Updated @ 1:30 p.m.
Biz – Rebel shareholders have opened fire on music shops chain HMV over its management of Waterstone’s, Britain’s largest books retailer. Investors want HMV to sell the book business if a turnaround strategy unveiled in March fails to boost returns by this time in 2011 [Guardian UK]…
Less than two years after joining EMI as President of Central Marketing and Global Catalogue, Ernesto Schmitt is leaving the firm. EMI CEO Roger Faxon sent a memo to staff members explaining that Schmitt plans to return to his entrepreneurial roots after leading the “hugely successful global campaign to launch the re-mastered Beatles albums last year”…
A Paris perfumery company has teamed up with the Sex Pistols to launch “the spirit of punk in a bottle,†under the name of the band. The firm describes the contents as having a peppery scented composition. And no, we’re not taking the piss out of you…
Juno Awards‘ organizer CARAS is fast-tracking a coffe-table styled book for the Christmas season that combines pictures and essays in a celebration of Canada’s Grammys 40th anniversary. Actual event takes place in Toronto on March 27
Broadcast – RBR reports Larry King is in talks with Ryan Seacrest over plans to syndicate a live radio talkshow following his break from CNN. Seacrest wants to create a media empire and King of course spent 40 years on radio before hosting his britches on TV…
Media analyst and former Forrester research analyst Sonal Gandhi will deliver the second keynote at RAIN Summit East in Washington D.C. on Sept. 28…
Evanov is teasing the tba launch of Live 105 in Halifax. A beta site allows one to listen here, and advance hype tips an interactive website giving listeners the chance to have a say on what’s played at the Maritime’s 1st Modern Rock FM…
Shaw and other TV providers are negotiating with the CRTC to offer a la carte menu choices on the channels they wish to pay for, an obvious benefit to penny-stretched viewers but a real upset for channels now bundled in basic…
RCMP are investigating possible rivalries at Radio India in the suburb of Surrey, outside Vancouver, following a shoot-up at a local temple wedding on Saturday afternoon [G&M]…
Edison Radio consultant and former Billboard radio editor Sean Ross has long had a fondness for Canada and Canadian music. A recent column here reveals some of his favourite Maple Music trax that includes April Wine, Finger Eleven, Doucette, Harlequin and Crowbar…
Beeb dj Scott Mills was forced to eat crow after an avalanche of hate mails and tweets followed his calling Justin Bieber a “precocious little bratâ€
Copyright – Instead of suing copyright pirates, Warner Bros. and Disney are tackling piracy by suing companies advertising on sites offering infringing clips [MediaPost]
Digital Media – ZapTunes, a San Francisco-based music service boasting 8m tracks is temporarily waiving its $25 monthly all-you-can-eat download subscription fee in order to jump the queue and gain traction in a crowded virtual music space…
TechCrunch reports that Cisco has made an offer to acquire Skype before they complete their IPO process, Â an offering expected to bring in as much as $5b…
A fee-based iTunes report shows only 25% of users logged in to make a direct purchase, 45% made no purchase at all or used browser functions to find selections they liked but failed to purchase from the site…
ShareThis plans to release two analytics tools that allow advertisers and marketers to determine the value of content being shared across Web site. Putting a price on a piece of content being shared lets marketers manage campaign budgets to acquire traffic…
Dose and the National Post have teamed up to offer a 15-track download package from iTunes that’s absolutely free and includes Arcade Fire, Stars, LCD Soundsystem, Tokyo Police Club and Black Mountain
Live – Hollywood once looked to Broadway for ideas, but the shoe’s on the other foot these days with Priscilla Queen of the Desert the Musical and the budget-busting Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark set to open this fall in Toronto and NYC respectively [AP]
Social Media — MySpace remains big, attracting 61m unique users in July, according to ComScore, 2nd only to Facebook‘s 146m among social networks measured by the researchers. And it’s trying to escape the looming shadow Facebook inevitably casts with its 500m-strong global user base. To do so, it seeks to improve its usability; focus on its core audience of youth; and emphasize the sharing of music and entertainment — all while reminding people that it matters, despite the buzz focused on Facebook, Twitter and newer platforms like Foursquare [AdWeek]…
Reasoning that an endless stream of content is required to engage fans, GE, Electronic Arts and Red Bull last week launched their own Digg pages, along with banner ads teasing Digg content [AdAge]
Talent – 37 year-old Calgarian David Pierce won an Emmy Sunday night for scoring the Canadian Songbook elements at the 2010 Winter Olympics. The day after the Olympics, Pierce’s Sinatra tribute, Come Fly Away, opened on Broadway. Returning to Canada, he quickly scored projects ranging from CFL halftime shows to a Rockettes Christmas special and writing music for Cirque du Soleil [Calgary Herald]… Fellow Canadian Bucky Gunts took home an Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Variety, Music, or Comedy Special for his work on the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony…
Michael Ignatieff and wife Zsuzsanna Zsohar swapped tour-bus stories with Rita McNeil at Rita’s Tea Room in Cape Breton this past weekend…
U2 and NASA have collaborated on a video for the International Space Station, resulting in the release of an official space agency video on Friday and posted to the right of this file…
Susan Boyle is the latest victim of the UK talent show Auto-Tune controversy. Â Hot on the heels of revelations that vocal-correcting software was used on singers’ auditions during Simon Cowell‘s The X Factor, comes the news that contestants on Cowell’s other series, Britain’s Got Talent, got the same treatment [NY Post]
Juno winning Lights, born Valerie Anne Poxleitner, performs an acoustic version of The Who‘s Behind Blue Eyes on Billboard‘s website today. View here
Jazz – NYC’s WKCR-FM is rolling out a series of historic recordings and archival interviews as part of a subscription drive for the public broadcaster, starting Sept. 7 – and are also at the core of the subscription-based CMS Archival Project, recently launched by the Creative Music Studio
