• Yangaroo Lands CMJ Campus Distribution Account
• Google Muscles In On iTunes Turf
• Idiot’s Guide To D.I.Y. Digital LP Creation
• Royalty Settlement Leaves Songwriters With Short End Of the Stick
• Video: Brian May Launches 3D ‘Lost Village’ Book
• Making New Mileys: Disney’s Teen Star Factory Machine
• New iPhone App Brings Comic Strips To Life
• Tom Waits Gives the Devil His Due
• Rolling Stone Slapped Down For T–shirt Cover Art
• Memphis …On Broadway, Hairspray Without Soul
• What’s Wrong With Music? Robert Hilburn Explains
• Abracadabra, Shazam! The Magic Behind the Wand
• The Loneliest Newsbeat in America
• A Radio Station Promo Offering Guns and Grenades
• Paris Hilton Wants Us To Know She’s Not As Dumb As She Sounds

YANGAROO Inc., the industry’s leading secure digital media distribution company, has partnered with CMJ Network Inc., the largest and most influential multi-media organization focused on College Radio and emerging music in the US, to allow associate record labels, managers, indie promoters, and other parties to access the Canadian firm’s patented Digital Media Distribution System (DMDS) for distributing music to over 500 college radio stations throughout the United States.

DMDS enables the distribution of entire albums to the most accurate and comprehensive college radio contact lists in the business. DMDS also provides benefits such as instant delivery, graphic email blasts, and reports detailing the number of streams and downloads.

College radio executives benefit by having a central repository for new music, which they can preview and download in the file format and quality of their preference.

Albums released on DMDS will automatically be linked on the CMJ New Music Report Charts, the industry’s most important college radio charts, for radio programmers to stream or download and add to their playlists.

“For record labels and artists, using DMDS eliminates the cumbersome task of addressing packaging and shipping CDs, saving time, effort, and money,” said Robert K. Haber, CEO, CMJ Network. “For radio, they get their music faster and in higher quality, and in fact can access anything they don’t already have directly from our charts.”

The Yangaroo/CMJ partnership was announced at CMJ Music Marathon in NYC, on Oct 20. The four-day confab is the largest and longest-running music industry event of its kind with over 11,000 music industry professionals, 4,000 artists, and more than 75,000 music fans in attendance.

“We’re excited to partner with an organization such as CMJ. Our two teams working together will allow us to provide the best service to college radio in the business,” said Josh Zieman, Senior V.P. Business Development, Yangaroo Inc. “We look forward to a long and mutually rewarding relationship.”

GOOGLE MUSIC SEARCH – by Yinka Adegoke, Reuters:  Google Inc is partnering with major music labels to launch a new feature to make it easier to discover, sample and buy songs on the search engine, according to two people familiar with the plan.

The recorded music industry, struggling with plunging sales and fewer media outlets to break new acts, hopes that streaming songs or clips on the world’s most popular search engine will help stem the tide. Google has around 65 percent of all search queries in the United States, according to comScore.

Start-ups iLike and LaLa will facilitate the new feature, which will enable songs to be streamed on the Google page that will also include a “buy” button. This will help reduce the number of steps fans need to purchase their favourite songs or albums.

The screenshot shows how a search result might look on Google for a search for“U2.” Apicture of the band is to the left of four streaming options for various songs, and the user has the option of listening via either iLike or LaLa. Click on one of the results, and a player pops up from the services that streams the song, along with an option to purchase the song for download.

YOUR DIGITAL LP -   Hypebot: The album is not dead; it’s just evolving. iTunes LP is one iteration, but it’s not the only one. Recently launched Your Digital Record http://ydrecord.com/ offers artists and labels another branch of album’s evolutionary tree with a (currently) free platform that transforms albums from mere digital files into an interactive multimedia bundle.

Now in beta, artists and labels can:

*produce interactive digital albums by uploading tracks, liner notes, artwork, pictures, videos and other media in an online “studio.”

