• Diversity Funding Debate Heats Up
• Fourteen Year-Old Ottawa Pirate Silenced
• 9th Annual Indie Awards Announcement
• Deloitte’s 4th Annual Media Report
  
• Apple Toying With Plan To Market Free iPods, iPhones
• Terrestials Gaining Traction With Internet Listeners
  
• Midem Goes Viral
• Videos: Sellaband, Peter Gabriel
• Seth Godin’s 8 Questions and Why
• Annihalator Signs To Earache
• Hawksley Workman And Friends Stage Christmas Show
• Tom Jackson Winding Down ‘Supper’ Tour
• Vancouver Province Offering Weekly New Music Downloads
• Free Christmas music from iTunes
• What Was Said: Best Buy Q3 Earnings Transcript
  
• Audio: Marlee Scott – 5 O`Clock Dance
• RIP: Broadcaster, CRTC analyst Rick Deegan, Aged 58
  

DIVERSITY FUNDING FIGHT CONTINUES: On December 9, the Standing Committee on Heritage presented its report on the three hearings on the abolition of the Musical Diversity Programs ($ 1.3m) administered by the Canada  Council of the Arts on behalf of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

The programs abolished targeted the recording and distribution of so-called “specialized” music,  defined as music whose intent or content is not shaped by the desire for wide market appeal.Funding is to be transferred to FACTOR/MusicAction to support digital market development and international market development.

The Report calls for a return of these funds to the Canada Council for the Arts, for distribution to the sector.

The three specific recommendations include:

1. The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage commends the work of FACTOR, MusicAction, the Canada Music Fund and the Canada Council of the Arts for promoting and developing Canadian talent.
2. The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage recommends that the Department of Canadian Heritage restore, in its entirety, the Canadian Musical Diversity Component within the Canada Music Fund. In addition, the committee recommends that additional funding be allocated to the Canada Council for the Arts to further support the grants program for recording and distributing specialized music.
3. The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage did not hear evidence from the witnesses or from the Evaluation of 2007 that justified the cuts to the Canadian Musical Diversity Component.

On July 31, 2009, the Department of Canadian Heritage announced that the number of CMF components would be reduced from seven to five, with current support for the Canadian Musical Diversity Component and the Support to Sector Associations Component reallocated to the five remaining components. According to the Department’s news release, “this will result in the elimination of overlap in program delivery, a reduction of the administrative burden currently placed on a number of applicants, and better targeting of public funds to emerging priority activities.”

The two emerging activities are digital market development and international market development.

One of purposes of the Committee’s study was to “determine how and why the Department of Canadian Heritage decided to make these cuts.” During the hearing, the NDP seriously challenged the value of the 2007 evaluation, which was put forward by Heritage officials to justify the decision.

This approach was taken also by the Bloc Québécois, both during the hearings and in the Bloc’s Complementary Opinion, where it accuses government officials of misreperesenting the evaluation report to cover what it calls an ideological decision by the government:

The Bloc concludes its Opinion by asking once again that “negotiations be undertaken with the Government of Quebec towards an administrative agreement in order to transfer as soon as possible jurisdiction for the arts, culture and communications to the Government of Quebec, with the associated budgets.”

The government side of the Standing Committee voiced their stance by upholding the cuts.

The full text of the Canadian Conference of the Arts report can be found here

OTTAWA’S PIRATE RADIO STATION, MIX FM 91.9, has gone off the air after spinning songs for several weeks.

The station, operated by Jayhaed Saade, went silent Monday morning, shortly after midnight. Fourteen year-old Saade had ignored two cease-and-desist letters by Industry Canada. The second had warned he could  face a $5,000 fine for each day he remained on the air.

Engineers from local radio stations had also visited his aerial, located at the intersection of Bank St. and Rideau Rd., to check for radiation. They subsequently filed a complaint with Industry Canada.

Saade apparently blamed all those who were “jealous” of his station, according to posters on the popular website digitalhome.ca. Ottawa Sun

TOM JACKSON’s annual Singing For Supper charity benefit series is one show short of ending its 18-stop tour that opened in Halifax on Nov. 20 and wraps-up this weekend with two shows in Yellowknife on Dec. 18 and 19. This grass roots approach of fundraising and connecting with communities has had incredible impact: 20 shows in 2008 raised over $402,000; 13,417 pounds of food; and created invaluable awareness for food banks, family agencies and their diverse resources. Highlights from the Calgary show are to be broadcaston Radio 1 and 2 on Christmas Day.

