,000 individual music fans.

Not least because such litigation – aside from the possible PR damage when targeted at individual consumers – is also very expensive. So much so, aside from them strategically deciding that lobbying was more important than suing in response to the file-sharing issue, you couldn’t help but think that record industry leaders over here thought that – if they just waited long enough – as bandwidth speeds increased the film industry might step in and cover the costs of expensive legal action. And that’s what happened with Newzbin.

Although music is available on the file-sharing site, it was the Motion Picture Association that sued the operators of the site and, when they shifted their operations to Sweden to avoid the jurisidiction of the English courts, it was the MPA who took legal action to force BT – as the UK’s biggest ISP – to block access to the file-sharing service.

When the High Court ruled in the MPA’s favour earlier this year – ordering Newzbin to be blocked – some pointed out that such blocks are easy to circumvent because Newzbin will just quickly register a new domain name, or operate from a different IP address. Meanwhile, as this was the first lawsuit of its kind in the UK – no website had previously been blocked on copyright grounds – there were also questions as to who would pay for the cost of instigating the block, and what would happen if BT’s customers complained (as Newzbin, after all, does provide some links to licensed content). Because we were in unchartered waters, we didn’t know if and how these matters would be dealt with, which is why it was interesting when the injunction finally dropped. As it happens, all said matters were dealt with.

Firstly, as well as blocking the site as it stands now, BT must block any IP addresses or URLs used by Newzbin in the future. Meanwhile BT customers will not be allowed to launch their own legal action in relation to the block, because BT’s blocking of the site is already allowed under the terms and conditions of its ISP service.

Perhaps most interesting for rights owners, though, is the money bit. The MPA will not have to cover any costs incurred by BT in setting up this block. In the case of the Digital Economy Act’s main anti-file-sharing system – the graduated response process for warning and then punishing persistent file-sharers – it’s the content owners who will have to cover the bulk of the costs (assuming said process ever actually begins – we found out this week that whole thing had been delayed even further, and the first wave of warning letters will now not go out until at least 2013). But under the injunction system, other than the costs of getting the injunction in the first place, the rights owners will be let off contributing to the ISP’s expenditure.

Now the MPA has gone to the trouble of testing the ground here, we can probably expect other content owners – including the record industry – to apply for similar injunctions in the coming months and years. The big one to get blocked would be The Pirate Bay, which, for all the millions of dollars spent on generally successful legal actions against it, remains very much online.

Will this or any other injunction actually achieve its goal? Well, possibly. Of course those who really want to will still be able to find ways to access Newzbin – or any other blocked website – either (in the short term) by switching to another internet provider or by employing technical measures for accessing blocked websites. But more casual users won’t know how to do that, or won’t bother to try. They might just go and use other illegal file-sharing networks instead, but they might be encouraged to try out a legal online platform (especially if they never realised Newzbin was illegal to start with). So job done. Though, conversely, thanks to the publicity this case has brought it, Newzbin might find it is getting new users from those UK web surfers not using BT to access the net.

Either way, for those who want to, new methods for accessing unlicensed content for free will no doubt materialise, faster than the content companies, their technical partners, the legal system and even the more friendly ISPs can keep up with them. This is the reality of the internet. Which brings me back to that old argument. OK, the British content industries may not have gone as crazy as their American counterparts in their various efforts to combat online piracy, but perhaps the energy they have employed here and there would have been better focused on creating better legal alternatives. And if the US record industry had only invested all the phenomenal levels of effort (and money) it put into suing file-sharers in that way, who knows how good a licenced music service we could now have.

Of course there are some pretty good legal services out there already, some run by the music companies, most by well-funded digital entrepreneurs who have persuaded the record labels and music publishers to play ball. The UK boss of one of them, Deezer’s Mark Foster, recently said he thought a number of the legal platforms now operating will disappear in the coming year. He’s probably right. But I hope quite a few new services arrive too – because while there are some good legal music platforms out there already, I suspect the really good ones are yet to be developed.

For what it’s worth, I think one of the better existing services is Spotify, despite its weaknesses, and my dislike for its recent alliance with Facebook, and those frequent claims of late that the Swedish streaming firm is somehow ripping off artists. Despite there being a lot of love for Spotify, among artists and music fans, in its early days, recently it’s seemed liked some in the music community are as angry about it as they are the illegal alternatives. Many seem to presume that it’s run by evil, greedy people whose main motivation for getting up in the morning is to screw musicians out of cash.

I don’t think that’s true. Their business model is far from proven (and far from clear – it being shrouded in so much secrecy – not entirely their fault, but it does fuel the hater’s concerns), but Daniel Ek and his team are, I believe, genuinely interested in trying to find a way of providing consumers – many of whom used to file-share – with a means of accessing music they like and enjoy while also compensating artists for their time and effort. Are they paying enough to the various strands of the music industry? I don’t know. What happens when the venture capital runs out? I don’t know. But at least they are trying to move us all beyond ultimately futile lawsuits and lobbying.

Coldplay, however, don’t agree with me. Or so it seems. It emerged this week that their new album, ‘Mylo Xyloto’, would not be available on Spotify (or most streaming services, but Spotify has taken most of the focus). EMI was non-committal as to why, but many assume the band are hoping to mirror the success of Adele’s ’21′ in terms of conventional record sales, and that record breaking album is also not available on the streaming service. If that is true, presumably the thinking is that when people find a buzzy new album isn’t available on their favourite streaming service, they’ll instead go to iTunes or their nearest HMV and buy it in the old fashioned way. OK, Adele and Coldplay have fanbases perhaps less prone to use file-sharing networks, though said fans are probably less likely to use Spotify too. I suspect many of Coldplay’s Spotify-using fans will be tempted to say “fuck you” and go find their new album from illegal sources. Who knows?

Of course some will say that surely artists should be allowed to decide what services sell their music, and to strike up the deals that best suit them. Tom Waits’ new album, also out this week, isn’t on Spotify either, and perhaps that’s why both he and Coldplay have such prominent placing on the iTunes home page at the moment. Though if the music industry really wants to take the digital revolution to the next level, where “file-sharing is killing music” paranoia can be put to bed once and for all, I’m not sure letting the biggest artists opt out is going to help. Industry analyst Mark Mulligan also published an interesting blog post on this very topic this morning, so if you want to look at all this in more detail I suggest you head there now.

But blimey, so much else happened this week. Let’s have a quick look at all that too.

First up, the High Court (them again) decided that Morrissey’s libel lawsuit against the NME should be allowed to proceed to trial. The singer claims that the magazine, and specifically its then editor Conor McNicholas, doctored comments he’d made in a 2007 interview to make him sound like a racist. NME publisher IPC earlier this month attempted to have the case thrown out on the grounds that he’d taken four years to sue and seen no damage to his reputation in that time. However, the judge said that there was just reason for it to continue and Moz’s explanation for taking so long to begin proeedings was “credible”.