* share digital albums through embedded code, links and email as a widget

* link users to any digital or physical music store for purchase

* accept donations from fans directly via PayPal connect with fans and receive review.

THE LOCAL RECORD STORE  CLERK… Now In Your Pocket – Digital Music News: What ever happened to the local record store clerk? The storm that swept away brick-n-mortar retailers took plenty of knowledgeable employees with it, and a certain human touch in the process. In its place, music fans have access to millions of songs and more sophisticated recommendation sources, though the latest technology lacks the highly-opinionated guidance so aptly portrayed by Jack Black in High Fidelity.

Maybe some opinions are better left unsaid, though a new iPhone app, called ‘Panel,’ is attempting to replicate some of the magic of the dusty record store. The freshly released app currently features input from Mark and Wendy Redfern (Under the Radar Magazine), Jason Hughes (Sonic Boom Records), Justin Gage (Aquarium Drunkard), producer and musician Matt Bayles, and Peter Harper (sculptor and brother of Ben Harper). Each week, an appointed tastemaker will stream two full albums from various categories, including but not limited to rock, pop, indie, alternative, amd jazz.

SONGWRITERS BACK WAGES – Digital Music News: Major labels and the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) recently forged an agreement to pay a huge pile of unmatched royalty obligations. Those mechanical royalties have confusing or undetermined ownership structures, and represent a value of roughly $300 million, according to estimates shared by the NMPA.

Sounds like progress, and good news for those awaiting proper royalty compensation.

But in the wake of plan details disclosed by NMPA head David Israelite, a number of players are pointing to a deal structure that largely fattens the pockets of bigger, more established publishers, not the actual owners or writers of the content in question. In fact, a huge tranche of $174 million, accrued between 2000-7, is merely being distributed based on market share figures, calculated from those previously paid.

ABRACADABRA, SHAZAM! – by Farhad Manjoo, Slate: Shazam application logo for the iPhone.Shazam is the closest a cell phone can come to magic. Say you’re in a restaurant, a song comes on, and you can’t quite place the tune.

In the past, your options were limited; you could try asking your spouse or the waiter for a clue, but that approach risked revealing your ignorance. (That’s “Sex Machine,” dumb ass.) Shazam—which launched in the United Kingdom in 2002 as a call-in service and became widely known in the United States last year when it hit the iPhone—solves the dilemma in a few clicks. Press a button on your phone, and in seconds you’ll get the artist and song title. Other than playing video games, it’s the most useful thing you can do on your phone.

Last week, Shazam announced that more than 50 million people worldwide have used the service—up from 35 million at the start of the year. The company also said that it’s received an undisclosed investment from the fabled Silicon Valley venture-capital firm KPCB. Shazam’s success seems justified—it’s the one app you can show to iPhone skeptics to get them to reconsider their position (though Shazam is also available on Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and pretty much any other phone). Yet for all the acclaim it garners, Shazam’s inner workings are pretty mysterious. How does it actually ID your song? How does the company make money? (Here’s one hint: iPhone users should expect to see a pay version soon.) And what are the long-term prospects for a firm whose sole purpose is satisfying an acute, very occasional need?

WHAT’S WRONG - by Robert Hilburn, Live @ Leeds: For all the focus on technology and new ways of reaching consumers, the overriding challenge facing the record industry is the need for more visionary artists—the kind who once won the allegiance of fans by giving them comfort and inspiration that they couldn’t consistently find in other parts of pop culture.

At its most powerful, rock’n’roll was never just about a sound, but about an article of faith—the bold idea that we could change the world. That’s why many of the genre’s most enduring anthems addressed that theme, from “Blowin’ in the Wind” to “Lose Yourself.”

The influence of top-tier acts, from the Beatles to U2, went well beyond the millions of records they sold. They created and then nurtured the idea that rock’n’roll mattered in our lives and in turn fostered such a large appetite for rock around the world that hundreds of other musicians could march under that banner.

