VOICE FOUNDER WILL REVIEW SHOW WITH BBC
Ratings for the UK version of 'The Voice' franchise have been "a little bit disappointing", the original creator of the format, John de Mol, has admitted, as he meets with the BBC to discuss making changes to the programme before a second series.

As previously reported, when 'The Voice' - somewhat controversially bought in by the BBC in a bid to compete with the Simon Cowell-led talent shows on ITV - first aired earlier this year it performed well, especially when it went head to head with Cowell's 'Britain's Got Talent'. So much so, Cowell and ITV pushed their show back in the schedules to avoid any overlap with their new rival.

But as the first series of 'The Voice' progressed, and especially once the unique bit of the franchise (the 'blind auditions') were over, the BBC show started to slip in the ratings, while 'BGT' grew its audience. The most recent edition of the Beeb's show, a semi-final, had just 4.5 million viewers, while the recent 'BGT' final drew in 11.9 million people.

According to The Guardian, De Mol says that he is generally pleased with how the first series of the UK version of his talent show franchise has gone, but admits: "We are due to have a big meeting after the final and will talk about what we should change for the second series ... There may be a few slight changes".

Asked whether that meant new judges for series two, De Mol stressed that he was very pleased with how Jessie J, Tom Jones, Danny O'Donoghue and Will.i.am had turned out, but confirmed everything is up for review, saying of the judging line-up: "That's part of the discussions we will have with the BBC after the final. The question is, do the coaches want to continue".

He added that the US version of the show might also have some new features added for its next series, which could also be incorporated into the UK edition. As well as discussing how to improve the main programme, De Mol is also set to meet with BBC chiefs to discuss a kids' version of the singing show.

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WILLIS EARL BEAL ARRESTED FOR ASSAULT
Willis Earl Beal was arrested after a performance at Le Guess Who? festival in The Netherlands this weekend. The singer was held overnight by police in Utrecht after he reportedly kicked a man in the face from the stage.

According to reports, Beal became annoyed by two men, described later by RTV Utrecht as being "under the influence of drink and drugs", drumming their hands on the stage during his performance. The Guardian reports eyewitnesses as saying that he then told them: "If you disrespect my profession, I disrespect your face", before doing exactly that.

Shortly afterwards, Beal cut his performance short, telling the audience: "Because of a few bad apples, we all miss out on one more glorious, fantastic, lovely performance. I love you, and I even love the guy whose face I kicked in. I love him, too. He's a good guy! He's just drunk a little too much".

He then called another audience member "a prick" and asked everyone else to buy his merchandise. By this point the police were presumably getting ready to take the singer into custody. Meanwhile, thanks to the wonder of the internet, you can watch it all on YouTube right here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-vu7EOTsh8

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DEL REY CANCELS GIG BECAUSE OF EXHAUSTION
Lana Del Rey has had to pull out of a planned gig in Tokyo because of exhaustion. The show, due to take place yesterday, had already been postponed once from earlier this year.

Confirming that the gig would not go ahead yesterday, the gig's promoter said: "It is with great regret Lana will not be performing in Tokyo today, she is suffering from exhaustion and the show had to be cancelled. Lana says: 'I am really sorry to not have made it over to Japan again, I would love to be there to sing and look forward to performing a show that the fans deserve'".

Del Rey later apologised directly to her fans via Twitter, saying: "Wish I could be with everyone in Tokyo but I'm really sorry I am sick. Thinking of you and I will come back soon".

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IRON MAIDEN TOP HMV'S FAVOURITE BRITISH ALBUM POLL
HMV has announced the results of a public vote it conducted ahead of the Queen's 'hey, look how long I've been Queen' party this weekend to identify Britain's favourite British album and film.

Or, perhaps more likely, to identify which British cultural phenomena have the most committed and web-savvy fanbases. Which is probably why Iron Maiden and Depeche Mode topped the music list published yesterday, ahead of the more usual suspects of The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Queen, who come slightly lower down the top ten. It's also presumably why Monty Python do so well in the films list.

Commenting on the poll, HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo told reporters: "The beginning of Elizabeth II's reign, and the bright new future it represented, didn't just coincide with a flowering of British popular culture, it helped to provide the very spark that lit the touch-paper for an explosion in music and film talent. Since then, the Queen has presided over the richest period of cultural achievement in our nation's history, so it's only right that her Diamond Jubilee, which ironically also encapsulates sixty years of the official charts, should be a period when we reflect on the greatest British albums and films of the past six decades".

Meanwhile, responding to the news his band had topped the music poll with their 1982 album 'The Number of the Beast', Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson told CMU: "We're astonished and delighted to hear 'The Number Of The Beast' has been named number one in HMV's Diamond Jubilee survey for the greatest British album category. Some of the most influential and classic albums from the past 60 years were in the running so it's a testament to our incredibly loyal and ever-supportive fans who voted for us. Iron Maiden is a proudly British band, so to win this category as voted for by the British public, in Jubilee year, is very special. Thank you to all our wonderful fans!"

