FYIMusic Monday morning round-up

BUSINESS NEWS
Copyright Board adds a nickel to the price of blank CDs
Battle lines drawn in advance of Net neutrality hearing
UK music biz grapples with Pinnacle debacle
Sask government pumping $90M into broadband growth
Truphone app turns iPods into telephones
Google app enables smart phones to stream video
US copyright exemptions fodder for Canadian lawmakers
Rock Band tops catalogue with No Doubt hits
The ubiquitous mouse turns 40 tomorrow
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch exposed
Chinese morticians face stiff new tarrif
Pythonline a hit, but where’s the money?
MUSIC
Avril Lavigne said to have left Nettwerk Management
Leonard Cohen remains top of the pops in the UK
Anvil to be inducted into CMW Indie Hall of Fame
George Canyon teams up with Chad Kroeger and Richard Marx
EMI signs Vancouver country duo, McKillip sisters
Andy Kimm’s all-star charity Chrismas show
Christmas songs to replace Anne, Josh and Bing

NEWS
The Copyright Board of Canada has issued a decision on private copying levies for this year and next that effectively bumps up a blank media storage levy for CDs by a nickel, to 29 cents. The decision, announced Friday, maintains the 2001 rate for audio cassettes at 24¢. The three-person panel explained the blank CD increase was in recognition that the mechanical royalty rate paid by record labels to music publishers has increased; and because consumers now use compression technology to rip music, effectively expanding the number of tracks user can embed on a disc.

The blank media tariff is collected by the Private Copying Collective (CPCC) and annually generates about $30 million. A decline in blank CD sales is expected to cancel any overall increase paid to CPC. More popular portable blank media storage devices such as flash memory sticks and iPods are not subject to the tariff. The CPCC has indicated that it does not intend to collect the increase retroactively when the tariff is certified.

Creative Commons is studying how people understand the term “noncommercial use”. At this stage of research, the organization is reaching out to the Creative Commons community and to anyone else interested in public copyright licenses – to take a few minutes to participate in the study by responding to a questionnaire posted online.

“Because we want to reach as many people as possible,” the website preamble explains, “this is an open access poll, meaning the survey is open to anyone who chooses to respond. We hope you will help us publicize the poll by reposting this announcement and forwarding this link to others you think might be interested. The questionnaire will remain online through December 74 or until we are overwhelmed with responses — so please let us hear from you soon!” Questions about the study or this poll may be sent to noncommercial@creativecommons.org.

Google Inc. says ensuring that new media content in Canada remains unregulated is essential to keeping the Internet democratic,” the National Post reports. The online search Goliath’s opinion is one of almost 100 submissions to the CRTC addressing upcoming hearings on  whether Canadian new media, basically any content carried over the Internet, needs regulation in Canada. The commissioned announced it would solicit comments from the public toward a hearing scheduled for Feb. into the impact new media has had on the Canadian broadcasting system and what if any steps might be taken to regulate it. Final submissions to the federal regulator were due Fri. One proposals being put forward calls for an ISP gross revenue tax of between 2.5 and 5%, with the surcharge rolled back to Canadian broadcasters. Predictably, this proposal faces stiff opposition.

The Association of Independent Music (Aim) in the UK called an emergency meeting on Friday to discuss what can be done to help the record labels affected by the Pinnacle Ent. bankruptcy. The company was estimated to have a 3.8% share of the albums market in the last quarter of 08, and brands itself the UK’s biggest distributor of independent music, representing as many as 400 record labels. A few weeks back music distributor Entertainment UK went into administration after parent company Woolworths collapsed. The company was responsible for 30% of the UK’s music distribution. Zavvi and WH Smith suspended some online sales after being affected by the failure of Woolworths.

Fifty-six percent of Canadian cell phone customers are open to mobile advertising if it reduces their monthly wireless bill by 25-50%, according to a recent survey commissioned by Traverse and conducted by iGR.

The provincial government of Saskatchewan announced on Wednesday that it will contribute $90 million over the next three years towards a strategy to deliver broadband access to every community in the province.