Rock bands continue to make music. Record companies still turn out albums. And music fans love their iPods. But something essential is missing. Music is no longer a vital part of most young people’s lives—and everyone must share the blame.

Young musicians must take some blame for rock’s decline as a social force because most of them no longer aim to make recordings that will reach a mass audience. Ever since the death of Kurt Cobain, artists have been increasingly contemptuous of major record labels, and even too much success. They’ve witnessed a pattern of compromise, greed and self-destruction on episodes of “Behind the Music.”

We’ve seen many of the most promising new acts, from Arcade Fire to Radiohead, choose to operate outside the major-label structure rather than risk being chewed up by the system or enter the uncertain world of 360 deals.

ASIA MUSIC NEWS: The Recording Industry Association of Japan has just released physical-music shipments data for the first nine months of 2009, and to absolutely no one’s surprise, the state of the world’s No. 2 music market is as bleak as ever.

Shipments of audio product by the RIAJ’s 49 member companies in the January-September period totaled 156.8 million units, down 14% from the first nine months of 2008, for a wholesale value of 185.4 billion yen ($2 billion), down 15%, according to data released Oct. 20 by the RIAJ. The association’s members, who account for some 90% of recorded-music sales in Japan, shipped 34.2 million units of foreign product in the first three quarters of the year, down 18%, for a value of 41.6 billion yen ($458.3 million), a decline of 13%.

MEMPHIS …ON BROADWAY – by Roger Friedman, ShowBiz 2411: The musical “Memphis” opened on Broadway last night, budgeted at $12 million, in the works for ten years, and just, stupefyingly, clueless. It just seemed like “Dreamgirls,” with a dash of “Hairspray,” and no soul.

It wasn’t like the makers of it didn’t give it a good try. Bon Jovi’s David Bryan has been working valiantly for years to see this show open on Broadway. He was toasted last night by bandmates Richie Sambora and Tico Torres, who came to the Shubert Theater for their pal. Also on hand were a smattering of celebs including the great Danny Aiello, singer Freddie Jackson, and Gina Gershon. For verisimilitude, Memphis’s Peabody Hotel even sent their famous ducks north for a day of publicity.

But the ducks were about all that seemed true to the nature of “Memphis.” The story is supposed to be that of the white deejay who started playing black music in Memphis.

They don’t say when, but figure the late 1950s. There’s no way of knowing. Even though the show is set in my favorite U.S. city outside of New York, there is no reference to Stax, Rufus Thomas, Elvis Presley, or Martin Luther King. The real radio station that anchored R&B music in this seminal R&B capital, WDIA, is also not heard.

So what? “Memphis” is a big, generic commercial show about nothing…

BOY GEORGE has revealed that he has written a song about Amy Winehouse. The former Culture Club frontman wrote the song during his recent stint in prison for beating and falsely imprisoning a man in his east London flat.

The song, which is titled ‘Your Pain Makes a Beautiful Sound’, features the lyrics: “You’re a genius, you’re a car crash/ It’s hard to say what you do best.”

The pair have met once, backstage at London’s KOKO venue, where they discussed one of the shared favourite songs, the Phil Spector-produced ‘He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)’, which was sung by The Crystals and written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin.

“I wrote a lot of stuff, which will be released next year,” Boy George told The Times of his stay in HMP Edmunds Hill in Suffolk. “I wrote a diary, and songs.”

MARIAH CAREY’s forthcoming album to spotlight everyone who isn’t Mariah Carey – Idolator:  Don’t call the (probably inevitable) commercial retooling of Mariah Carey’s Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel a remix album: “They’ve said that it’s a remix album, but really what it is is a features album. [The songs] won’t necessarily be remixed,” producer Tricky Stewart told Rap-Up.com. “It’s just an album of features, really cool features on the exact same album.”

Among the artists enlisted for this salvage operation: Trey Songz, Gucci Mane, Big Boi, OJ Da Juiceman, R. Kelly, and—natch—T-Pain. No release date has been set.