And here is Britain's favourite British albums according to the HMV poll (with percentage of overall vote in brackets):

1. Iron Maiden - The Number Of The Beast (9.18%)
2. Depeche Mode - Violator (6.30%)
3. The Beatles - Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (5.69%)
4. The Beatles - Abbey Road (5.67%)
5. Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon (5.23%)
6. The Beatles - Revolver (4.01%)
7. Queen - A Night At The Opera (3.98%)
8. Oasis - (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (3.91%)
9. Adele - 21 (3.07%)
10. The Beatles - White Album (2.60%)

And here's the film list:

1. Trainspotting (6.00%)
2. Monty Python And The Holy Grail (5.48%)
3. Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part Two (4.79%)
4. Monty Python's Life Of Brian (4.78%)
5. A Clockwork Orange (4.37%)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (4.29%)
7. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban (3.69%)
8. The Italian Job (3.11%)
9. Shaun Of The Dead (2.95%)
10. The Kings Speech (2.66%)

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SECOND WATCH THE THRONE ALBUM PLANNED
US producer Mike Dean has revealed that plans for Kanye West and Jay-Z to record a second 'Watch The Throne' album are in the works.

In an interview with Quiet Lunch, Dean, who co-produced seven tracks on the pair's first record together, said: "[I'm] working on 'Watch The Throne 2'. It's not started yet, but it's coming".

He also revealed that he's been working on new Kanye West solo material: "Just, you know, regular shit that we put down on the machine every two years. Just doing the cycle".

Watch the full interview here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3wip7L_sjg

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LIARS STREAM NEW ALBUM
Liars have handed over their new album, 'WIXIW', to NPR. And what did NPR do? Only put it online for everyone to hear a whole week ahead of its release. Showing off the band's new wholly electronic sound, it also gives you time to learn all the words for a big singalong at Field Day in London on Saturday afternoon, where Liars are due to play.

Listen here: www.npr.org/2012/05/27/153520354/first-listen-liars-wixiw

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DAN LE SAC UNVEILS NEW VIDEO
Dan Le Sac has put a video for his CMU approved single 'Play Along' online. Which is nice. Featuring vocals from Sarah Williams White and due out on 6 Jun, the track is the first single taken from the producer's debut solo album, 'Space Between The Words', which itself is due out on 9 Jul.

The album will feature yet more guest vocalists, including a delightfully dark turn from Emmy The Great, plus Merz, B Dolan, Joshua Idehen and former Pete & The Pirates frontman Pete Hefferan.

Watch the video for 'Play Along' here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzPBD69UI3g

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A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS RELEASE VIDEO
A Place To Bury Strangers have released the video for 'You Are The One'. Due out on 25 Jun, the song is the first single from the band's third album, 'Worship'. Released via Dead Oceans, the new long player will follow on 11 Jul.

The video, I should warn you, comes marked 'Not Safe For Work'. Unless, like me, you've been left alone in the office, in which case knock yourself out. The same goes if you work on your own anyway. Or if you're working at home. Or, in fact, if you work somewhere that doesn't mind you watching videos that include not particularly graphic violent and sexual imagery. So really it comes marked 'Not Safe For Some Workplaces. It Really Depends Where You Work'.

Glad we got that cleared up. Now watch the video here (depending on where you currently are): www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-o4h-GFUqQ

Oh, and the band have also published the tracklist for 'Worship'. You might as well have a look at that too - it's totally safe for work (depending on you employer's internet usage policy and how sternly they enforce it):

Alone
You Are The One
Mind Control
Worship
Fear
Dissolved
Why I Can't Cry Anymore
Revenge
And I'm Up
Slide
Leaving Tomorrow

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ACID HOUSE DOCUMENTARY TO BE SCREENED IN SHOREDITCH
'High On Hope', a documentary chronicling the rise and fall of acid house in the late 80s and early 90s, will be screened at Village Underground in Shoreditch this Saturday. The screening will be followed by acid house DJ sets from Farley & Heller and Ralph Lawson, plus a secret special guest.

Tickets for the night will cost you £10, part of which will go towards funding licensing of the music used in the film in order for it to be commercially released. More information from www.highonhope.com

Watch the trailer for the film here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2q38mu3MKs

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FINAL EVER WESTLIFE SHOW TO BE SCREENED IN CINEMAS LIVE
The final ever concert by Westlife will be beamed live into cinemas across the world (mainly in the UK and Ireland admittedly, but some cinemas in South Africa, Australia and various other European countries too), I think so representatives from the United Nations can check for certain that they really actually do bid the world farewell once and for all, as long promised.

