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Reuters.com
Singer Ali Campbell is leaving the reggae band UB40 after selling tens of millions of records worldwide in a career spanning nearly 30 years, a spokesman for the group said on Friday.
No Ali Campbell …. No UB40

Tags:UB40

Billboard
McCartney tells Billboard.com that “it’s all happening soon. Most of us are all sort of ready. The whole thing is primed, ready to go — there’s just maybe one little sticking point left, and I think it’s being cleared up as we speak, so it shouldn’t be too long. It’s down to fine-tuning, but I’m [...]

Duran Duran’s new album Red Carpet Massacre is available today.

ITunes
Amazon

Tags:Duran Duran, Music

GarageBand Remix Challenge
So if you’re up to the challenge and if you have a Mac with GarageBand* installed download the below file and mix your very own version of Duran Duran’s song, “Nite-Runner” – from the band’s new album ‘Red Carpet Massacre’ – available November 13th!
*requires GarageBand 3 or higher. GarageBand is included free [...]

WSJ.com
The chief executive of EMI Music, Alain Levy, said EMI had discussed the issue with Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs and believed Apple planned to end its single-price policy for iTunes music.

It was bound to happen, but I dying to find out how VARIABLE the pricing will be.

Tags:iTunes, Music

Billboard
To celebrate the 20th birthday of its landmark album “The Joshua Tree,” U2 is reissuing the set in four different incarnations on Nov. 20 via UMe. The album will be available as a remastered single CD, a 2-CD set, a 2-CD/1-DVD collectible box and a double-vinyl package.

I can’t believe it’s been 20 years, but you [...]

So today not only I get a new version of textexpander we learn that indeed Apple’s Leopard operating system will be available on October 26th for $129. Over at the iTunes Store it seems they have added some indies to iTunes Plus (DRM free) and dropped the single track price from 1.29 to 99 [...]

BBC NEWS
Exactly 25 years ago the world’s first compact disc was produced at a Philips factory in Germany, sparking a global music revolution.

Tags:Music

Apple News
Apple® today announced the debut of the John Lennon solo catalog on the iTunes® Store (www.itunes.com). Sixteen of Lennon’s solo works from EMI Music are available for the first time on iTunes starting today, with the “Lennon Legend” and “Acoustic” collections making their worldwide digital debuts. For a limited period of 30 days, exclusive [...]

New York Times
Universal, the world’s biggest music conglomerate, said it would offer albums and songs without the software, known as digital rights management, through existing digital music retail services like RealNetworks and Wal-Mart, nascent services from Amazon.com and Google, and some artists’ Web sites.
But the music will not be offered D.R.M.-free through Apple’s iTunes, the [...]

Today @ PC World
Today the band AC/DC says it’s bypassing Apple’s iTunes and has brokered an exclusive deal with Verizon to sell its music through Verizon’s online music store.

I hope AC/DC is getting a big cut from Verizon because there is no way are going to move as many copies as they would through [...]

Yahoo! Finance
Apple® today announced that more than three billion songs have been purchased and downloaded from the iTunes® Store (www.itunes.com). iTunes is the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store featuring a catalog of over five million songs, 550 television shows and 500 movies. iTunes recently surpassed Amazon and Target to become the [...]

MSNBC.com:
Brian May is completing his doctorate in astrophysics, more than 30 years after he abandoned his studies to form the rock group Queen.

Tags:Music

Looks like we’re not getting a deal anytime soon. SoundExchange evidently wants DRM on internet radio streams in exchange for lower royalty rates. I don’t see where hijacking internet radio streams is a big problem, but as we all know the record companies have their own reality.

Tags:Music, Net Radio

Steve Gordon over at the The Register thinks that music companies should get a royalty on each iPod sold. Of course the assumption is that iPod owners are thieves and that the music companies should be able to recoup some of their losses by instituting a tax on consumer electronics.

Tags:iPod, Music

Listening Post – Wired Blogs
At today’s Congressional hearing about the new rates for online radio that would essentially destroy it (as readers of this blog already know), SoundExchange, which was scheduled to receive the new royalty payments on Monday morning (since the enforcement date falls on a Sunday), made a startling statement.
The SoundExchange executive [Jon [...]

According to CNET News.com
A federal appeals court has declined to grant a petition by Webcasters to delay the onset of new royalty fees.
If they don’t come up with a compromise I suspect quite a few Internet radio stations will go off the air this Sunday.

Tags:Music, Radio

Times Online
Retail sales, for which figures have been compiled since 1969, the year that the Beatles’ Abbey Road album was released, have never fallen by so much, although there was a 9 per cent decline in 1982 before the arrival of the compact disc.

Tags:CD, iTunes, Music

New York Times
Album sales have continued their downward slide this year, but sales of digital tracks are up almost 50 percent over this time last year.
A total of 229.8 million albums were sold in the United States from Jan. 1 to July 1, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures released Wednesday. That is a 15 percent [...]