WHITNEY married me to stop bisexual rumours – Entertainment Daily: Grammy Award-winning singer Bobby Brown reveals in his new tell-all book that Whitney Houston married him to end speculation about her sexuality.

PARIS HILTON’s Hollywood mansion has its own miniature replica house complete with chandeliers, air-conditioning and furniture, for her dogs Prada, Dolce and Marilyn Monroe. The self-styled blonde bimbette tells London’s Daily Mirror her personna is anact: “”I think a lot of people will assume that I’m just like an airhead. But in my everyday life, when I’m hanging out with my friends or if I’m in a business meeting I’ll talk in my normal voice.”

DYLAN, Hollywood Palladium -  by Steven Mirkin, Variety: You have to give Bob Dylan this — in a youth and novelty-obsessed era, he’s not afraid of aging. With his pencil-thin moustache and Western suit, backed by musicians in suits and fedoras, he looks like an old-fashioned troubadour who wandered into town looking for a gig. And on his last few albums, he’s rummaged through the dusty corners of American music — Delta blues, parlor songs, murder ballads — for inspiration.

ROLLING STONE COVER ART – by Eriq Gardner, THR, Esq: Most musicians would love to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. Back in its heyday, a cover spot was even worth millions of dollars in record and concert sales.

But take a Rolling Stone cover, slap it on to a T-shirt and sell it to fans — that equals trouble.

The Wenner Media publication is now being sued by concert promotion giant Live Nation, F.E.A. Merchandising and Bravado International Group Merchandising Services for hawking products that feature the names and likenesses of popular musical artists like Nirvana, Beyonce and Run-DMC.

According to a complaint filed in California district court, the plaintiffs claim Wenner violated the trademarks and rights of publicity for numerous “Live Nation Artists” in connection with merchandising sold at Macy’s and Wal-Mart.

“Defendants have done so without any input, approval, or quality control from the Artists,” says the lawsuit, filed by Howard King and Seth Miller at LA’s King Holmes Paterno & Berliner.

TOM WAITS GIVES THE DEVIL HIS DUE - by Xan Brooks, The Guardian: At 59, Tom Waits has finally landed the role he was born to play: the devil. He reveals how his part in Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus was informed by a lifetime’s fascination with beatniks, stories and lonely old men

All thoughts of conducting a straightforward interview with Tom Waits turn to steam within seconds of his arrival in the Soho hotel suite. I come in through one door, carrying a notepad and a tape recorder. He comes through the other, carrying the exact same equipment. “Now OK,” he says, arranging his effects on the table. “You have your questions for me, and then I have some questions for you.” Introductions complete, he whips off his porkpie hat to let the hair stream up. He could be a conjurer unveiling a rabbit.

One does not so much interrogate Waits as be granted an audience, a private performance. Talking to the press, he once confessed, is like talking to the cops. You only do it when you have to, and it is always better to bear false witness. So he will claim he was raised by a pair of circus acrobats, or that he met his wife after busting her out of a convent, or that he trained as a doctor and still occasionally practises on the kids.

“Most of the time I just tell ‘em stories,” he allows. “And if the stories are entertaining, who cares whether or not they’re true?”

COMIC STRIPS BY iPHONE – by Stuart Dredge, Mobile Entertainment: UK firm Tapisodes has launched its first ‘interactive mobile motion comic’ for iPhone and iPod touch, kicking off with an episodic app based on the Daily Telegraph’s ‘Alex’ strip.

The app costs 59p, and is offering users 20 different episodes for download throughout this month. It was developed by Tapisodes and published by games firm TAG Games.

Tapisodes producer Jorg Tittel tells ME that iPhone made for a great launch platform.

“While we’ll be bringing Tapisodes to other platforms, including the BlackBerry, no other mobile platform has such a well integrated and efficient store as the App Store, nor do they offer in-app purchasing, which is key to a provider of episodic entertainment like us,” he says.

“All the episodes in Alex are downloadable for free, but we’ll be using in-app purchases in future products, especially now that Apple has decided to finally allow in-app purchases in free apps.”