A wrangle that now won’t go to court is the case of children’s charity Rhythmix against ‘X-Factor’ group Rhythmix. The charity was shocked when the group announced their name last month, even more so when the makers of ‘X-Factor’ applied to register the trademark in the music space. The charity wrote to the TV programme’s producers pointing out the likely chance of confusion. Team ‘X’ advised the organisation to get a good lawyer. However, this week a personal appeal from the charity’s chief exec to Simon Cowell himself seems to have done the trick. The group will now be known as Little Mix.

Still in the courts, but in LA now, and the defence in the Conrad Murray trial began making their case. Things didn’t start with quite the bang of the prosecution’s testimonies, and some defence witnesses seemed to do more harm that good. Still, we got some insight into Michael Jackson’s relationship with prescription drugs (particularly Demerol), the behind the scenes dealings for his ill-fated O2 Arena residency, and Murray’s apparently kind and generous character.

Also this week, the results of the inquest into Amy Winehouse’s death in July were announced (though not before the copy meant for her family was sent to the wrong address). Her death was attributed to the high levels of alcohol in her system (five times the drink drive limit), built up over a number of days after a three week period of abstinence.

And elsewhere, the race to buy EMI continued, with rumours spreading that BMG and Warner are now favourites to split the company between them, and that Universal is out of the running.

In the world of CMU features, we this week interviewed record producer Steve Levine about the past, present and future of music production, Eddy Temple-Morris had some advice for any struggling musicians out there, and new pop musician Archeo picked out ten of his favourite tracks for us.

In the CMU Approved slot, we had top music blog Gorilla Vs Bear’s new Halloween mix, plus music from Pyramid Vritra, Ghost Wave and Tremoro Tarantura. Elsewhere, we saw Duck Sauce become genitals in their quite disturbing new video, heard new music from The DOT (aka the Streets’ Mike Skinner and The Music’s Rob Harvey), and sampled brand new tracks from Zomby, Busdriver, Active Child, and Make Do And Mend.

And in this week’s podcast, Chris and I can be found discussing Morrissey’s libel case against the NME, the injunction to force BT to block Newzbin, Google’s still not launched download store, the Conrad Murray trial, and Rhythmix (both of them).

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

If you happen to own an olive grove, as I’m sure many of you do, you’ll probably want to go out and check on your crop. This week a lot of people seem to have been waving olive branches around, leaving the unusual smell of rekindled friendship all over the music business.

It started, of course, with The Stone Roses announcing their reunion on Tuesday. By the time the press conference started, that John Squire and Ian Brown had settled their longheld differences came as a surprise to no one.

Despite the fact that the identities of who exactly was making an announcement hadn’t been revealed in the invitation that went out to the press, the fact that it was the Roses who had something to announce had been common knowledge since the previous week. That they would announce at least two reunion shows in Manchester was also known. And so it came to pass, olive branches all round.

Then yesterday, Noel Gallagher revealed that he’d recently patched things up with Damon Albarn. The pair apparently met in a club and reminisced about the feud their respective bands had back in the 90s, presumably belly laughing about the time Gallagher wished AIDS upon Albarn and Blur bassist Alex James. Oh, such japes.

And it doesn’t stop there. Last time Liam Gallagher tweeted a response to something his brother had said about him in an interview it pre-empted a lawsuit. This week he tweeted, after Noel claimed that Oasis had become a “sham” in their latter years, telling his older sibling to “go to bed and give me a shout in 2015″. Reading between the lines is unnecessary, because Liam subsequently told Rolling Stone: “In 2015, if we can put our shit aside, [Oasis] can tour and play the [debut] album in its entirety for the 20th anniversary. I’d be up for that”.

Although he did add: “I think [Noel] needs to do his solo thing first and realise he’s not that good without his brother. He’s got to find out for himself. I’m up for [a reunion] – I’m not desperate for it. If it doesn’t work out, I don’t give a shit, I’m quite happy with Beady Eye”.

So maybe that one’s not quite the love-in the other reconciliations appear to be. Although I think Liam is probably protesting a little bit too much there. We’ll see who talks up the reunion more as 2015 draws closer.

Thankfully it wasn’t all back patting and making up this week, which suits the miserable bastard I pretend to be just fine. It was a very busy week in the pop courts with everyone getting all angry all over the place. Even the Conrad Murray trial, which was postponed for much of the week, saw the prosecution deliver two more firm blows to the defence when it got back under way again. Their final witness, a leading expert on the drug that killed the late king of pop, first damned Murray’s willingness to give Michael Jackson the surgical drugs he requested, and then said that the defence’s theory that Jackson self-administered the dose of propofol that killed him was “crazy”.

Meanwhile, a libel judge was trying to decide whether or not Morrissey’s case against the NME for portraying him as a racist back in 2008 should be allowed to go to court. That decision is taking a bit longer than expected to be announced, but we’re all hoping it does continue, because it’ll be a great case. Morrissey and Conor McNicholas both giving evidence – imagine!

As well as all that, it was announced that the High Court will consider Terra Firma’s latest legal battle with Citigroup – actually an action against PricewaterhouseCoopers, to get files relating to the day they helped the bank take control of EMI – next month; one of The Pirate Bay’s co-founders, Goddfrid Svartholm, lost his appeal against his sentence from the original copyright infringement trial against all three founders and a funder, mainly on the grounds that he hasn’t turned up to any of the appeal hearings and no one knows where he is; four members of UB40 were declared bankrupt; The Daily Mail was forced to pay damages to Susan Boyle’s former manager; former Lady Gaga collaborator Rob Fusari was hit with another lawsuit in relation to his work with the singer; Kanye West and Jay-Z were sued over a Syl Johnson sample on their ‘Watch The Throne’ album; and Soulja Boy was arrested for Marijuana possession. Though back to our original theme of making up, Rihanna and David LaChappelle reached a settlement in relation to his claims that she plagiarised one of his photo shoots.

But either way, a busy week in the old pop courts. Speaking of being busy, we put a couple of musicians to work for us this week, and a very good job they did too. First up, CMU Business Editor Chris Cooke got in touch with former Babyshambles drummer Adam Ficek to ask him a few questions. As well as chatting about Ficek’s new solo album and his time with that particular Pete Doherty-fronted project, he also had some very interesting things to say on the subject of the music industry and trying to make it as a DIY artist.

Then we asked Bombay Bicycle Club bassist Ed Nash to put together a Powers Of Ten playlist for us. Not only did he do so, but he came up with music old, new, and unexpected, which we’ve been enjoying listening to. Especially Fat Man Scoop.

