The Wall Street Journal’s Joseph De Avila has an interesting article about music fans buying “presale” passwords from fan club members in order to buy concert tickets early. Just in case you were wondering why all the tickets were ’sold-out’ thirty seconds after going on sale…
Barack Obama weighed in on the consolidation in radio at recent FCC Public Hearings in Chicago. He said that the FCC had come down on the side of media consolidation rather than diversity in ownship and that the FCC should alter that tendency. FMQB has the story.
The Freakonomics blog at The New York Times has a very long and thoughtful article featuring commentary from five knowledgeable people about the future of the music business. Worth a read if you have a bit of time
The RIAA is at it again: they’ve sent out 403 pre-settlement letters to 22 universities, plus they’ve filed 24 copyright infringement suits against individuals previously warned who did not settle. Billboard.biz has the story.
Paul Resnikoff at Digital Music News opines about the problem of diversifying artist management, touring, recording and distribution and why the record labels’ efforts to gather them all together is likely to lead nowhere.