A freeware application for the iPod Touch can turn the music player into a virtual mobile phone. Truphone uses wi-fi technology in an iPod Touch to allow users to make calls to other iPod Touch owners and Google Talk’s messaging service users. The software is a spin-off from technology Truphone developed for smart phones and iPhones.

Wireless customers who access the MySpace social networking service on their mobile phones can now watch online video clips over the airwaves. The new feature allows for the “streaming” of MySpace video content onto any of a number of mobile devices including the BlackBerry Bold, LG Voyager, Motorola Q9, Nokia N95, Palm Centro, or Samsung Instinct. In future, the company will also enable mobile video downloads, effectively extending the service to the Apple iPhone and other devices.

Yahoo launched an updated version of its mobile website for Flickr on Thursday. The update includes the ability to playback Flickr’s short, 90-second videos on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Other devices, like the T-Mobile G1 and the Nokia N-series phones, will be supported soon. Videos on the Flickr mobile site are being processed by Yahoo’s new video platform, which works on the backend to transcode uploaded videos into the high-quality H.264 format. There’s also a web API for feeding videos into the transcoder and for collecting the results.

The US Copyright Office has received 19 comments constituting nine requests for exemptions to anti-circumvention provisions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Hopefully the ensuing discussion and decisions will catch the eye and ear of legislative researchers in Ottawa.  More than a dozen exemptions to that language have been granted the past decade. Public hearings on the latest requests, which were submitted by Tuesday’s deadline, will be held next year. Among the filings, reported on by Wired magazine: a request to exempt DRM-protected video that limit the platforms and players the content can be streamed across; an petition to extend for another three years the ability to unlock cell phones to switch to another carrier; and an exemption to circumvent DVD encryption to obtain clips for noncommercial video usage.

Microsoft is cracking down on people it believes are counterfeiting and selling its software. On Thursday the company added another 63 legal filings in 12 countries against individuals who it says are selling counterfeit Microsoft products. Of the cases being filed, 16 are against defendants in the US, 12 each in Germany and France, and seven in the UK. The other cases deal with activity originating in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Mexico and New Zealand. Sites that Microsoft alleges counterfeiters have hawked wares include Amazon.com, Craigslist, eBay, MySpace, PCWorld and PriceGrabber. The software co. has a site called “How To Tell” that helps people determine whether the Microsoft software they were sold is genuine.

Q3 growth in the global smart phone market was its weakest year-on-year since Gartner Consulting started tracking the market, but Apple’s iPhone stood apart with strong gains. Q3 figures show 36.5M smart phones where sold, an 11.% increase compared to the same period last year. Sales grew in the Q2 by about 16% over last year. Going forward, Gartner expects the smart phone market to continue to grow but at a slower pace. The big winner among the vendors was Apple, which more than quadrupled its sales compared to the same period in 07 as a result of wider geographical availability of its iPhone, a new business model and lower pricing, according to Gartner. Apple sold 4.7 million phones and owns 12.9% share of the market.

Facebook‘s millions of users are in danger from a computer virus dubbed Koobface that is being spread through the social networking site’s messaging system. Users whose computers are infected may have their credit card numbers stolen or their searches on Google, Yahoo and MSN diverted to fraudulent Web sites. Koobface is spread through messages sent from friends whose computers are infected with the virus. The messages arrive in Facebook inboxes with titles like “you look just awesome in this new movie” and direct readers to another Web site to supposedly watch the clip but instead are shown a message that tells them they need an updated Adobe Systems Flash player. But downloading the software infects the victim’s computer with the virus.

MTV Games and Harmonix add The Singles 1992-2003, a No Doubt best-of. The pack brings the total number of songs  available in the Rock Band catalogue to 500.

Whether intentional or not, record companies have for years tested the patience of even the sharpest eyes with miniscule print on cassette inserts and CD booklets. Now the accompanying credits and background stories are largely lost because online retailers aren’t in the text business. It appears that the final nail is being driven into this inglorious end to the liner note. Increasingly, operas sold in the CD format do not include librettos. The market shift to the DVD furthers the trend. Most rarely even include subtitles in the menu. The tactile joy of holding something that one can both play and read created a long emotional tie to the analog LP. Now many of us are going to be loath to toss our CD collections, finding ourselves appreciatively reading the met-data, even if it does require  the help of a magnifying glass and a desk lamp.