And speaking of new music, in the Approved column this week, we had the lowdown on the new Justice album, ‘Audio, Video, Disco’, along with a full stream of the record ahead of its release next week, plus some choice cuts from the latest releases by Tycho, Trailer Trash Tracys, and This Frontier Needs Heroes.

We also brought you a mercifully short run through Lou Reed and Metallica‘s collaborative album, a full stream of Tom Waits‘ new LP, the new EP from Stealing Sheep, plus the utterly amazing video for the unlikely collaboration between Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo and electro-house producer Steve Aoki, ‘Earthquakey People’.

If you want some more in depth chat about The Stone Roses reunion, Morrissey’s libel lawsuit against the NME, and Pirate Bay co-founder Goddfrid Svartholm’s appeal hearing mentioned above, then get along and listen to this week’s CMU podcast. There you’ll also find discussion of Westlife‘s split, the increase in vinyl sales, and predictions for the future of digital music.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

This week, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal claimed that Google is finally preparing to launch its long awaited download store.

Now, I can remember – sometime in the dim and distant past – when talk of some sort of gTunes service entering the digital music market was exciting. After all, we all used to say, if anyone can take on Apple’s iTunes, surely its Google, what will all that existing traffic those guys enjoy, and all the user data they’re holding onto from years of searches and Gmailing.

But my enthusiasm about the prospect of a Google download service has long since waned. For starters, if Amazon couldn’t beat Apple in the download space, do we really think Google can?

And then there’s the fact that, everytime Google’s iTunes-killer has been previously rumoured, the web giant has subsequently come out with some really lacklustre new music service. The most recent lacklustre ‘innovation’ was Google’s digital locker, and any new Google download store – it seems likely – will simply be an add-on to that, bringing the Google locker more in line with Amazon’s rival service, where users can either upload existing MP3s into their cloud storage zone, or populate it with tracks bought from an accompanying download store.

I’m not especially excited about digital lockers. And I’m not especially excited about Google becoming the latest in a long line of tech companies to launch their own proprietary MP3 stores. Can’t Google think of something more innovative in music? A big idea that can move the whole digital music space forward a few notches? Something revolutionary like the original Gmail, and not just a mediocre copy of someone else’s services like, dare I say it, Google+.

You could argue that Google has already done something revolutionary in the digital music space (albeit quietly and over time, and possibly not completely deliberately) by turning YouTube into the most successful legal streaming service on the net, despite it not being overtly designed to service music fans. I can’t help thinking that if Google wants to be a serious player in the digital music space, doing something really clever with the music on YouTube would be the way to go about it. Though the bosses at VEVO – the music video service powered by Google technology but owned and managed by Sony and Universal Music – might argue they are already doing clever things, and all the web giant need do is stand by and provide some some technical wizardry when required. We’ll see I guess.

Some are already trying to write off streaming music services (especially the audio ones) as a temporary fad in the wider development of digital music, and the unearthing this week of financials relating to two of the big players – Spotify and We7 – both of whom are still making substantial losses, provided amunition for those who believe streaming platforms can’t work. Spotify’s business model, in particular, came under attack on some US blogs. But that these companies are still losing money isn’t surprising – both are still relatively new and both have grown massively in the last two years. Plus, of course, these figures come from before recent efforts by both We7 and Spotify to reduce the costs of their freemium services. I’m not saying either have definitely developed a sustainable business model just yet, but it seems very unfair to write them off so soon.

Though if I’m preaching about not writing things off too soon, I suppose I should wait and see what Google has to say if these reports of yet another music-based product launch are true. As this week’s big new digital music innovation was a site for selling second hand MP3s, perhaps whatever Team Google announce will actually seem exciting by comparison.

But what else happened this week? Well, how about an update on the ongoing Conrad Murray trial? And things still aren’t looking too good for the doctor accused of causing Michael Jackson’s death, despite efforts by the defence to convince the jury that the singer himself administered the fatal drug, and that the insomnia that caused him to do so was caused by another doctor.

The latter claim was raised by Murray himself this week. Not that he testified – it’s unlikely he’ll actually take to the witness stand during the trial – but we did hear his own account of what happened on the day of the king of pop’s death via a taped interview with police, played out in the courtroom.

In it Murray said that he believed that Jackson had been visiting his dermatologist Dr Arnold Klein up to three times a week prior to his death, and that he had been prescribing the singer the painkiller Demerol, which may have caused the chronic insomnia that Murray was then combatting with propofol, the drug that killed the singer. But the autopsy results did not show any trace of Demerol in Jackson’s system, and while one prosecution witness did testify that the singer was taking the drug, and that it could result in insomnia, it seems the judge hearing the case considers the ‘Demerol defence’ something of a distraction. Certainly he’s refused to let the defence call Klein as a witness.

As for the defence’s other big claim – that Jackson self-administered the fatal shot of propofol – that too took a knock this week. First the doctor who conducted Jackson’s autopsy, Dr Christopher Rogers, said it was “unreasonable to believe” that Jackson had given himself the fatal dose, and then the defence team were forced to admit that one of their own theories – that the singer may have drunk the drug – had to be rejected, because their own research showed propofol taken orally wouldn’t result in cardiac arrest.

So, the prosecution – who are still leading the proceedings – had a good week. Still, it’s the defence team’s turn next week, so perhaps their arguments will gain ground over the next seven days. But, in the meantime, and to make sure the jury remembered all the ways in which Murray acted negligently in the run up to and shortly after Jackson’s death, one of the prosecution’s final witnesses – Dr Alon Steinberg – summarised his errors in a six point list. The case continues, as we say.

Elsewhere in music news this week, there was continued speculation about the future of EMI as an announcement from Citigroup on that very subject was awaited. The US bank took final bids for the major label last week, and although it was initially thought that it might hold off selling if offers didn’t come close enough to the asking price, the Mail On Sunday last weekend reckoned that the bankers were now more keen on just getting a sale completed. All of which means that it’s looking increasingly likely that EMI will be split into two and sold off to different bidders – that approach likely to earn Citigroup more money. Universal or Warner are reportedly favourites to get the recordings side, while either Sony/ATV or BMG look set to get publishing.

In other news, BT and Talk Talk were given the opportunity to appeal their unsuccessful judicial review of the copyright portions of the Digital Economy Act, ‘X-Factor’ took the name of a children’s charity for one of its new acts and then told the charity to piss off when they complained, the ‘on air, on sale’ system for releasing singles – where tracks are serviced to download stores at the same time as radio – looked to have died, Ministry Of Sound succeeded in blocking a developer from building flats opposite its club, and Peter Hook vowed to “fuck over” New Order. But best of all this week, was this story about Snoop Dogg getting gardening tips from a champion swede grower.