BBC Worldwide and a company called By Experience will film and transmit the concert, which takes place at Dublin's Croke Park on 23 Jun. Tickets for the final show sold out within five minutes. Tickets for seats at those cinemas already confirmed to screen the live broadcast will go on sale today, with more cinemas to be confirmed in due course.

Say the group in perfect unison, presumably from four neatly aligned stools: "It is bound to be a hugely emotional night and we expect to have tears in our eyes for nearly every song. The fact that the show will be beamed to our fans in cinemas around the world only adds to our excitement".

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SEAN PAUL ANNOUNCES LONDON SHOW
Jamaican dancehall bod Sean Paul will be over in London next month to play one of those live show things. The performance at IndigO2 in the Millennium Dome complex will take place on 26 Jun. Tickets are due to go on sale this Friday, 1 Jun.

Paul will also appear the weekend before the IndigO2 show at Radio 1's Hackney Weekend, which will be his first show in London for almost a year, and therefore the first opportunity for Londoners to see him perform tracks from his 'Tomahawk Technique' album, which was released earlier this year.

Here's the video for one such tracks, 'She Doesn't Mind': www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbUBMklQSVU

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BENGA AND FRIENDS TO TAKE OVER KOKO
Dubstep producer Benga will headline a show at London's Koko this Sunday, premiering some of his new material. He'll also be joined by Joker, Youngman, Dismantle and CMU approved pop duo AlunaGeorge.

Benga is also due to release a new single, 'Icon', which features vocals from Bebe Black, on 24 Jun. Watch the video for the track here: www.vevo.com/watch/benga-feat-bebe-black/icon/GB1101200433

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TORCHE ANNOUNCE UK SHOWS
Floridian metallers Torche have announced that they will be over in the UK for a run of shows this September. The band released their third album, 'Harmonicraft', back in April.

Here are the dates:

13 Sep: Manchester, Moho Live
14 Sep: Nottingham, Rock City
15 Sep: Glasgow, Captain's Rest
16 Sep: London, XOYO
17 Sep: Brighton, The Haunt
18 Sep: Southampton, The Cellar

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LOVELIVE EXPANDS
LoveLive, a company that develops and makes usually live-music based programming for media, artists, labels and brands, has announced a number of senior appointments as part of continued expansion.

The new appointments include Will McGillivray, formerly of MTV and Ginx TV, who becomes LoveLive's Head Of Content & Formats; Abby Newell formally of Warner Brothers Entertainment, who joins as Commercial Manager; Paul Watkins, former financial planning man at the Perform Group, who becomes Finance Director; and Cherry Collard of Red Light Campaign, who joins the firm's social team.

The new recruitment spurt coincides with the announcement of a new alliance with New York-based music and entertainment marketing company Giant Step, which will work with LoveLive on US-based projects moving forward.

And, if you're looking for some official comment on all this activity, then it's your lucky day. Music Week quotes LoveLive CEO Richard Cohen as follows: "I'm thrilled to have such remarkable talent joining the LoveLive team at such an exciting time in our development. Our recent growth has been extraordinary and Will, Abby, Paul, Cherry, and indeed the team at Giant Step, are perfectly placed to support the company's ongoing expansion".

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SO WHERE EXACTLY DID THE BOGUS "$72 TRILLION" CLAIM COME FROM?
So, as previously reported, last week a link to a news story was doing the rounds of the social web bearing the headline 'RIAA Thinks LimeWire Owes $72 Trillion in Damages'.

It was an intriguing title because [a] it looked like the Recording Industry Association Of America was being an arse again, and that's always amusing, [b] the RIAA and LimeWire actually settled more or less exactly a year ago, so it would be interesting to know what went wrong, and [c] $72 trillion is more money that there is in the world.

So intriguing was the headline, in fact, that the NME picked the story up and ran with it, citing as its original source for the bold claim a website called ComputerWorld.com. And once the NME had run the story, several other sites repeated it (actually, it's possible some of them actually ran the story before the NME) and so it became 'proper news'. But there were two important facts about the original Computer World story worth noting. First, it was over a year old. And second, it wasn't a Computer World story. Well, not exclusively.

As noted on Friday, the Computer World report that the NME and various other media linked to dated from March 2011, something the date stamp at the top of the story confirmed. At that time the record industry, having defeated its long time P2P enemy LimeWire in the US courts the previous year, was preparing its damages claim.

The RIAA noted that, under US copyright law, a court can award up to $150,000 in damages for every infringement a third party commits. LimeWire was being held liable for all the infringement committed by its users, and the trade body reckoned at least 11,000 of its members' tracks had been illegally shared via the service. As technically damages were due for every single time a file-transfer occurred, that's how the record industry trade body argued that trillions in damages might be due.

As it happens, the judge hearing the case said that size of claim was ludicrous, and LimeWire and the RIAA subsequently agreed last May to a more modest settlement of $105 million.