INDIE AWARDS: The Nominees for The 9th Independent Music Awards have been announced. A complete listing of acts by category and country of origin, audio streams of the nominees music and a chance to vote can be found by linking here.

The IMAs were launched 9 years ago, and created by Music Resource Group publisher of The Musician’s Atlas and co-sponsored by online retailer, eMusic; Pump Audio; digital network The StreamTV; media promotion companies The Planetary Group & HIP Video Promo; college booking agency, NACA among others, According to the organizers, the IMAs leverages its access to performance, promotion & distribution opportunities to place winners & nominees in front of 50 million music fans, programmers, talent buyers, film, TV & gaming music supervisors, retailers, media outlets and licensing opportunities.

NARM - National Association of Recording Merchandisers – announced today that Christina Calio, Director of Strategic Music Relationships & Business Strategy for the Entertainment & Devices Group at Microsoft, and David Levin, Sr. VP, Business Manager of Digital and Ad Supported Sales at Sony Music Entertainment, will co-chair the NARM Digital Think Tank, a task force that is dedicated to resolving issues surrounding the business of digital music.

NARM’s Digital Think Tank is tackling three broadly defined issues identified by the NARM membership: digital supply chain and operations, metrics and data visualization, and product development. Members serving on the Digital Think Tank include: 7digital, Amazon.com, E1, EMI, IODA, Iris, iTunes, Microsoft, Mix & Burn, Napster, Nokia, The Orchard, Rhapsody, Rhino, Sony Music, Topspin, Universal, Verizon, WEA, and Wind-up.

MEDIA TECHNOLOGY MARKETING

TELUS CEO BETS HIS SALARY: Darren Entwistle, the chief executive of Telus Corp. is so optimistic that the telecommunications giant will meet or exceed expectations next year, he’s betting his salary on it.

“I’m confident in the opportunity that our company has in the coming quarters and years ahead in creating sustainable value,” he said. “Accordingly, I’ve recently informed the Telus board of directors that I’ll be taking the entirety of my 2010 annual cash salary compensation net of taxes in Telus shares.”

Compensation figures for this year were not immediately available. However, in 2008, Mr. Entwistle earned $1.225-million in salary, according to the company’s annual report. Total after-tax compensation, including options, totalled $4.42-million. CBC

INTERNET RADIO STUDY: A new report from Bridge Ratings says that Internet radio use continues to rise and terrestrial radio streams are recording significant unique user counts, as the industry continues to better understand the important role Internet streaming plays in audience building and monetization of their terrestrial listeners. Between July 5 and August 30, Bridge Ratings interviewed 3,500 persons 12+ on a national basis to determine their use of Terrestrial radio, Satellite Radio, Internet Radio, MP3 Players and HD Radio. Among Americans using these technologies, terrestrial radio continues to dominate. 60 million Americans listen to some form of Internet Radio in a typical week according to the Bridge study. Satellite radio’s nearly 19 million subscribers accounts for nearly 6% of the U.S. population and HD radio has made solid usage gains now reaching 650,000 weekly users.

OPEN ACCESS: A hard and fast rule that prohibits Internet service providers from discriminating between content providers could “inadvertently limit the availability of creative and innovative services that consumers may want to purchase,” AT&T argues in its latest statement about proposed neutrality regulations.

In a letter submitted today to the Federal Communications Commission, the telecom argues that ISPs and Web companies should be free to enter into “voluntary” agreements “for the paid provision of certain value-added broadband services.”

AT&T adds that rather than a “strict nondiscrimination” rule, the FCC should instead focus on “unreasonable and anticompetitive” forms of discrimination. Daily Online Examiner

MEDIA DEMOCRACY: According to Deloitte’s fourth annual “State of the Media Democracy” report, due out today, 34% of Americans cite TV as their favorite medium, up from 27% last year. Second through fourth, respectively, were Internet, music and books, all of which are perceived by the average consumer as being less expensive than a night out at the movies. While 71% of respondents say watching TV is one of their top media choices, only 22% listed going to the movies among their top 3. Media Week

GOOGLE’s latest product development is an URL shortening service attached to its toolbar. The tiny URLs are a staple on Twitter that limits users to 140 characters per tweet. Google`s Goo.gl has some wondering if the company plans on introducing its own Twitter-like service in the near future, an adjunct to a suite of free services that include chat, e-mail and document files. In October, Google announced a search deal with Twitter so as to integrate real-time tweets in its search queries.

