Label:Life

Glam rock sensations The Darkness have been named best British group and rock act at the 2004 Brit Awards.

Frontman Justin Hawkins said: “It’s a real privilege, a tremedous honour and a real achievement… I have to say we probably are the best British group.”

The glam rock act won the first two of their four nominations, while Dido, Dizzee Rascal, Daniel Bedingfield and Busted follow with three each.

Rock and R&B take pride of place, with Beyonce Knowles and OutKast teaming up on stage at the ceremony which is under way at Earl’s Court, London.[more @ www.news.bbc.co.uk]

According to recent news reports, the music industry began to show some positive signs of fiscal recovery beginning in 2003. The NPD Group, Inc. reports, however, that teen consumers are not on the leading edge of this industry upturn.

Overall dollar sales of music CDs fell eight percent last year compared to 2002. NPD estimates that three quarters of this decline can be directly attributed to unit sales declines last year, while the rest is attributed to recent retail price reductions. Among teens aged 13 to 17 years old, sales declines were even steeper reaching 15 percent in 2003.

“Certainly illegal peer-to-peer music file sharing continues to plague the music industry, but that’s only part of a larger story” said Russ Crupnick, vice president of The NPD Group. “Another aspect of these sales declines is based on competition we’re seeing from alternative entertainment-related spending options for teens, such as cell phones and video games. As music sales continued to fall, video games software unit sales rose 12 percent in 2003 among teens aged 13 to 17 years old.” [more @ www.businesswire.com]

A spinoff company from Vivendi that includes former executives of MP3.com has acquired the music archive from its parent, and will make it available to its business customers. In addition to the physical archive, the newly independent TruSonic has also acquired rights to the streaming software developed at MP3.com.

When in November, mega tech portal CNET acquired the MP3.com domain name, Vivendi had already indicated that it was no longer interested in hosting the 1.5 million song archive. Despite a spirited campaign by MP3.com founder Michael Robertson, who sold MP3.com to VU in 2001, and an offer to host the collection by Archive.org founder Brewster Kahle, Vivendi shut off public access to the music in December. [more @ www.theregister.co.uk]

The music industry, like all aspects of showbusiness, is extremely difficult to get into. For every George Michael or Dido there are thousands upon thousands of ambitious young people looking for that elusive “break” – a recording contract, or, for most, a steady job.

The Brit awards, being held at Earls Court, London, are a celebration of the best of British popular music. But this glamorous event also has serious implications for grass-roots music.

Every year, around £250,000 of the money raised goes towards the Brit School, an institution designed to bring on the best of UK talent.

Based in Croydon, south London, it prepares students aged 14 to 19 for a life in professional showbusiness. [more @ www.news.bbc.co.uk]

It’s being hailed as one of the best remix albums ever made — and you may never even get the chance to hear it, let alone own it.

The Grey Album is a marriage of musical samples taken from The Beatles’ The White Album overlapped with vox and beats from Jay-Z’s The Black Album. DJ Danger Mouse was slapped with a cease-and-desist order after EMI caught wind of the project (rumours of which have been circulating on the internet for weeks), citing copyright infringement. Unfortunately for fans of the West Coast producer and DJ (not to mention fans of The Beatles and Jay-Z), goliaths of the music industry tend to see copyright issues in black and white — not in shades of grey.

According to MTV.com, EMI served the order to Danger Mouse, as well as to various retail outlets and online vendors of the album. The DJ has agreed to comply with the order and will no longer distribute the record, which was allegedly only intended for the ears of friends. [more @ www.chartattack.com]

Venerable music monthly Q has fallen to one of its lowest ever circulations as titles pitched at older music fans such as Uncut and Mojo continue to eat away at its audience.
Q, which has gone through three editors in the past two years and saw its ABC figures slashed in 2002 when it was discovered that giveaway bulk copies were being counted at full price, suffered a further drop to 161,634. The total is just 684 copies above the circulation recorded in January 2002.

The figures, 5% lower than six months ago and down 10% in the last year, will make grim reading for Emap chiefs who have in the past confessed privately they are unsure what to do with the title.