So, a fourteen month old story does the rounds on Twitter and gets picked up by news media for a second time, those journalists forgetting [a] that we all wrote about this story a year ago and [b] to check the date at the top of the source story. Simple. Though, as some CMU readers have pointed out, the Computer World report that was incorrectly picked up as a new story didn't actually carry the eye-grabbing $72 trillion figure. Rather, it spoke about the RIAA pushing for "trillions" in damages; which is still a ludicrous claim on the trade body's part, but not more money than exists in the world.

So where did the $72 trillion figure come from? The author of the original Computer World story, noting this discrepancy in a new article this weekend, proposed: "The NME picked up [my] story from last year and for some reason ran it this week as a new one, albeit with an additional twist. The website, based apparently on some of its own calculations, concluded that the RIAA was claiming it was owed $72 trillion in damages from LimeWire for music piracy".

But was it the NME which lumped for the $72 trillion figure? Interestingly, at the same time Computer World ran its original RIAA damages story last March other media were, obviously, also reporting on the trade body's claim, and in some of those other reports the figure $75 trillion was bandied around, in particular in this article on the similar-sounding-to-Computer-World website PC World. And, actually, it was the PC World article, and not the Computer World piece, that we here at CMU saw being touted around on the social networks 24 hours before the NME story first appeared.

So, perhaps the NME piece not only reported on a fourteen month old news story as if it were new, but also didn't credit the right source. Although that wouldn't quite explain how the 2011 story went with $75 trillion, while last week's reports said $72 trillion.

Anyway, to reconfirm, the RIAA is not going after LimeWire for more money than there is on the planet, or indeed any more money than that it agreed to with the now defunct file-sharing company last year. Instead the trade body that everyone loves to hate has been enjoying the opportunity to be justifiably high and mighty about the way it has been misrepresented on the internet.

Its spokeswoman told Computer World: "This was disturbing to see. We would hope that there be basic standards that reporters and bloggers adhere to, like doing original research, checking with sources referenced, before just re-posting a story and accepting everything as fact. That means also actually attaching a byline to a post too. The standard should not be 'we'll post whatever and correct it if it's wrong'. Get it right in the first place, do the homework".

Though, as the trade body that pursued an incredibly expensive and totally counterproductive sue-the-fans policy against file-sharers for so long, arguably setting back the whole digital music market five years, and a policy that even the body's own former chief has subsequently admitted was misguided, perhaps it would have been better if the RIAA had said, more simply, "see, everyone makes mistakes".

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CLASSIC FM LAUNCHES NEW WEBSITE
Global Radio's classical music station Classic FM has launched a new website which it claims will become the "world's biggest online classical music destination". New features include a diary of classical concerts, lists of recommended listening, a database of audio, video and images featuring key classical composers and performers, plus the ability to buy music listeners have heard on air.

Confirming the new look site, Classic FM MD Darren Henley told reporters: "When Classic FM launched in 1992, we rewrote the rulebook on how people listened to classical music on the radio. Two decades on, we're reinventing the way listeners engage with classical music in the digital world. And this is just the start. We have a whole host of exciting new innovations that we will roll out on classicfm.com during the year ahead".

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POP STARS FOLLOW FOOTBALLERS IN SHARING NAKED PHOTOS OF GROUPIES VIA THEIR BLACKBERRIES, SAYS THE SUN
According to The Sun, a number of "top music stars" have formed a "sleazy sex ring" via their Blackberries, through which they exchange explicit photos of groupies.

The secret group is reportedly called PMB, short for 'Pimp My Bitches', and has similarities with a Blackberry-enabled naked-photo-exchange-network allegedly set up by a group of premiere league footballers, and revealed by The Sun last week. Which means male pop stars are now as misogynistic as footballers, which can't be good.

Though, by naming no names, The Sun's report does mean we can all join in the fun here, not by leering at naïve and possibly unsuspecting poor girls, but by trying to guess which pop stars are part of the PMB network. It apparently includes the members of one "hugely famous British band" and two solo artists, one from the UK and one from overseas. And if it helps, one act has a "squeaky clean" image. And for some reason, one of the sporty misogynists in the aforementioned footballer's photo exchange network has also been allowed to join the pop version.

The Sun quotes a source as saying: "Some of the best known celebrities in this country - be they in sport or music - are caught up in these sleazy groups. They treat women like pieces of meat and have no respect for them. These women and girls have no idea naked snaps of them are being circulated. It's disgusting. What gets me is one of the acts trades on a squeaky clean image. Their fans would disown them if they knew what they were up to. All three acts have massive followings among young girls. It's a bit like with the footballers - they think they are untouchable".

So, there you go, this just in: arrogant chauvinistic bastards can sing songs as well as kick balls. Who knew?

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