This Tue., Dec. 9, the computer mouse turns 40 after making its first public appearance at a technology gathering in San Francisco. Created at the Stanford Research Institute in California, the device was the brainchild of Doug Engelbart and his team  who were looking for a new way to control their computers. Before the mouse scrolled its way on to the scene, they had been using light pens.  Now we understand that thehumble aid is about to be radically re-invented in the coming years.  A company called Oblong Industries is working on a set of gloves, similar to those used by Tom Cruise in the film Minority Report, to control computers and manufacturers are already working on devices that can translate thoughts into actions. Another co.  is pitching the Emotiv Epoc headset that allows players to control computer games using expressions and emotions.

Vanity Fair commentator Michael Wolff has written a 446 page biography of Rupert Murdoch. The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch is drawn from 50 hours of taped interviews. Reviewing the tome in the Guardian, Peter Preston writes, “strip down the hyperbole of ‘secret world’, and what have you got? An extraordinary deal-maker and risk-taker, still staking the pot but curiously solitary – and sympathetic – as he does so: a shambling, discombobulated senior citizen. Wife Wendi handles his emails; he can barely manage a mobile phone.” On why the Oz media emperor likes newspapers so much: ‘Because he can sit in a downbeat office on Sixth Avenue stabbing the copies of the WS Journal with a pair of scissors and demanding shorter, brighter yarns; because this is the business he truly knows, the one where the guys who understand movies and cable can’t compete.”

Funeral parlours in China soon may have to pay copyright royalties when they console the living with popular songs. The Beijing News reported on Saturday that the country’s copyright collective will use Nanjing as a test city.

Last year, Eric Idle signed a partnership with the New Media Broadcasting Co. to jointly operate Pythonline. The site has been in beta-testing mode since the spring and launched late last month. In the first two weeks of going live, the Python channel on YouTube had recorded 4.5 million video views and signed 52,000 subscribers. New Media Broadcasting aims to make Pythonline profitable through advertising revenue and paid subscriptions, but so far is funding the channel through private financing.

The Consumer Electronics Association revised downward its earlier holiday sales projections on Thursday — and the news, predictably, is not good. The CSA now projects that revenue from wholesale shipments of electronics in Q4 will be roughly equal to last year’s number. That is a sharp downgrade from Oct., when the trade group projected that sales would increase 3.5%.

MUSIC
Has Avril Lavigne dumped her longtime manager Terry McBride? The manager to Canada’s stars’ Sarah McLachlan, the Barenaked Ladies and others isn’t saying anything more than “I never comment on things like this.” If the pop pin-up gal has, she may have made a giant mistake. McBride is a savvy promoter with a knack for negotiating profitable sponsorships and generating mega-downloads in a digital world with his Web 2.0 marketing strategies.

The news follows a spate of reports in Hollywood blogs and scandal sheets that the 24 year-old multi-millionaires has been seen whooping it up in various hot spots with socialite Paris Hilton. Scandal scribes such as Perez Hilton are gleefully noting that her boisterous outings appear to be without “washed up” husband/musician Deryck Whibley. This all follows much griping over Lavigne’s compact 65 minute sets that left fans and parents who forked out big bucks for her shows feeling short changed. Tour insiders have been stirring the waters as well. Clearly exhausted from a long road romp, roadies are said to have been instructed to tape tour stop names in block letters on the front of the stages. Landing in Plymouth, Lavigne is said to have giddily pronounced the Pilgrim’s land spot ‘Ply-Mouth’ without having realized her gaffe.

Plants & Animals and Kathleen Edwards make Glide magazine’s year-end Top 20 albums list.

Of all the incarnations of Leonard Cohen‘s song “Hallelujah” – and there have been many – the X Factor winner’s version will raise the most eyebrows. One of the greatest songs of all time, it has a long and varied history dating back to 1984 – long before any of the talent show’s remaining finalists were even born, the Indpendent of London declares today in a wordy essay about the on-going history of the well loved song.

And Cohen, along with Neil Young, are touted as two of Britian’s top concerts in a year-end round-up of hot shows in the  Sunday Guardian.