This week I also spoke to Gruff Rhys about his solo career and the soundtrack he recently created for an iPhone app-based game, Nitin Sawhney created a Powers Of Ten playlist for us, and in his column Eddy Temple-Morris asked if it was right for political events to be covered by blanket music licences.

We approved of Swedish pop duo Icona Pop, dance outfit DRMCNT, purveyors of psychedelia PET, and ambient troupe Jewellers, plus brought you Thom Yorke‘s Boiler Room DJ set, a stream of M83‘s new album, a Jesus And Mary Chain cover by Asobi Seksu, and the trailer for a new horror movie staring Pete Doherty.

And of course, how could I forget this week’s CMU podcast, which this week contains discussion of the Conrad Murray trial, EMI bids, ‘on air, on sale’, Peter Hook and Snoop Dogg’s love of gardening.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

When Apple launches a new product, you can be pretty sure that it will dominate the headlines for days. There are few news stories that can overshadow such an event because Apple has become so good at turning its product launches into just that: events.

Sadly, the one thing guaranteed to do it happened this week. Just 24 hours after Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the new iPhone 4S, his predecessor Steve Jobs, the man who developed the theatre and spectacle of the company’s announcements, succumbed to the cancer he had been suffering with since 2003.

It was only in August that Jobs stepped down as Apple’s CEO, taking on the role of Chairman instead. Although he had taken a number of leaves of absence from the company in recent years, usually prompting wobbles in Apple’s share price, he being so tied to its vision and ethos, he’d always returned (most recently against doctor’s orders to launch the iPad 2) seemingly with as much drive as ever.

However, two months ago he wrote in his resignation letter: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come”.

I think most of us knew what that meant. Any man who can brush off pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant is going to have to be very ill indeed to admit that they can’t carry on. But still, I’m not sure any of us quite expected Jobs’ death to come so quickly and it is incredibly sad that a man with such a talent and flair for business died aged just 56.

As the news spread, tributes began to pour in, and such a respected figure was he that even the protesters occupying Wall Street, campaigning against the capitalist system of which Apple is part, felt the need to mark the sadness of his passing.

What this means for Apple as a company isn’t yet clear. Those wobbles in share price have become less pronounced more recently, and as Tim Cook (who had been established by standing in for Jobs whenever he was away) is generally seen as a suitable new leader, the company itself seems perfectly stable in business terms. Also, Apple’s long lead times on new products means that we’ll be seeing new devices that Jobs had a hand in producing for some time yet.

And so influential was he for many new entrepreneurs now rising up the ranks, such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Spotify’s Daniel Ek, his outlook will likely continue to resonate for many years to come.

Just the fact that I’m writing about him here, and assuming that you’re not wondering why I’m talking about some tech guy in a music publication, shows what influence Jobs had. Because, of course, he did do hugely important things for the music industry too. Whatever you think about it, this business would be a very different place without iTunes. By adding a music store to Apple’s music software in 2003 as a means of feeding the already dominant iPod MP3 player, digital music was gradually brought to the masses.

The iTunes Store still has around 75% market share in the digital music space despite facing competition from countless rivals over the years, including all the traditional players in music retail. That’s a huge achievement, and it seems unlikely any of its competitors over the years could have achieved something similar had the Apple platform never existed – either because they are targeting a niche audience, or because their technology is a turn off to many. Apple have always approached digital music with a mainstream agenda, and with a technology the masses can use.

And, of course, all this was just a tiny part of Jobs’ overall achievements. Earlier this year, Wired published this great piece on Steve Jobs’ life in business, how he thought and how he worked. Reading it, it’s hard not to be impressed and inspired by him.

But what else happened this week? Sadly, guitarist Bert Jansch also died younger than he should have done. Both as a solo artist and with his band Pentangle, Jansch was an innovator. Along with John Martyn (who died in 2009) he redefined folk music in the 60s and proved hugely influential to musicians across many genres right up to the present day. And, of course, he continued to perform almost until the end of his life, cancelling what would have been his last performance less than two months ago in August.

Elswhere the trial of Conrad Murray, the doctor accused of killing Michael Jackson by negligently administering a fatal dose of surgical anaesthetic propofol as an insomnia cure, rumbled on this week. The prosecution continued to wheel out witnesses who seemed to show that Murray was not only negligent in many areas, but really in over his head to care for someone like Jackson.

Various paramedics and doctors noted that Murray never mentioned that he had given the singer propofol as they attempted to revive the dead or dying Jackson, and some noted it should never had been administered in a domestic setting anyway.

Three of Murray’s girlfriend’s (though not his wife) also testified, one saying that packages had been delivered to her house, with a pharmacist confirming that those packages had contained four gallons of propofol. However, the Las Vegas-based pharmacist also said that Murray had told him the house was actually his California medical practice, something he did not actually have on account of not being licensed to practise medicine in the state.

Various voicemails, text messages, and emails from Murray’s phone were also presented, one of which showed that, in the days before Jackson’s death, his then manager, the now also deceased Frank DiLeo, was concerned about the singer’s health, despite the doctor telling ‘This Is It’ promoters AEG Live everything was fine.

All of which might make you wonder what the defence have been doing as the prosecution wheel out all their witnesses. Well, yesterday they did get tough with the investigator from the LA coroners office who reviewed Jackson’s room shortly after his death. She’d messed the review up, the defence argued, throwing doubt on some of the proseuction’s forensics.

In other Jackson news, the big tribute concert at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium is due to take place on Saturday. Although considering how shambolic the organisation of it seems to have been, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was called off at the last minute. Earlier this week, late additions to the bill the Black Eyed Peas announced they were pulling out, and then yesterday it was revealed that a pay-per-view live stream of the event on Facebook (due to be the first of its kind and only announced last weekend) could not go ahead because no one had thought to get the appropriate licences.

On the business side of things this week, Citigroup was taking final bids for EMI. Five, possibly six players are thought to have offered to buy all or part of the major label, half of whom are the other three major labels. Sony received outside backing for its various bids, and whatever happens now it seems certain that EMI will very soon cease to be a British owned company. Whether that actually matters or not depends on your point of view.

Speaking of music company sales, Napster was bought by Rhapsody, the latter being the biggest subscription service in the US and the former being, erm, not. It’s thought that Napster will be shut down in America and simply merged into Rhapsody in a bid to up its user base. It’s not so clear what the plan is for the brand internationally, but if Rhapsody chooses to use its new purchase to roll out worldwide, essentially rebadging Napster, this would mean the disappearance of one of the most iconic names in digital music (albeit not iconic in relation to its current form).