One of the interesting features of Tapisodes’ technology is the motion aspect, which aims to provide a more animated experience than other comic apps available on iPhone.

Tittel says this was a deliberate choice by the company.

“Other comic book offerings all seem to be based on the concept of a ‘camera’ moving over scanned-in comic book pages,” he says. “While some of them have found nice ways of moving from panel to panel, we would still prefer reading the real thing.”

DISNEY’S TEEN STAR FACTORY – by Belinda Luscombe, Time: Luscombe Bridgit Mendler is a willowy, blond teen with a sweet singing voice and decent comic timing. She’s also the show-biz equivalent of the next iPhone — a young Disney star-in-waiting. Mendler, 16, is getting the full Disney Channel rollout. Introduced with recurring guest spots on two of its hit shows, Jonas and Wizards of Waverly Place, she will star in her own series, Good Luck Charlie, in 2010.

“I’ve been told to brace myself,” says Mendler. “If we have the success I hope we have with the show, everything will change.”

Mendler is following a path to fame the channel has mapped over the past three years as it has launched serial stars into orbit: the supernova Miley Cyrus in 2006, Selena Gomez in 2007, the Jonas Brothers in 2008 and Demi Lovato this year. (See pictures of Disney stars throughout the years.)

Each of these youngsters was given a TV show — the so-called zitcom — followed usually by a recording contract with Disney-owned Hollywood Records, songs in heavy rotation on Radio Disney and on Disney-movie sound tracks, a concert tour with Disney-owned Buena Vista Concerts and tie-in merchandise throughout the Disney stores. Miley & Co. are like modern Mouseketeers, but instead of M-I-C-K-E-Y, they spell C-A-S-H.

BRIAN MAY LAUNCHES 3D ‘LOST VILLAGE’ BOOK

AND FINALLY, REFORMING GOVERNMENT: A disparate party of greviously offended taxpayers in the UK have come together to form a coalition pushing for parliamentary reform, and an end to graft, greed, pork barreling and generally shafting the punters that put these pickled buffoons in power. Watch the video, and link here  to see what the Brits are doing, and what clearly needs interested parties here in Canada to emulate.

BROADCASTING & MEDIA: The CBC is launching a new 10-minute late-night local newscast and a 10-minute online version of The National as part of a sweeping set of changes to take effect next Monday. The National, the public broadcaster’s flagship evening newscast, is getting a new look and a new format, the CBC announced Wednesday, though it remains a one-hour show. And CBC Newsworld, the 24-hour news channel, will be renamed CBC News Network (CBC NN), and see programming changes throughout the day. The thrust of these changes, which will be rolled out Monday, is to prepare the CBC for a news environment in which consumers want news from a variety of sources, including the internet and mobile phones, according to Richard Stursberg, executive vice-president of CBC English services. Source: CBC

CBCNN? Say it out loud. CBCNN. You tend to put the break between CB and CNN because you’re so used to saying CNN. Having a competitor’s name IN your name doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. It would be like Harvey’s advertising the “Donald Burger.” – John Rashotte, SONY Board

VIRGIN RADIO Toronto has added Akon to its “star-studded” radio team, including Ryan Seacrest, Mad Dog and Billie, Taylor and Biggs and Hollywood gossip blogger, Perez Hilton. As one less than enthused radio wag commented on the SONY board: ‘Yeah..and one less warm body in the chair that can relate to the market.’

GUNS & GRENADES CONTEST – RadioInfo.com: Answer the question correctly at one radio station in war-torn Somalia, and instead of cash, or a dinner or a trip, you can win an assault rifle, ammunition or hand grenades. Radio Garowe reports an Islamic station in the city of Kismayo was offering the lethal prizes for answering questions correctly about the Koran, and to “encourage the population to fight.” Kismayo, a port city, is controlled by the Islamic al-Shabab militia, a group deemed to be a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaeda …

VATICAN RADIO, the voice of the Roman Catholic Church, is starting to air advertisements for the first time in the station’s nearly 80-year history. The first company to run its commercials will be an Italian gas and electricity company – Enel.