Stephen Holden turned in a generally up-beat review of Michael Buble’s Friday night concert at Madison Square Garden, writing in the New York Times that “the thing at which Mr. Bublé excels is traditional pop singing with an ear to the present. Whether swinging moderately hard or crooning, he effortlessly bridges the gaps among old-style big-band music, rhythm and blues, and mainstream pop. You never sense that he has a superior attitude toward one style or another. They all belong to a continuum” He ends his review in saying that the Canadian crooner successfully managed to make “the cavernous Garden felt like an intimate nightclub.”

Anvil will be inducted into the Indies Hall of Fame at the 9th annual Independent Music Awards next March 14. The event is part of Canadian Music Week. The knuckle dusting rock outfit’s fortunes have taken a turn for the better after years of slogging it out for a nickel and a jar of draft. The newfound fame follows the release of a mockumentary true-life account of Steve “Lips” Kudlow and Robb Reiner who tour Europe and decide to record a 13th album. Anvil! The Story of Anvil has won scads of glowing reviews, earning the band and doc producer Sacha Gervasi growing acknowledgement and offers.

Country star George Canyon says he has high hopes for his new album What I Do.  “I am so proud of this album and these songs,” he tells the Williams Lake Review.  Canyon co-wrote material with Richard Marx and  Chad Kroeger … two incredibly talented men.” The album includes “What I Do,” a song written for and about his son Kale.

“My son said to me, about six months ago, ‘Dad, why don’t you have any songs about me on your albums?’ And he’d just turned 10. And I said, ‘you know what buddy, you’re right.’ So I wrote two songs about him on this album.’” He says his son knows it’s a true song. “When we heard it on the radio for the first time, he sat there with a big grin on his face, because he knew it was his. And I’ll tell you, as a dad, that’s a pretty darn cool feeling.” In Nov., Canyon released the  five song EP Home for Christmas, cut a deal with CMT Canada to produce the holiday TV special George Canyon’s Christmas and then  set out on a 36-show nationwide tour that’s been doing SRO business.

EMI Music Canada is proud to announce the signing of sisters Britt & Carly McKillip, collectively known as One More Girl. The duo’s first single/video for the song “I Can Love Anyone” is generating success on Country radio as well as CMT, and is available Dec. 23 on iTunes. The BC sisters, aged 17 and 19, have also released their own rendition of “Run, Rudolph, Run.” Young as they are, the McKillips have performed at Calgary’s Stampede, the Merritt Mountain Music Festival and Canadian Country Music, opened for  Dwight Yoakam and Keith Urban, and have been touted with three annual Group of the Year BC Country Music Awards nominations. Expect to hear One More Girl’s EMI album in Spring.

The 4th annual Andy Kim Christmas Show is booked in to Toronto’s Mod Club this Wednesday. The all-star billing includes Ron Sexsmith, Lawrence Gowan, Dru, Alex Lifeson, The Kings, Emm Gryner, Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning.  Last year’s event raised $10,000.00 for Children’s Aid. This year funds are being raised for the Sanfilippo Children’s Research Foundation. Tickets can be scooped in advance online at LiveNation.com and Ticketmaster.ca.

The Barenaked Ladies performed their first Canadian shows Saturday since the band’s singer Steven Page was charged with drug possession in New York last July and Ed Robertson crashed his float plane in a cottage district in ON. The band played a set of kid shows at Massey Hall this past weekend and is scheduled to appear  for tots in Ottawa next.

The reclusive Gaye Delorme is billed at the Yale in Vancouver this Wed.  The eclectic songsmith, musician and producer, perhaps best known as the writer of the raunchy “Rodeo Song,” makes infrequently appearances and when he does he’s more often than not wearing his jazz guitarist hat.  The notoriously private and talented Delorme hasn’t up-dated his own website or his MySpace websites in over a year. We’ll keep you posted on his up-coming show. He does, however, have several videos posted on YouTube, including a sanitized performance of the “Rode Song” with the Edmonton Symphony.