This week we also wondered if a ruling on how people are allowed to access TV coverage of football could have wider ramifications for music licensing. A European court decided that if technology allowed, telly-viewing Brits should be able to get their football matches from other European TV companies, rather than paying Sky for them. And if that’s the case, there seems little reason why Germans, who are unable to access Spotify in their own country, shouldn’t be able to access the UK version of the software if they feel it is better than what is otherwise on offer in their own country. And while we know for certain the FA don’t like the former scenario, the major record companies and music publishers likely wouldn’t like the latter one either.

Finally in music news, my favourite story of the week came out of the Tory party conference. Primal Scream were livid when they were told that Home Secretary Theresa May had used their song ‘Rocks’ to close her speech at the event. So angry were they that they felt moved to issue a statement saying just how very very angry they were about it.

Then someone pointed out that it was actually a Dandy Warhols song that May had used.

Our features this week saw me interviewing Plaid’s Andy Turner about the duo’s new album, ‘Scintilli’, Yann Tiersen curating a Powers Of Ten playlist, and Eddy Temple-Morris wondering what on earth has happened to Steve Jones’ voice since he arrived on US soil to present ‘X-Factor’.

This week’s Approved column featured Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds, who has been spending the week recording and releasing new music from his living room, psyche duo Psychic Dancehall, dark Swedish pop from Karin Park, and brilliant new pop singer-songwriter Foxes.

Also, we brought you full streams of Radiohead‘s new remix compilation, ‘TKOL RMX 1234567′, Rustie‘s brilliant debut, ‘Glass Swords’, James Blake‘s new EP, plus William Shatner taking on Black Sabbath. Meanwhile, having recently recorded a six hour song, The Flaming Lips one-upped themselves by announcing that they are to record a 24 hour long song released in a limited edition of five hard drives embedded in human skulls.

And, as ever, if you’re tired of reading but want more of that good CMU information pumped into your brain, check out this week’s podcast (which you can stream below). We don’t normally discuss deaths on there, because the tone of the show doesn’t really lend itself to it, but this week we felt we had to make an exception in the case of Steve Jobs and Bert Jansch. As well as them, Chris and I discussed the Conrad Murray trial, the EMI sale, Rhapsody’s purchase of Napster, MySpace’s plans to relaunch as an entirely music-focussed service next year, and Primal Scream’s aforementioned identity crisis.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

On Sunday night I went to see Death Grips at XOYO in glittering East London. To say it was not really a Sunday night kinda show would be a bit of an understatement.

If you’re not familiar with Death Grips, they are MC Ride, producer Flatlander and Hella drummer Zach Hill. They make dark, unwelcoming, industrial hip hop, a sound which was represented on Sunday (other than by the music itself) by the lack of almost any discernable lighting or on stage banter. It was brilliant.

Mind suitably pummelled by the aggressive sounds of Death Grips, I stumbled out into late night Shoreditch and waited for my eyes to adjust to the night sky, which was considerably brighter than the lighting inside the venue.

The fact that I had just returned to London after a weekend in the countryside provided further contrast to add to my Sunday evening experiences.

I’m telling you about the contrasts I experienced the other night mainly so you can contrast this Editor’s Letter from last week’s, because I’m about to bang on about Facebook and Spotify again. Though with a week to reflect on the new look Facebook, and the various subsequent events relating to Spotify’s hook up with it, there are some new things to say.

As you’ll remember, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the social network’s big new redesign last week, and he put Spotify right at the heart of it. Although plenty of other content providers will be feeding endless amounts of user data into Facebook’s new activity tracker, it was Spotify’s Daniel Ek he called up on stage to talk about it. And although the latest redesign is yet to properly roll out, it’s Spotify which has probably garnered the most attention for hooking in to the evolving social network, though not with entirely positive results.

Spotify displeased a very vocal and sizeable minority of its users on Monday when it announced that from now on new users would have to sign up for the streaming service using their Facebook account. No Facebook account, no Spotify account. That’s it.

This assumes two things. Firstly, that everyone is happy to have a Facebook account. And secondly, that everyone who does is happy to use it to sign into other services. But not everyone in the world is a Facebook user, and many of those who are not – especially if they are web savvy enough to want to sign up to Spotify – have made a conscious decision, on whatever grounds, to not use the social network. Therefore, Spotify’s advice to just “set a Facebook account up and not use it” wasn’t very helpful. And even those who are Facebook users aren’t necessarily going to be comfortable with it having access to their wider online lives (even if it’s getting harder to stop that being so).

Then came the next change: Without really explaining properly what was happening, Spotify asked current users to agree to send data about every track they play via the service over to Facebook, so the social network could build a profile of their listening habits, and share details of every single track played with their friends. It is possible to turn this data sharing off, even if you inadvertantly allow it when presented with an update window by Spotify, but at the outset it wasn’t especially clear how to do this. Responding to criticism (and, to be fair, they did do this pretty quickly), Spotify added a ‘private mode’ to its software on Thursday.

Spotify argued that all these changes were justified because they added up to “creating an amazing new world of music discovery”. But even if you agree that this is where Facebook and Spotify are taking us, trying to force everyone to join them on their journey, from day one, isn’t really on, and is particularly unfair on those who object to having a profile on Facebook.

The way Spotify seems to have leaped so resolutely into the Facebook camp – and the way in which the company seemed to try to trick its customers to follow – was either a gross misjudgement, perhaps because the geeks at Spotify got carried away with Zuckerberg’s grand plans, or was perhaps the result of some sneaky deal with the social network, which got Ek top billing at Facebook’s party but tied his team to certain Facebook promoting commitments. Conspiracy theorists speculated that the reason Ek was so openly responding to criticism on Twitter on Monday night was so he could persuade Facebook to let him out of previous commitments.

That all seems a bit far-fetched – Ek was probably just doing the decent thing, and handling the critics head on rather than hiding behind a PR machine – but even if we assume good faith on Spotify’s part, and that they genuinely believe the Facebook hook up will deliver the holy grail of music discovery and that we’d be mad not to want to be part of it, does that justify the rush? After all, the immediate benefits of Spotify-hooked-to-Facebook for the user are few and far between (the benefits for Spotify itself, of course, are more obvious, the Zuckerberg induced hype has scored them a flood of new sign ups).

As I noted here last week, the changes Facebook are implementing provide a service akin to Last.fm – ie one that logs your online activity, and makes recommendations and tries to form communities based on your tastes – though rather than just logging the music you play on your computer, it will try to record everything you do online, from reading news stories to watching films. This information is then shared with your friends in real time. For the reasons outlined above (ie the almost forced participation), the newly shared data from Spotify is most obvious as a Facebook user, because now you’re being bombarded with information about every track every one of your friends (well, the opted in Spotify users) ever plays. It’s a huge amount of data I’ve subconsciously trained myself to ignore within five days.