Magazine magnate Felix Dennis is also thought to be considering launching his successful US music title Blender in the UK, a move that would further hit Q’s sales.

Some readers have accused the magazine of undergoing an identity crisis, featuring the likes of Robbie Williams and Britney Spears on the cover in an effort to appeal to a more mainstream audience as serious music aficionados turn to sister title Mojo and IPC’s Uncut.
[more @ www.musicians.about.com]

‘Sam and Mark’, the runner-up double bill from Pop Idol, are at Number one in the UK charts…presumably with a lot of help from some very powerful friends. Someone please sort it out. It’s embarassing. Thanks. -ED. [www.uk.launch.yahoo.com]

RealNetworks said on Tuesday it had signed up five telecom companies for its mobile media software, gaining access to 180 million subscribers in its battle with arch-rival Microsoft to stream music and video to handsets.

Spain’s Telefonica Moviles, Italy’s Wind and TIM, Britain’s 02 and Sweden’s TeliaSonera have chosen RealNetworks software to send video and music to mobile phones. Real earlier signed agreements with U.S.-based carriers AT&T Wireless and Sprint.

In the David-and-Goliath battle between the two Seattle-area software companies, RealNetworks’ Player for desktop computers has been overtaken by Microsoft’s Windows Media Player which comes pre-installed with its Windows operating system. The European Union is expected to rule that Microsoft abused its power.

But the mobile telecoms industry, unlike the computer industry, is not dominated by one software vendor such as Microsoft, and Real has managed to win lots of customers. [more @ www.reuters.co.uk]

“It is unacceptable that the music industry should try to solve the problem of CD piracy by ripping off the consumer,” says Fianna Fail Dublin South East Deputy, Eoin Ryan TD.

Deputy Ryan was referring to the latest efforts by some recording companies to prevent CDs being copied by introducing a new mechanism which stops CDs from being played in a machine containing burner or copying technology. However, the effect of this measure is that such CDs cannot be played in car players or some of the newer home CD players.

“This means that someone who has paid a considerable price for a CD can no longer enjoy that product in their car or maybe even in their home. In other words, the music industry is asking the consumer to pay for its loss of revenue through CD piracy and that is unacceptable,” said Deputy Ryan.

Worse still, according to Deputy Ryan, is the fact that this measure has been introduced without any warning and without any labeling on the CD.

“I received a complaint from a constituent who returned the new Norah Jones CD twice to the outlet where she had bought it before finally being told that the CD wouldn’t work in her car because of the new copy protection measure. CD piracy is a problem for the music industry but this approach is hardly the way to solve it,” added Deputy Ryan.

“The way to stop CD copying is to reduce the price of CDs. If discs were cheaper, people wouldn’t go to the trouble and expense of trying to copy them,” concluded Eoin Ryan. [www.politics.ie]

The legendary Rock Steady Crew will celebrate its 26th anniversary with four days of festivities, from July 24th-27th, including a film festival, celebrity basketball game, DJ battle, free concert, a special Rock Steady Crew performance, and the invitation-only Lipton Brisk Flava Styles B-Boy/Girl Battle which crowns the best B-boys/B-girls in the world. This year competitors hail from as near as the Bronx and as far as Japan. Last year’s champion, Miami-based Bebe, of the Ground Zero Crew, won a cash prize of $1000 and was the first to take the title for a second consecutive year.

Throughout the early 80s, The Rock Steady Crew championed the B-boy movement, gained the support of the godfather of Hip Hop, Afrika Bambaataa and the Universal Zulu Nation and garnered international mainstream attention. “In today’s cultural landscape the B-boy is an amalgamation,” explains Crazy Legs. “Part athlete, part artist and part diplomat, the B-boy/B-girl is revered because he doesn’t let anyone else dictate his scene and he doesn’t shut anyone out. Rock Steady has all kinds of people regardless of ethnicity, religion or culture. It’s about being passionate and self-expressive.”
[more @ www.mi2n.com]