American jam band Umphrey’s McGee has an album launch campaign every band, musician and manager should take note of. The band is offering a shopping list of value-added content that fans can get their mitts on if they fork out and  pre-order the album. As pre-order benchmarks are reached, more content is  added.  Fans stand to nab videos and live recordings online. According to Billboard magazine, the band has rung up 2400 pre-orders since launching the campaign in late Oct. The band clearly has a savvy bent. Umphrey’s McGee 120 annually plays 120 shows, often selling out in 4,000-capacity venues by employing a core group of fans in each market to hype the up-coming show and giveaway CDs. It then lets ticket holders freely tape shows; and it then sells soundboard mixes for $15 per CD after the gig, and $10 for a digital download available 72 hours after each show. According to Billboard, the band sells upwards of 300 CDs per show and has shifted 750,000-plus tracks online. It also has a podcast series that releases two 75-minute recordings of live material every month to more than 20,000 subscribers.

Ron Wood has confirmed long-standing reports that the Faces are gearing up for a reunion tour next year. “We had a few fantastic rehearsals last week and we’re ready to go,” Wood tells Rolling Stone. “It’s like no time has passed by.” Rod Stewart’s touring bassist Conrad Korsch sat in on bass, replacing original Faces bassist Ronnie Lane who died in 1997. A new studio recording is also a strong likelyhood. “Rod wants me to write a load of new stuff for him, so I can do that,” Wood says. As far as Wood’s mainstay employment in the Rolling Stones, he says he’s “always itching to do more work … We just haven’t decided when and where, yet, but I know we will.”

The album Best Record In the World Part 2“by emo band CalPOP was released to etailers for digital download last week, but the album contains a track called “Missing Song,” which appears to be just that – a missing song. Clients spending as much as $.89/song to download the track have been complaining.  Lynn Tracy, the lead singer of CalPOP. “‘says that Missing Song’ is actually about 1/4 second of near silence. The controversy smells and feels like a promotional stunt, but Tracy is keeping a poker face and denouncing etailers that have apparently balked at billing customers for a track that sounds altogether blank.

The San Francisco Herald has a feature that suggests 21 alternative seasonal songs to  replace Bing, Anne and Josh Groban.  Below, the newspaper’s  recommendations and if you have any lists of your own, feel free to send them to us. We’ll compile the submissions and print them here before the turkey’s stuffed and in the oven. Promise!

Christmas Song List:
The Flaming Lips – “White Christmas”
Glasvegas – “Please Come Back Home”
Saint Etienne – “I Was Born on Christmas Day”
Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan – “Silent Night”
The Vandals – “Hang Myself From the Tree”
Band Aid – “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”
Low – “Just Like Christmas”
The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl -  “Fairytale of New York”
Cocteau Twins – “Frosty the Snowman”
The Waitresses – “Christmas Wrapping”
Wham! -  “Last Christmas”
Everything But the Girl -  “25th December”
Run-D.M.C. – “Christmas in Hollis”
The Ramones – “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight)”
Badly Drawn Boy – “Silent Sigh”
The Pretenders -  “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”
Marvin Gaye – “Purple Snowflakes”
Chris Isaac – “Blue Christmas”
Sufjan Stevens -  “That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!”
U2 – “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”
Galaxie 500 – “Listen, the Snow Is Falling”

Martin Bandyke penned his own list of alternatives to the usual Christmas chestnuts in the Detroit Free Press this past weekend. In amongst those noted,  Canadian vocalist Loreena McKennitt who “meshes her World music influences to seasonal sounds to haunting effect on A Midwinter Night’s Dream.” He continues: “Avoiding the tried-and-true songs you too often hear on Christmas albums, McKennitt includes lesser-known traditionals “Coventry Carol,” “Gloucestershire Wassail” and “Noel, Nouvelet,” which goes back to 16th-Century France.” He gives the album a “highly recommended” commendation.

BROADCASTING
Trends show that the college-age audience pays less attention to radio every year. From 1998 to 2007 the amount of time 18- to 24-year-olds spend listening dropped 18%, while for people 35 to 64 it slipped 9% according to the Arbitron ratings service.

With the media universe squeezed by mounting economic pressures, some of its biggest stars are flickering, fading and falling from sight.  Big ticket voices once viewed as rating draws are finding themselves replaced by music as broadcasters move to curb overheads, and re-focus formats as a reaction to often startling new data supplied by the PPM meters.