The CBS corporation seeks to reach a younger demographic with the acquisition of the UK-based social music recommendation engine. With 15 million active users, last.fm is one of the most successful of the social music web services. The site will retain the same management and name for the present. The BBC has the story.
AOL is preparing to launch a video service next month to rival YouTube. They’re currently giving away a Camera-A-Day, uploaders only eligible. Check their Insider Blog for info.
As usual, the voluable Bob Lefsetz rips the corporates for their failure to pay attention to the impending demise of the music CD as a viable product. He notes that even the New York Times asserts that the next Christmas season will be the end of the line for CDs.
He also has a pretty good article on how upcoming bands should handle their management issues.
This week’s Velocity has a feature on the transplanted rapper Solo, a.k.a. LaMaze Singleton, written by Javacia N. Harris. Meanwhile, Joseph Lord recruits ‘citizens’ to review the new Wilco, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and (the late) Elliott Smith’s releases.
The corporate ‘alternative’ weekly continues to refer to Louisville music as ‘local music.’ Maybe they’ll catch on sooner or later. Or not.
The battle over the sale of EMI continues to be a dust-up, emphasis on ‘dust,’ as the matter is mostly obscured by the blizzard of rumors and reports. Bloomberg has the current ‘hi-lite’ reel.
If you needed any more convincing that the music business is permanently in the toilet, this item from Hypebot.com should seal the deal: The Home Shopping Network has signed a deal with Sir Paul McCartney to produce a ‘Paul McCartney Listening Party’ television special to promote his new CD. Read it and weep.
The end of the Memorial Day weekend in Louisville also marked the end of the courier-journal.com Abbey Road On The River Festival, which closed out with a boomer-drawing “Summer of Love” theme. Naturally, you can read all about it here, the final daily write-up of the event in the C-J.
J. L. Puckett’s “Tune-In Tuesday” column is a little thin this week, with the new Richard Thompson project the featured CD. The question is, what will replace “Tune-In Tuesday” when the CD market completely collapses?
The Courier-Journal ran a full-page ad in the Sunday paper offering one free admission to the courier-journal.com Abbey Road on the River Festival for Monday. Must be slow downtown.
Andrew Adler’s column concerns the continuing money problems the Louisville Orchestra has despite paying off their bank loans.
J. L. Puckett, who is noted for his love of Seventies soul, reviewed the Brian McKnight show.
Susan Reigler has a nice piece on Louisvillian Patrick Lane, who is taking on the role of Stephen Foster down in Bardstown for this season’s run of “Stephen Foster — The Musical.”
Interesting that the LEO website has not yet been updated. Even though it’s usually late - Thursday or Friday - it’s seldom left untended until Saturday - Sunday - Monday . It certainly seems that the owners, a newspaper company, still don’t rate the web version very highly.
The site has last week’s stories as of Tuesday a.m.
My bad - so busy looking in the interior of Velocity that I ignored the cover story about the Louisville band VHS or Beta by Joshua Hammann. Read it here.