5. What band closed the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival?
11. Which of these is not a project involving rapper MF Doom:
15. What is Ryan Adams' real first name?
16. Which British punk band were the first to release a single?
28. Ronnie Scott played saxophone on which Beatles recording?

I also got a question about the Bad Brains wrong, which I am wholly embarrassed over. Your turn!

Music Intelligence Quiz [mymusiciq.co.uk via Hypebot]
[Photo via ericcastro]

1. Call Pitchfork a music blog. Never mind that it's been around, as you point out in your article, since 1995—two years before the term "weblog" was invented, and four before Peter Merholz coined the shorter version; never mind that the only aspects of the site that vaguely resembles a music blog are the Forkcast and the News section, neither of which have the coronation power of a "Best New Music" from its reviewers. Who aren't bloggers (well, at least not for Pitchfork, anyway).

2. Use as your new media "expert" a futurist whose recent forays into the digital-music world ended in failure. Remember the guy who coined the term BlogJ? Yeah, his "blogs will be the next record labels" spiel is quoted here, although left out of the piece is the fact that his recent experiment in Web 2.0 widgetry went tits-up last week.

3. Fill your story with data-free anecdotes, because they make lovely window dressing. Music blogs apparently have "young readers." How is Sandoval aware of this? We don't know, because there aren't any actual numbers in the story at all aside from the number of unique readers Pitchfork gets a month (1.5 million) and the number of words Rolling Stone's Nathan Brackett thinks that the average Man Man blurb has (50).

4. On that note, never, ever press for details. Would you be interested to know that eMusic's Yancey Strickler (who, it should be known, is a friend), who's given space to pontificate on music blogging, writes a music blog for his employer, which could make for some interesting discussion of blogging-for-dollars in a story that mentions corporate influence? Want to know how BrooklynVegan "developed a reputation for being the must-read blog for concert information"? Like to know what, exactly, was inaccurate in the reporting about Stereogum's sale, as Scott Lapatine claims? Too bad, because Sandoval isn't interested in making those details known. (At least not yet! Maybe there's a sequel to this piece coming—Music Blogs II: Return To WordPress!)

5. Get an old-media type to comment on how the blog kids should get off his fact-checked lawn—and then fail to fact-check his comments. "The blogs do the really quick 50-word update on what a band's doing," Brackett tells Sandoval. "They'll write about (singer) Lilly [sic!!!] Allen releasing a new EP or (the band) Man Man is preparing an album. The way Rolling Stone competes is we pick up the phone and bring original reporting. We take advantage of our access. Most blogs don't have the staffs to pick up the phone." Well, most blogs also aren't subsidiaries of huge magazines that can be sources for repurposed content. And really, does recapping a reality TV show count as "original reporting" these days? I guess it's a good thing that I got cable in my office after all.

Music blogs: The new wall of sound [CNet]

The Craig mix is especially instructive. On eMusic, iTunes, and the Amazon store, Sessions' 22 songs are available in their full-length versions. eMusic's subscription model means the full album price varies, about in the $5-$10 range; iTunes sells the whole bundle—including a digital booklet and two album-only tracks of the CD-length mixes Craig created for the brick-and-mortar trade—for $11.99. Amazon, which offers the same package minus the digital booklet, charges only $6.99. Beatport has the whole thing for $16.99. Say what you want about that price difference, though keep in mind that because Beatport caters to DJs it offers much higher bit rates (320 vs. eMusic's 192 and Amazon's 256)—and that it's still only charging a third as much for the whole as it would track for track. Of those four outlets, Triple R's Selection 6 is only available on Beatport (oddly, there it's only a single-track mix for $11.99) and eMusic, which is where it's available at full-length, song for song.

Obviously, dance labels make little enough money as it is thanks to the plummeting of the marketplace and the paucity of vinyl outlets (Ronan Fitzgerald recently wrote a column about the dance-vinyl marketplace here), and licensing tracks for mixes isn't generally a high-end income source anyway, unless you own rights to the Beatles or Hendrix and can get away with charging an arm or a leg for two minutes of "Tomorrow Never Knows" or "Crosstown Traffic." The Craig and Triple R mixes can do this because in the latter case, Trapez owns all the songs (the annual Selection mixes are showcases for the label), and in the former, half the songs are from Craig's Planet E label. A hat-tip to both for taking their chances that some of us want to hear as much as we can for a very good price.

As Billboard reported earlier this month, Victory Records has already pulled out of eMusic, citing the service's restructured pricing plan (according to the article, per-song profits can be as low as twelve cents). The company's CEO, David Pakman, responded with a blog post in which he argued that "a healthy digital music business needs a variety of business models and a variety of price points."

We'd like to know if other labels are considering an exodus, and if so, which ones. Hypebot notes that "Urge, Red House, Silva America, and Tzadik and others have either left or are considering an exit," and it looks as though certain Warp Records releases have been pulled, meaning that newly anointed Battles album won't be available. Apparently Warp was never on the site in the U.S. Our mistake. Either way, if you've got more info, drop us a line at tips@idolator.com.

The result follows heavy speculation that Amazon would purchase eMusic, and use the MP3-based destination as its entry into the digital music market. But during conversations with Digital Music News, insiders pointed to a lapsed exclusivity window between the pair, and a no-deal result. "There were talks, but no deal was consummated," one executive relayed. Additionally, the sources were quick to quash rumors of changes at eMusic parent company, Dimensional Associates, LLC, noting that the group is not seeking outside funds and remains committed to its eMusic property...

The result raises more questions than answers about the Amazon digital music strategy. Speculation has swirled around a possible Amazon entrance for years, though nothing concrete has materialized. One executive noted that the retailer would love to enter the market ahead of the holidays, though a launch strategy remains tricky. Aside from EMI, major labels are still brokering in protected content, a landscape that prevents access to the all-important iPod. Theoretically, an eMusic purchase would solve the DRM issue by offering largely independent content, while positioning a platform to accept future, non-protected major label catalog as the market evolves.

Whatever strategy Amazon winds up implementing, it better do it soon—as Hypebot points out, the company's digital-music plan was flailing even before the eMusic talks stalled. Can't Jeff Bezos just ride his space-ship over to Edgar Bronfman Jr.'s helo-pad and sort this all out before lunch? That's how we always imagined these things went down.

Amazon, eMusic Buyout Discussions Unsuccessful, Sources [Digital Music News]

Our sources now tells us that European digital distributor Vital...pulled Vice's content from eMusic Europe because of "royalty issues". In the US Atlantic helps fund Vice; so it may have been WMG who forced the eMusic take-down here.

We're also hearing persistent rumors that even as some labels are growing restless, eMusic is actively up for sale. Google and Amazon are most often mentioned as buyers. Some even claim a deal is close and attached a purchase price around $100 million to the rumor. I haven't seen any of the private company's numbers, but the figure seems high given the competition (including Amazon) almost ready to or strongly considering entering the mp3 marketplace.

We'd add more here, but we have to grab the entire mid-'80s Dischord catalog before the shit goes down and the prices go up. If you've got any info, please send it along to tips@idolator.com.

Is eMusic For Sale Just As Some Labels Grow Restless? [Hypebot]