Until now Vatican Radio has been wholly funded by the Catholic Church at a cost of some $30M US a year. But the latest finances show that it is suffering from the global economic downturn.

THE LONELIEST NEWSBEAT IN AMERICA – by Richard Perez-Pena NYT: …An Associated Press reporter based in Houston, Michael Graczyk covers death penalty cases in Texas, the state that uses capital punishment far more than any other, and since the 1980s, he has attended nearly every execution the state has carried out — he has lost track of the precise count.

No reporter, warden, chaplain or guard has seen nearly as many executions as Mr. Graczyk, 59, Texas prison officials say. In fact, he has probably witnessed more than any other American. It could be emotionally and politically freighted work, but he takes it with a low-key, matter-of-fact lack of sentiment, refusing to hint at his own view of capital punishment.

Given a choice between the death chamber’s two viewing rooms, he usually chooses the one for the victim’s family rather than the side for the inmate’s, partly “because I can get out faster and file the story faster.”

GOV’T SUBSIDIZED MEDIA – by David Carr, NYT: A report by Leonard Downie Jr., formerly of The Washington Post, sets forth a number of ways to pay for journalism. One of them is government money.

LOUDNESS CONTROL – Broadcast Engineering: Over the decades, audio professionals in the production and broadcast industries have attempted to control audio so their audiences hear programs that are both intelligible and easy on the ear.

Initially, audio professionals did this by simply listening to the audio content. In theory, it made perfect sense because audio is produced to be perceived by the human ear. But in practice, there were reasons why simply listening to what was running on the audio track did not achieve the desired results. It quickly became apparent that  the industry needed a means of measuring the audio.

…Currently, there are two main ways to distinguish loudness: sensory and perceptual. Sensory loudness is directly related to the neural activity of the inner human ear. It is possible to model this and build a sensory loudness meter. In contrast, perceptual loudness is related to how interested the listener is in the sound. Obviously, this is not something one can model because it is a learned response that varies according to the personal involvement of the listener. As people are different in how they use their senses, there are enormous variations in the information needed to form a perceived reality. This becomes interesting for people working with sound and moving pictures because if the source can be seen, then the mind will prefer the visual evidence to the sound.

Nonetheless, the standard published by the ITU describes a proven method of measuring the audio and getting a result related to loudness. As the production and broadcast industries start to embrace loudness control, they will face some important challenges.

They must get used to something they have no experience with. The industry knows how to deal with level control because it has been doing it for years, but as already stated, two different pieces of audio with the same level characteristic can be different when it comes to their loudness impression.

The industry should learn to control audio material by using loudness measurement techniques instead of level measurements because when it comes to complying with the ITU 1770 standard, what the level meter is showing is no longer important. Engineers need to understand that loudness and level are two different things. If the audio material is aligned to equivalent loudness, the level might vary wildly, and that’s going to confuse those who have been trained to look for proper leveling.

The way we control audio is going to be very different in the future. The audio engineer still needs to trust his or her ears, but the optical reference instrument of the future will be the loudness meter.

ONSCREEN MEDIA SUMMIT - by Stephanie Robbins, Broadcast Newsroom: Promoting the value of content and developing compelling offerings for consumers is the key to helping the industry from tossing money and premium content down the drain, according to Warner Bros. Chairman and CEO Barry Meyer, speaking at the Broadcasting & Cable/Multichannel NewsOnScreen Media Summit Oct. 21 in New York City.

“Something of value is generally not given away for free,” he said. “Just because a consumer is watching on a mobile device or a Website doesn’t mean it cost any less to produce the content.”

… He cited the popular computer game World of Warcraft, which customers buy for $60, then spend $15 a month to play online. Nine million people play the game, predominantly millennials, the same demographic that many executives say expect to get their content for free. The success of WoW seems to undermine that argument.