Not to be outdone, Facebook is testing it own URL shortener, which will initially focus on its mobile application; and Twitter is about to launch commercial accounts, designed to allow attribution among the multiple employees and contributors that often co-author big brand accounts.

APPLE NEWS: More than half of Americans (52%) say they’d be willing to watch the ads if paid to watch them, such as through a discount on their cable bill, according to a multi-country survey by Synovate. The US was the second-highest market globally that said this, after Spain at 57% .

Such data supports the notion behind a patent filed by Apple earlier this year that raised eyebrows when news of it became public. The patent suggests that Apple is toying with the idea of developing low cost or even free iPods and iPhones that are equipped with software that not only forces the consumer to watch ads, but then quizzes them on the video to make sure they had been paying attention (via the New York Times ). Marketing Vox

CONCORD MUSIC Group has launched a Holiday Winter Music Guide website that is brimming with seasonal titles, vinyl, boxed sets, shirts and other goodies. Follow Concord Music Group on Twitter, and tweet to win! Tweet the 10% discount holiday code  (CMGW4 + the link http://bit.ly/cmgholiday) to enter to win a $50 Concord gift card. The music group has alsopartnered with Audiolife, an e-commerce platform for independent artists and labels,  for the exclusive launch of pop star Anjulie’s Direct-to-Fan online store.

VERIZON WIRELESS has introduced a tool that lets subscribers more easily port photos, videos and music between mobile devices and PCs. The new V Cast Media Manager allows users to transfer user-generated content from phones to computers using only a USB cable rather than the more involved process of having to remove a device’s SD memory card to do so.

MYXER,  a standard-bearer in the mobile delivery content field, today announced broad expansion into the artist services realm with a suite of mobile marketing services aimed toward strategic partnerships with the music industry.

To complement the company’s music marketing offerings, Myxer is launching MobileStage, a mobile marketing suite featuring a music application distribution service for iPhone, BlackBerry and Androids.

Myxer’s MobileStage offers the following tools to all artists:

• Free, enhanced mobile websites
• Mobile fanlist management and messaging
• Advanced data analytics
• Promotional initiatives for artists based on location and touring routes
• And, for independent artists, A&R opportunities with some of the industry’s top music management professionals

As part of Myxer’s application distribution service, the company will promote artist apps to its user base of nearly 30 million customers. The first of these includes BlackBerry apps for legendary rock acts, Pearl Jam and U2.

Myxer currently works with more than 100,000 artists delivering customizable and feature-rich mobile content to help these artists connect with fans in new ways. The company’s plans include several new features in the coming months, including full-track downloads, streaming audio and video, as well as links to artist merchandise outposts, concert ticket purchase options and a much broader application distribution service.

MIDEM: The annual music industry trade fair in Cannes, France is the long-established hub for acts, labels and music publishers to buy, sell, licence and network. In recent years the event has increasingly attracted alligned entertainment industries, and corporate brands seeking to foster stronger relationships with audiences through the uses of music and musicians. The Midem organization is social networking itself, creating a YouTube channel, Twitter feed and an RSS blog which can be viewed by linking to the respective sites. Additionally, one can subscribe to a Midem newsletter.

Below, a couple of Midem YouTube videos:

MIDEM – Sellaband

PETER GABRIEL’s Keynote MIDEM Speech

SETH GODIN’S EIGHT QUESTIONS & WHY

Who are you trying to please?

What are you promising?

How much money are you trying to make?

How much freedom are you willing to trade for opportunity?

What are you trying to change?

What do you want people to say about you?

Which people?

Do we care about you?

(and after each answer, ask ‘why?’)

