It appears that the major record labels have managed to  effectively kill off a new start up Sonific who tried to create a business around properly licensing music for podcasting & blogging sites thus creating a more controlled environment revenue rather than the currently Wild West situation that predominates outside of the top tier of blogs not to mention revenue for the record labels. According to Sonific they have wound things up because of the licensing situation with the record labels. Tragic that the record industry again appears to have architected a situation where they may potentially earn some revenue and at least slow the amount of unlicensed music flying around has failed.

Sonific announcement here.

According to Coldplay ….

We’re very pleased to announce that Coldplay’s new single, ‘Violet Hill’, will be available as a free download exclusively from Coldplay.com for one week starting tomorrow, Tuesday April 29th, at 12.15pm UK time. This is a full week ahead of the single’s conventional paid-for digital release, on Tuesday May 6th.

All Music are reporting that after Ed Harcourt being dropped by EMI recently has been signed to the US label Dovecote Records with the right to distribute Ed’s last album The Beautiful Lie (a fine one at that). The sad thing is that like many other small American indie labels I’m sure that Ed will start to do well and will continue winning ‘hearts and minds’ with his work, with us UK fans probably having to wait a lot longer for the material.

One of the problems of DRM has really come home to roost for MSN Music users. According to Digital Music News, Microsoft have informed users in writing that music purchased through MSN Music will not be transferable after August 31st 2008 to other devices or machines. This means that MSN Music users must continue to keep their existing equipment (and working) to not lose their investment.  So if after August you experience a catastrophic failure of your computer then game over, your investment is lost.

My personal view is that given you have paid for the right to have a copy of the music to play that Microsoft in this situation should carry the cost of transferring MSN Music users to their Zune infrastructure which is replacing it, or allow people to re-download the music in a DRM free format.

Horace Andy who has provided vocals for a number of Massive Attack albums has been talking with the NME about song lyrics he has been provided with to record for the new album.  The article (here) also suggests that they maybe on the road later in the year as well.

1 Giant Leap are returning with new material. Duncan Bridgeman and Jamie Catto  who started out working with Faithless.  The new project called What About Me? follows the same basic approach as their debut, of travelling around sampling music and interviews from around the world and weaving them together to tell musical stories. What About Me? has again resulted in an audio visual offering.  Those in the UK will be fortunate enough to see at least some of this feast over the next couple of months as from April 23rd Channel 4 will be showing seven chapters spread over 7 weeks.

I’ve not yet seen release dates for the anticipated album and DVD.

The first piece picks up where the first album left off with Maxi Jazz and Michael Stipe.

Links:

• http://www.whataboutme.tv/
• http://www.1giantleap.tv/

 Helienne Lindvall as song writer has written on the Guardian music blog an interesting, if a little dispiriting article (here) about how she gets emails asking her to write and pitch songs in a particular style modelled on specific hits and artists (e.g. “Estelle’s American Boy and Duffy‘s Mercy, with an Amy Winehouse flavour to it.”).  The situation is comically tragic to hear A&R working in such a manner, and as Helienne says its not surprising that EMI have suggested sacking (or shooting) their A&R department.