itsmatos: Note location of Ashanti's next gig.
mauraatidolator: oh yeah, she's from glen cove!
mauraatidolator: i guess now that billy joel has turned his back this is all nassau county's got
EMI has tendered a conditional resignation from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the global trade lobbying group for the music business. The label apparently wants to have its interests represented in a more cost-efficient and effective way, and it's calling for the merger of the IFPI and the RIAA. [Billboard
More details on the physical release of In Rainbows, which is set for next year and which will shun major labels 
The long-running independent label Sympathy For the Record Industry, which has put out records by the likes of the White Stripes, Hole, and the criminally overlooked Shitbirds, is on the block, and unlike the mystery label that was on Craigslist last week, this one can be all yours for a cool $625k (or $700k, if Sympathy's current owner doesn't like you):
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For its weekend edition, USA Today examines the higgeldy-piggedly world of concert-ticket sales—a world that some of our more well-connected, guest-listed readers probably haven't had to explore in some time. The good news is that good seats for in-demand shows are easier to snag nowadays; the bad news is that, in addition to premium prices, you have to navigate an increasingly confusing marketplace:
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For the past few years, artists such as Radiohead have toyed with the idea of doing away with the album format and replacing it instead with a stream of intermittent EPs or singles; the idea is that singles can be churned out and distributed quicker than albums, and besides, no one's buying albums anyway. And now it looks as though the upcoming release from Ash—the Irish power-pop band that has done its damndest to break into the U.S. market—will be the band's last proper album:
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EMI has become the latest label group to sign on with SpiralFrog, the ad-supported music downloading site. Do the math, like Coolfer did last week, and you'll find that SpiralFrog's 90-second embedded ad per download adds up to 15 minutes of ads before downloading a 10-song album — which then self-destructs, Mission Impossible-style, six months after being acquired. An EMI executive said that the company signed up with the 'Frog to "recapture consumer demand, which has been hijacked by online piracy." The more we hear about SpiralFrog, though, the more we think that the only consumer demand SpiralFrog is going to encourage is the overwhelming desire for some bored 15-year-old to crack its code during computer club meetings.
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Because we were out yesterday, we missed the chance to rant about Spiral Frog, a yet-to-be-launched online download site that's just entered into an astonishingly backwards-ass partnership with Universal Music Group. You can catch up on the reaction here and here, but to summarize the awe-inspiring boneheadedness at work here: The songs will be free, but with a minute-and-half-commercial embedded at the beginning of each track; you can't play the songs on your iPod—but even if you could, you'd only be allowed to keep them for six months anyway; and the thing is called SpiralFrog, making it the second-stupidest amphibian-related musical innovation in years.
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Idolator
