Monday’s Music Briefing: Online Dips, Facebook Rises, NoiseTrade’s 1M, Spotify & More

I hope that you all had a restful holiday break. Now its onward to what may be a challenging and will certainly be an interesting 2009.

I’m headed to MidemNet and Midem next week in Cannes.  If’ you’re going
to be there and feel we should meet, please drop me an email. If you’re not going, what
would you like me to cover? (Share your suggestions in the comments section below.)

HYPEBOT FEATURES:

• Could 2009 Be Music’s Year Of The Garage?
• 3 Reasons Sirius XM Will Fail
• NEW FEATURE: Daily D.I.Y. – Be A Student Of The Music Business
• 10 Music Industry Stories From The Holiday Break

MORE NEWS:

• Overall holiday online retail sales dipped but there were a few bright spots. (Billboard.biz)
• 
  Facebook had record holiday traffic proving predictions that the social networker was on the decline wrong. Facebook boasts 140 million users worldwide. (Media Memo). If you haven’t tried Facebook’s cheap targeted ads; you should.
• The RIAA has fired its evidence gathering serivce MediaSentry. (WSJ)
• NoiseTrade, the Nashville-based digital music distribution service that launched in July, recently gave away its one millionth song download.NoiseTrade connects artists and fans via an embeddable widget, offering fans the choice to tell five friends in exchange for a free download or to pay the amount of their choice. (City Paper)
• 
  Music streaming service Spotify is getting some great reviews ("An Alternative To Music Piracy") even though its still in semi-private beta and not yet available in the US. (TorrentFreak) I’ll have my own hands on review of Spotify later this week.
• The folks at online music license site YouLicense turned us onto to Fab Channel via their fun blog  and music community The Plugg. Fab Channel not only offers streams of originally produced live and archived concerts, but via its Fabplayer enables fans to create their own music channel and via a widget integrate multiple videos in blogs and social networking profiles.
• Eric Addeo announces the launch of AMI (Addeo Music International): a new multi-genre, international booking agency located in New York City dedicated to progressive and roots music.