It comes in constantly via Facebook’s new ‘ticker’. It flashes before your eyes so quickly it’s hard to take in, even if you’re not already ignoring it, which you almost certainly are. It’s hard to see how this will ever amount to an “amazing new world of music discovery”. Of course, this is presumably just stage one. But what’s stage two? Even if Facebook begins grouping together tracks, so it tells you “ten or so of your friends have listened to track X”, how does that help? It assumes that a play equals a recommendation. Which it doesn’t.

In my job I listen to a lot of new music that I definitely don’t want to inflict on others. Even some of the things I like, I might not want to explicitly recommend to all my friends. When Spotify announced its easier opt out button – the ‘private mode’ – it suggested this would be used to hide “guilty pleasures” you don’t want people knowing you listen to. But that misses the point – a play doesn’t equal a recommendation, whether it’s a guilty pleasure or not. On top of all that, because Facebook logs a track as soon as it begins playing, rather than (as Last.fm does) half way through, I found it was logging an awful lot of stuff I wasn’t actually listening to, but was skipping or stopping after a few seconds. Or on a couple of occasions, after I’d mistakenly clicked on a link and a track had automatically started playing. That doesn’t aid music discovery in any way at all.

By confusing tracks being played (or even just clicked on) with tracks being recommended, Facebook and Spotify’s bid to find this new world of music discovery is heading in the wrong direction. Which is why I’m not travelling with them, and have turned the tracking function off.

I’m hoping any of you out there who I’m friends with on Facebook appreciate my selfless act of not filling your newsfeeds with pointless information. I’ll continue to help out by not installing any other tracking apps either. Because, frankly, who wants to be told every time I click on a link to a news story, which I may or may not then read or enjoy or find useful or want to recommend. If I want to recommend something on Facebook, I’ll just carry on linking to it manually, as before.

Of course Facebook and Spotify will say “that’s fine, we’re not forcing you to join us in this brave new world, so stop your moaning”. Which is fair enough. Except I suspect sharing information via Facebook in the old way will become an increasingly infuriating thing to do, as partner websites make it harder to link to and embed content without installing their activity-tracking-apps. I say “suspect”, I’ve seen that happen already this week.

I don’t want to sound like a luddite, and I’m willing to accept Facebook’s data capture frenzy might – might – result in some genuinely interesting services down the line. But until it does Facebook is going to have to do a lot to convince me that these new changes are a good idea. For the first time since I signed up to the world’s biggest social media network I’m genuinely thinking I might have to give up on it. I’ll just stick to Twitter, or maybe I’ll give Google+ another go. Maybe this will be the making of Google+. We’ll see.

Or perhaps I’m sounding like a luddite because that’s what I’ve become, the lone moaner who harks back to the good old days of the internet, aka 2009. Is that what Spotify getting all these sign ups since its hook up with Facebook actually means? Maybe I’ll just go back to standing in the dark listening to aggressive hip hop. That’s the future, I tell you!

Now, how about this week’s other news? Well, the trial of Michael Jackson’s former doctor got under way finally this week. Conrad Murray is, of course, accused of killing the late king of pop when he negligently administered a surgical anaesthetic, propofol, as a cure for insomnia. Murray’s defence will argue that Jackson was helplessly addicted to various prescription medicines, that their client was trying to wean him off them, but that the singer neverthless helped himself to a concoction of drugs on the day he died. And that it was those self-administered drugs that killed him.

As part of all that, the defence want to show what a mess Jackson was in prior to his death. To that end they wanted to show the singer’s famously shambolic press conference in London in early 2009 announcing his doomed O2 residency. Though before the trial got underway, the judge refused that request.

But it’s not the defence’s turn yet anyway. The prosecution have this week been putting forward their evidence, and have brought in a line of witnesses from Jackson’s PA to his security guards, whose testimonies appeared to show that Murray had been negligent in using propofol outside of a hospital, delayed calling paramedics after discovering Jackson’s body, and attempted to hide evidence that he had acted improperly. The case is expected to continue for up to another five weeks.

Meanwhile, the other big story this week, possibly showing how little actually happened, was that Bloc Party don’t know if Kele Okereke is still their frontman or not. Or vice versa, it’s confusing. Back in the digital domian, We7 also revamped its service yet again, pushing its personalised radio option even further forward and blocking free subscribers from using its on demand service at all.

Also, Sugar Hill Records founder Sylvia Robinson, a very significant character in the history of rap and hip hop, died from heart failure yesterday, aged 75.

And on a happier note, I interviewed the marvellous Sondre Lerche, and Slow Club put together a Powers Of Ten playlist for us. And, adding a more shocking element to this week’s features, Eddy Temple-Morris used his column to recount the story of when he broke his neck on live TV.

In the CMU Approved column this week were Gold Panda, Papercutz, Dems, and Achilles. And elsewhere we brought you a full stream of the new Feist album, the trailer for Sonic Youth‘s soon to be re-issued 1991 tour film, a hoax from Tyler, The Creator, a full track from Lou Reed and Metallica‘s ‘Lulu’ album (which, let’s just say, divides the room), plus the frankly horrifying news of Korn‘s dubstep album.

And if you fancy some spoken word action, then look no further than the brand new CMU podcast, which is out right now and features discussion of the Conrad Murray trial, Spotify and Facebook, We7, Bloc Party, and Rihanna getting told off by an Irish farmer.

Until next week,

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

So, after months, nay years of speculation, yesterday Facebook announced its new music offering. It wasn’t, as many had once thought, an in-house music service, nor did it bring Spotify streaming in-browser, as was also suggested. It was, basically, a polished up version of Last.fm.

Actually, Facebook’s announcement yesterday does mean some pretty drastic changes to the biggest social network, changes that may over time alter the way we interact with content online. If you allow it to, Facebook will now not only log every song you ever listen to via Spotify et al (just like Last.fm), it’ll also log pretty much everything else you’ll ever do online. All automatically. And it will inform all of your friends as you do so, while mapping it all out on a handy timeline of your entire life. Scared?

Mark Zuckerberg’s explanation of all these changes was pretty long and tedious (as much as he tried, he’s no Steve Jobs) but he pretty much summed it up when he said:

“This year, we’re adding verbs”.

He said it as if the concept of verbs was something people might not have heard of yet. As if Facebook was in the process of inventing language. But what he meant was that you’ll no long have to click the ‘Like’ button to share things on Facebook, the sharing will just happen as you listen to, watch or read anything online. And if you cook something too. He talked a lot about cooking. Though I’m not sure how that could be automated, unless he knows something about net connected ovens that I don’t. He also said “express” more times that I thought possible in an hour.

