Label:Life

British music mogul Alan McGee says increased reliance on Internet downloads has likely signaled the end of the singles era of music.

The Creation records founder added that the increasingly technologically based world of music has grown beyond the control of major labels and will likely make the once popular musical format obsolete, The Guardian reported.

“Downloads will be king within the next couple of years,” McGee said on his Web site. “The majors have lost the football.”

While McGee believes the decline in singles’ popularity to be inevitable and indicative of a change in power in favor of musicians and smaller labels, the British Phonographic Industry rejects that view.

“It depends how you define the single,” a BPI spokesman told the paper. “In terms of the volume of single tracks that have been sold, the market has doubled in just over a year. What has happened is that the singles market has accommodated a new format, the download.”

Source:upi

China Mobile, the larger of the country’s two cellular operators, yesterday launched a wireless music club as part of a drive to increase its presence in a lucrative emerging market.

The club, M.Music, offers a one-stop service to China Mobile subscribers, including copyrighted music downloads and sharing, and could help lift the struggling record industry.

M.Music also offers members access to the latest labels, downloads of music videos, singers’ photos and ringtones as well as magazines in SMS (short messaging service) format.

China Mobile Vice-President Lu Xiangdong said the club’s launch marked a big step for China Mobile as it seeks a greater role in the fast-growing mobile music market.

“Our wireless music club will soon become a new tool for record companies to release new labels,” he said.

More@people.com

Event organisers plans to release classic Glasto performances

The Glastonbury Festival has set up his own record label.

The Glastonbury Phonographic Society has been put together specifically to release classic live Glastonbury performances on CD and DVD.

The first album – ‘Music From Glastonbury The Film’ – is the live soundtrack to the recently released Julien Temple-directed ‘Glastonbury’ film.

More@nme

Thought you’d heard every note? Fans of the biggest group of all time are now waiting for new sounds
IT IS a priceless insight into the creative processes of the most celebrated pop group of all time — more than 500 tapes of the Beatles arguing, singing snatches of old tunes and jamming to unreleased tracks.

But for 35 years only tantalising fragments of the missing tapes had emerged, until they turned up as evidence in an English court after a long investigation into their whereabouts. Now Beatles fans are hoping for the release of a treasure trove of material they’ve never heard before.

More@timesonline

On a recent Monday, six people — soon enough four, then two — were browsing the bins of compact discs at Norman’s Sound and Vision, a music store on Cooper Square in Manhattan, around 6 p.m., a time that once constituted the daily rush hour. A decade ago, the number of shoppers might have been 20 or 30, said Norman Isaacs, the owner. Six people? He would have had that many working in the store.

“I used to make more in a day than I probably make in a week now,” said the shaven-headed Mr. Isaacs, 59, whose largely empty aisles brimming with punk, jazz, Latin music, and lots and lots of classic rock have left him, many afternoons, looking like a rock ’n’ roll version of the Maytag repairman. Just as troubling to Mr. Isaacs is the age of his clientele.

“It’s much grayer,” he said mournfully.

The neighborhood record store was once a clubhouse for teenagers, a place to escape parents, burn allowances and absorb the latest trends in fashion as well as music. But these days it is fast becoming a temple of nostalgia for shoppers old enough to remember “Frampton Comes Alive!’’

In the era of iTunes and MySpace, the customer base that still thinks of recorded music as a physical commodity (that is, a CD), as opposed to a digital file to be downloaded, is shrinking and aging, further imperiling record stores already under pressure from mass-market discounters like Best Buy and Wal-Mart.

More@nytimes

BARRY MANILOW is furious his music is being used by Australian officials to deter gangs of youths from congregating in a residential area late at night. Around 100 teenagers have been gathering in Rockdale, near Sydney, and residents are fed up with being disturbed by racing cars and loud music. So local leaders have hit back – by blasting out Manilow’s music between 9pm until midnight every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

More@contactmusic

A new research study shows that the digital music market has experienced remarkable growth in the past year with women aged 15-49 emerging as the hottest growth demographic and the iPod maintaining a 10-to-1 margin over its nearest competitor. The survey, conducted by Digital Life America in the U.S. and Fast ForwardTM in Canada, found that 28 percent of Americans aged 12 and older—an estimated 67 million—now own a digital music player, more than double the 12 percent figure in 2005. Remarkably, it appears that strongest growth demographic is women. According to the data, ownership of digital music players tripled among women from a mere 8 percent in 2005 to 27 percent in 2006. The survey also found signficant growth among men with over 28 percent owning a digital music player—up from 18 percent in 2005.

More@ipodnn

Innovative super-producer Timbaland has set-up his own label called the Mosley Music Group (MMG), with Interscope/Geffen/A&M.

Timbaland, who has produced mega-hits for multi-platinum artists like Aaliyah (One In A Million), Missy Elliott (Get Ur Freak On) and Jay-Z (Big Pimpin‘), will now be producing hits for his own imprint, while continuing to produce for other artists.

“Mosley Music Group is a label where the doors are open to all kinds of music,” explains Timbaland and CEO Marcus Spence.

Among the acts signed to MMG is R&B artist Keri Hilson, who has penned songs for Mary J Blige and the Pussycat Dolls. Timberland is executively producing Keri‘s tracks.

source:chocolatemagazine

After five years, Prince’s NPG Music Club online site is being shut down. According to a statement released to NPG members, the music club has maximized its potential.

“In its current form, there is a feeling that the NPGMC has gone as far as it can go,” read the statement. “Has the time come to once again make a leap of faith and begin anew? These are questions we in the NPG need to answer. In doing so, we have decided to put the club on hiatus until further notice.”

Named after Prince’s New Power Generation backing band, the site debuted on Valentine’s Day 2001. Envisioned as a thriving online community of Prince devotees, the site provided a conduit for fans to obtain new releases and non-album music, secure choice concert seats and receive passes to sound checks and after-parties.

More@reuters

The future of music A-levels is under threat after one of the country’s leading exam boards said it was planning to stop running the course.

Edexcel, which set more than half of the 9,000 music A-levels last year, had said it was planning to scrap the exams because they were too complex.

But yesterday, after widespread condemnation from professional musicians and teachers’ groups, Edexcel said it would reconsider.

More@theguardian