APPOINTMENTS/CHANGES

DAWNA HENDERSON, the president/CEO of digital agency Henderson Bas, has been named chair of the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada’s 2010 board of directors … Paul Vidich, former Executive at Warner & AOL, has joined the Board of ReverbNation.com

BRIEFLY NOTED: Earache Records has announced the signing of Canadian thrash metal pioneers Annihalator to a European deal.The band was named in the Favorite Metal Artist/Group category at the ‘09 Indie Awards held on March 14 at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto.

HAWKSLEY WORKMAN, Melissa McClelland, Luke Doucet, Justin Rutledge, Rick Miller,  Teresa Pavlinek & Shoshana Sperling, Samidha Joglekar, Wilderness Of Manitoba, Lily Frost and others  are on the bill for the annual Christmas Show, set at the Rivoli this Friday/Saturday nights (Dec. 18/19) in Toronto. Proceeds in support of Daily Bread Food Bank & The Stephen Lewis Foundation. Tickets are set at $18 in advance and can be purchased at Tickets $18 at Soundscapes / Rotate This and online at SixShooterRecords.com

THE BLACK EYED PEAS are in trouble with the taxman, a sore point that has landed the band manager in hot water … Lady Gaga‘s ‘Bad Romance’ is cited as the year’s best advertisement. The video manages to incorporate 10 brands in a sleek 5 minutes … The Beatles have topped the Nielsen Soundscan Albums of the Decade chart in the US – and are the only British act to feature in the top 50 … Green Day are to follow in the footsteps of The Beatles and collaborate with the Rock Band computer gaming franchise … Rufus Wainwright has announced plans for a UK tour … Montreal band October Sky October Sky will represent Canada in the final round of the Global Battle of the Bands. The competition, which in the past has had members of the Sex Pistols and high-powered English record producers as a panel of judges, takes place Jan. 31 in London, England.

HAZINA the hippo, one of Telus’ most popular critters is back again for the holidays with the unforgettable song that everyone is asking for, “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.” The song was a huge hit in the 2005 holiday campaign so the Telco brought it back again ‘by popular demand’.

THE PROVINCE in Vancover is now offering readers a weekly download service offering free songs by rising stars in Canada, via the Province Playlist. This new weekly feature was kick-started by Barry Stecyk, a huge music fan and the man behind Hevy D’s Old-Fashioned Kettle Korn,

iTUNES: Do you need some Christmas music?  Well does iTunes have the deal for you.  You can download 7 Christmas songs for FREE from iTunes right now.  The songs include some of the best Christmas songs and alot of them are by recent artists.   In the US they can download the whole album but Canadians get 7 songs.

Here is a small sampling of the songs included:

* Silent Night-Sarah McLachlan
* We Three Kings-Toby Keith
* We Wish You a Merry Christmas-Weezer
* Another Christmas Song-Stephen Colbert

Click here to download the iTunes freebies
In a career catalog of some 30 albums, Give ‘Em As Little is Swamp Dogg’s first to consist almost entirely of soul, blues, and rock ‘n’ roll classics.

“Black people go to bed and wake up the next day and their address has been changed,” Swamp Dogg said in an interview with BluesCritic.com.

“Like we went to bed one night as rhythm & blues artists and we woke up and we were no longer. Then it’s soul, then it’s R&B and that [R&B] is someone like Usher. Nothing against Usher, you understand, but that’s not really rhythm & blues.”  To hear samples from the album, link here

WHAT WAS SAID - The following is extracted from Best Buy’s Q3 Earnings Call

Our domestic comparable store sales for the month of November increased 8.4%, a phenomenal result given the challenging environment most retailers are experiencing. That month concluded with a double-digit comparable store sales gain over the Black Friday weekend with roughly half of the gain coming from an increase in traffic and the balance coming from higher average ticket.

Our online business also experienced strong results. Revenues for the third quarter increased more than 20% versus last year as a record number of consumers visited bestbuy.com over the period. These results also highlighted the power of a multi-channel retailer as in-store pick-ups were up nearly one-third of total online sales for the quarter.

Results like these are only possible through the joint efforts of our marketing merchant supply chain teams all working with a sense of shared purpose to support what I believe is the greatest retail team in the industry.