Anyway, bringing this back to music, the big deal here is that music services will be able to log your listening data in your Facebook profile (or ‘timeline’ as it is to become known). Your friends will be able to see what you’re listening to, and if they’re interested they’ll be able to listen to the same track at the click of a button. You can even share a track directly with someone and both listen to it together at the same time while discussing it on Facebook’s instant messenger.

Now, these are all things you could, to an extent, already do, but in theory the new look Facebook makes everything a lot easier. Zuckerberg also talked a lot about “frictionless experiences”, and that’s relevant here. As I said, a lot of this new functionality can already be achieved with Last.fm and other social media apps and tools. But Facebook is, for most people, the de facto online service for sharing comments and content. And while people may be interested in music discovery, many have not been interested enough to sign up to bespoke services. This will bring the music discovery to the place where they are already sharing online.

And it won’t really matter which music service you are using to discover new artists and tracks, because pretty much all of them will be hooked up to new look Facebook. Though yesterday everyone’s focus seemed to be on Spotify’s involvement. It must have been something of a disheartening moment for some of the bigger US streaming services to see the new kid (in their market), Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, wander on stage at Facebook’s big event to explain how his service will integrate with the new look social network.

And while Zuckerberg said he wanted to “rethink the music industry”, Ek said the hook up would boost engagement and draw more people to a system that “fairly compensates artists”.

Interestingly, that last claim was at the heart of the other big digital music story this week: Is Spotify giving artists a good deal? Spotify proudly announced this week that it now has over two million paying subscribers, news that won’t please the co-founder of metal label Prosthetic Records EJ Johantgen, who told LA Weekly that “there [does] not appear to be an upside” to having your music on Spotify as he pulled the label’s catalogue from the service.

Prosthetic is the third US metal label to pull its catalogue off Spotify since it launched in the States in July, following Century Media and Metal Blade. Johantgen argued that the “fractions of pennies” Spotify pays per stream do not compare well with the revenues to be made from downloads and physical releases. And in his view, having your music on Spotify will drive down CD and download sales as time goes on (although download subscription service eMusic published research this week that suggested ‘ownership’ of music remained important to many consumers, despite the rise of ‘access’ based services, with many users of Spotify-like platforms still buying MP3s).

As well as Prosthetic, self-releasing indie band Uniform Motion also announced they were pulling their music off the streaming service, and in an attempt to explain why published an entire breakdown of how much money they earn from every possible avenue, including retail, pay-what-you-want downloads, publishing and more. Spotify, they said, just doesn’t come up with the goods.

Spotify responded to all this by pointing out that it’s unfair to compare its payouts to download sales, because it doesn’t “sell streams”, rather, it sells access to a whole catalogue of music. Spotify would rather, I imagine, you think of its service in terms of radio, and the fact that seven million streams through its software will earn an artist far more in royalties than if a song is heard by seven million listeners all at once by having their song played on the Radio 1 Breakfast Show.

However, while Spotify is not a download store (assuming we ignore the fact that it has a sideline selling MP3s too), it’s not a radio station either. It may sell access to music, but users can still access that music on demand, like they would a download in iTunes.

But anyway, that, said Uniform Motion, was not even the issue. The problem, they said, is that Spotify is so secretive about its business model. It’s entirely possible the band were getting a fair cut of advertising revenue and subscription fees, but because Spotify doesn’t explain how it divvies up the money between the various people due a payment, no one actually knows.

Now this isn’t entirely Spotify’s fault. The reason we know how much money an artist gets from a play on Radio 1 is because radio is licensed by collecting societies PPL and PRS via a transparent blanket licence. But digital services can’t do that, they have to do deals with individual rights owners or their representatives (such as the indie sector’s Merlin). Even when rights owners decide to use their collecting societies for digital deals, the arrangements are often clouded in secrecy. In the case of the major labels, it’s assumed that they insisted on a larger cut of Spotify’s revenues in order to play ball. And Spotify’s founders, who needed all of that major label music in their system to be able to get enough traction with the public, had to roll over. And also had to sign the non-disclosure agreements barring them from saying what those cuts were.

So, Spotify may be stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to transparency, but that doesn’t alter the fact that a lot of smaller artists and indie labels therefore assume they’re getting ripped off.

One solution to this would be to apply the methods used to license radio to streaming services. Stop lumping streaming music with downloads – Spotify is right when it says the two services are not the same – and instead think of streaming platforms as interactive radio services, and license them like radio, through transparent blanket licences, probably administered by collecting societies or some similar organisation. This would add transparency to the whole system and ensure that everyone was getting their fair share.

It would also mean that online services unwilling or, more likely, unable to meet the demands of the big rights owners would be able to get their services off the ground. Having more digital services has to be a good thing. Sure, Mark Zuckerberg and Daniel Ek might be clever, but their success has, in part, been down to their skill and luck in securing big money investment. There are other clever but less cash-rich people who – if the industry would just help them get the licences they need in an easier fairer way – could also help build a more diverse and engaging digital music marketplace. Which is almost certainly the best solution to that tedious piracy problem.

Anyway, talking of piracy, what else happened this week? Well, the long-awaited appeal hearing of Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm went ahead without him, as no one (including his lawyer) seems to know where he is, and convicted file-sharer Joel Tenenbaum saw the damages he has to pay the US record industry bumped back up to $675,000, after they were dropped to $67,500 in July 2010.

Elsewhere, Live Nation and Universal announced a new joint venture that will see them providing fan engagement services to artists, Interscope responded to claims that its offices had been used to traffic drugs, and the Conrad Murray trial began to get going with talk of what arguments and evidence the defence might put forward.

Meanwhile, in more artist-focussed news, REM finally split, Queen’s Roger Taylor announced plans to ensure that the band would go on forever, Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke seemed unsure of whether or not he can still be referred to as Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke, Bow Wow threatened to blow up XXL’s offices if he wasn’t put on the magazine’s cover, and Kings Of Leon bassist Jared Followill drove through the door of his neighbour’s garage for reasons he wasn’t entirely clear on (he wasn’t drunk though, right?)

Also on theCMUwebsite.com this week, we interviewed Richard Fearless from Death In Vegas, Polyvinyl’s Mark Jiggsaw put together a playlist to celebrate the label’s fifteenth birthday, and Eddy Temple-Morris used his Eddy Says column to announce a new weekly residency in Brixton.

And, as ever, we brought you lots and lots of new music. In our CMU Approved column this week we tipped Japanese electronic duo Trippple Nippples, London-based indie bands Zulu Winter and Grass House, and Brooklyn quartet Friends. Plus, there was the amazing new video from Three Trapped Tigers, a full stream with visuals of Mastodon‘s new album, an entire six hour song from The Flaming Lips, and the Foo Fighters serenading the infamous Westboro Baptist Church.

