10 Music Industry Stories From The Holiday Break

WHILE YOU WERE OUT: There was a surprising amount of action in the music industry over the two week holiday break. Here is a quick compendium of top stories that you might have missed.

1. Year end sales figures showed that: CD & ringtone sales fell and digital growth slowed
2. Digital sales had their best week ever in late December
3. YouTube is negotiating lower payments to labels
4. WMG pulled all content from YouTube
5. Project Playlist was banned from MySpace, Facebook and Friendster
6. But Sony BMG signed on with Project Playlist
7. Zune's 30G model suffered a widespread meltdown
8. $800M was invested in music tech in 2008
9. Major labels explore launching a video site
10. A new study advised killing the CD in 2008 to save the industry