Connectable devices drove most of our strength in the quarter and over the Black Friday weekend, with strong growth in notebooks and netbooks, smartphones, televisions, and digital SLR cameras. This performance simply reinforces our belief that these devices continue to move from discretionary items to products with real utility and customers’ lives. While we are seeing very strong growth in devices that can be connected, only a small percentage of them leave our stores with a connection attached, with the notable exception of smartphones. We are not yet where our customers need us to be in the connected world, a situation that is both a challenge and a future opportunity.

Gift cards are also a bright spot this year. Last year, as you might recall, customer demand for gift cards dropped dramatically, in large part we believe because of the bankruptcies and strife among retailers and financial institutions. We are very encouraged by the fact that gift card sales were up approximately 40% in November heading into the final two days and they were up approximately 100% on Friday and Saturday.

As you might know, our customers historically spend over two times the value of a gift card when they come back to redeem it, a fact that has contributed meaningfully to our post-Christmas business in recent years.

At the same time our teams were serving a record number of customers across all of our channels, the number of Black Friday customer complaint calls to our call center decreased 24% versus last year, which is on top of a 25% decline the previous year, an outstanding data point that illustrates how well we are taking care of our customers during this very busy season.

Even though we believe our categories are more important to customers than ever, we need to make sure that we continue to add tremendous value to each and every customer who shops with Best Buy. We were and will continue to be sharp on price because we know that remains the non-negotiable table stakes in this very competitive environment. But beyond price, we wanted to make sure customers had the opportunity to buy all of their connected devices from Best Buy and have access to 18-month interest free financing on any basket over $249.

Third quarter net earnings of $0.53 per diluted share was ahead of our expectations. We are very pleased with our revenue and share trends in this difficult environment and are optimistic that the strength we see is sustainable for several reasons. First, we continue to see domestic volumes and traffic stabilize and improve. This give us confidence that the results we announced this morning are the result of something more than just easy year over year comparisons.

Second, actions we have taken to focus spending on growth areas while lowering costs are providing benefits in both the domestic and international segments. Lastly, given our sales and operating income performance of this quarter, we believe we are finding a good balance between price and profit relative to the opportunities that exist in the current environment.

Turning now to the third quarter results, revenue for the enterprise rose 5% to $12 billion. The revenue growth was a bit ahead of what we had assumed in our guidance and was the result of new stores and third quarter comparable store sales growth of 1.7%. Domestically, third quarter revenues increased approximately 9% from last year to $8.9 billion. The quarter saw a comparable store sales increase of 4.6%. We are encouraged to see strength in categories that are consistent with where Best Buy is going in the path to the connected world, such as computing and mobile phones. These categories have been particularly strong all-year and in the early holiday season, as evidenced by their low double-digit comparable store sales growth.

Additionally, flat panel TVs saw low double-digit comparable store sales growth versus last year due to strong unit increases that were offset by declines in the average selling price.

Partially offsetting these gains were continued low double-digit comparable store sales declines in music and movies and high single digit comparable store sales decline in gaming. Looking at how the quarter performed, we are encouraged that the domestic comparable store sales improved sequentially each month and finished strong in the month of November, as Brian mentioned earlier.

Another bright spot was the 3% increase in domestic store traffic during the quarter, which marks the second consecutive quarter of traffic growth for Best Buy. Traffic gains and strong coordinated execution by our store and corporate teams resulted in an estimated 230 basis point increase in our domestic market share for the three months ended October.

Overall, ASP was up slightly during the quarter as notebook computers, mobile phones, and televisions increased in the revenue mix. The net result was an average ticket that was up slightly for the quarter.

Turning now to international, the segment third quarter revenue totalled $3.1 billion, which was approximately a 6% decline versus last year. The revenue decrease was driven by comparable store sales decline of 6.7% and the negative impact of foreign currency fluctuations. Excluding the impact of foreign currency exchange rates, the international segment’s revenue decreased by approximately 4% versus the prior period.

Best Buy Europe, which is in our comparable store sales numbers for the first time, reported an approximately 3% decline in comparable store sales. These results were in line with our expectations and resulted in slightly higher market share, as modest increase in connections was offset by increased promotional pricing.

Canada experienced high single digit comparable store sales decline while essentially maintaining its strong market share. So while we were seeing relatively strength domestically, the consumer in Canada continues to experience more difficult headwinds of a challenging macro environment.

In China, we experienced low double-digit comparable store sales decline.