One final thing, assuming you’ve made it this far (and well done if you have), if you want more chatter about the week in music, there’s a new edition of the CMU podcast now available for you to stream or download. This week, Chris and I can be found discussing Facebook, Spotify, Live Nation and Universal’s joint venture, REM’s split, Queen’s never-ending tour, and Bloc Party’s possible streamlining.

Until next Friday,

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

So, copyright extension. Ccccooopppyyyrrriiiiiiigghhhttttt Eeeeexxxxtttteeeeeeeeennnsssssiiiioooooonnnnnn. It’s not fun, but we’re going to talk about it because it’s the big music business story of the week. Actually, it’s not even this week’s story really. The move to extend the sound recording copyright in Europe was rubber stamped by the European Union this Monday, but we knew it was going happen last week.

Basically copyright on recordings in Europe is going to be extended from 50 to 70 years – bringing it slightly closer to the 95 years enjoyed in the US – after groups lobbying for the change finally convinced representatives of all EU member states that it was a good idea. This means that on 1 Jan 2013, EMI will still own the exclusive right to sell the first Beatles single ‘Love Me Do’. Which is nice. For them.

But it wasn’t the possibility of EMI being able to earn even more money from some 50 year old recordings that brought about the extension. What really won it was the possibility of some aging session musicians being out on the street, the same argument that changed the British government’s mind two years ago.

The argument goes like this: Session musicians, by law, are due a cut (a small cut) of public performance royalties from any recordings that they play on. And if you happened to play the kazoo on a particularly big hit that is still played regularly around the world 50 years later, then that small cut can add up to a fairly decent salary. But, said the BPI, PPL and others behind the campaign, after 50 years those musicians no longer get their cut, and suddenly find themselves with no income.

Now, you might ask why these people hadn’t planned for their retirement, and you’d probably be right to. Nevertheless, many of these musicians were wheeled into parliament during the campaign and MPs were asked to explain why they were going to take the food out of these OAPs’ mouths. The MPs, rather than asking why they hadn’t been paid properly by the music industry for their work in the first place, instead buckled and said that, yes, this all sounded like a great idea.

I’m not saying I want the guy who played violin on ‘Eleanor Rigby’ to go hungry, but there is something of a smoke screen here. Session musicians earn by far the lowest cut of these royalties, featured artists make more, but the bulk of the money still goes to the record label.

Now, I’m not going to a launch into a tirade about “greedy record labels”, because people who do that are among the most irritating on earth. Besides, if greed is your main motivator, there are better businesses to be in. And I can see exactly why the majors don’t want to give up the revenues 50 year old recordings generate. The record industry still dominates within the wider music business when it comes to launching new talent, ie it still generally invests the most money and takes much of the risk (even if both investments and levels of risk are less than they once were). And that label system works by taking some of the profits of older hits and investing them in new records, some of which will be profitable, some of which will not.

In many ways it’s a good system, though if the labels are really still relying on The Beatles to fund the launch of the next generation of Coldplays, I’m not sure it’s working as well as it could and should. I mean, how long does this system need its copyrights to last to be viable? Because the copyright has to run out eventually, and perhaps labels should just accept that fact and put their efforts into finding new ways to make the label system work, one that doesn’t rely on endless royalties from very old songs.

And let’s not forget, that when copyrights expire, it can result in a whole new era of creativity as new artists rediscover the work of old artists that are now out of copyright. What’s to say that the next big wave in music wouldn’t be based on samples of 60s recordings, on which no label licence would now be required? Hip hop and drum n bass have both benefitted from the use of out of copyright samples, so who knows what delights we could have enjoyed had producers suddenly had freer access to the 1960s catalogue. Still, there could still be a whole burgeoning underground scene based on Cliff Richard’s already out of copyright 50s recordings about to blow up right now. I sincerely hope so.

I suppose my point is this. I don’t begrudge artists and session musicians another 20 years of royalties, and maybe not even the record labels. But while active sound recording copyrights aid innovation as labels use yesterday’s hits to fund tomorrow’s acts, copyrights expiring can also result in, and force, other kinds of innovation, both commercial and creative, and it’s that kind of thing the music industry could probably do with just now. If only to ensure that in 20 years time EMI isn’t still saying it can only invest in new bands if it is still earning money from Beatles songs.

But, hey, I’ve talked about copyright long enough. If you want further discussion on the topic, check out this week’s CMU podcast, in which CMU Business Editor Chris Cooke and I also chat about the Amy Winehouse Foundation, Turntable FM, MOG, Mick Jagger’s distaste for Keith Richards, and, for some reason, the Mercury Prize.

What else has been going on this week? Well, Jeremy Hunt made a speech in which he called on Google to do more to block websites that infringe copyright (there’s that bloody word again), while a German court refused to force German ISP HanseNet to block file-sharing network eDonkey on EMI’s behalf. EMI also filed new papers relating to its legal fight against MP3tunes.com.

Elsewhere in legal news, it was claimed that Interscope’s New York offices may have been used by Czar Entertainment chief James Rosemond in the drug trafficking operation he is accused of running. And slightly bizarrely, it turned out that the Boombox record shop in Edmonton was actually a front for a Met Police operation to ensnare criminals.

On Tuesday, it was sadly announced that French producer DJ Mehdi had died in an accident at his home, when he and a number of people fell through a glass veranda. Three others were injured, while Mehdi’s production partner in Carte Blanche, Riton, whose birthday they were celebrating, escaped unhurt. He tweeted later this week: “Just want everyone to know that we were all laughing our asses off half a second before the accident”. Our thoughts go out to his Mehdi’s family and friends.

Also this week, we launched the new look CMU Daily. Thanks to all who have commented on it. The first week of the revamp brought with it an interview with Beggars Group founder Martin Mills and a playlist from Peggy Sue, amongst other things. And, as usual, we brought you all manner of new music to listen to. There were CMU Approved tracks from Visions Of Trees, Joker and Lana Del Rey, as well as a whole free live album from Deerhoof. And elsewhere, we brought you new music from Florence And The Machine, The Big Pink, Drake, DJ Shadow, and more.

But that really is quite enough from me, I think. I’ll just urge you once more to listen to this week’s CMU podcast. It’s our first after a two month break, and between talking for an hour before we realised we weren’t actually recording and the sounds of clattering crockery halting the entire process, it was a bit traumatic. Despite this, I think the finished product it pretty good. If you’ve not listened before and fancy some CMU-style audio, today is the day you should rectify that, I think.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU