New Music Industry Briefing For Wednesday May 31, 2006

UPDATED –

– Concert giant Live Nation has acquired a controlling interest in Michael Cohl’s CPI global touring firm responsible for recent Rolling Stones and U2 tours. (Hypebot)

– XM troubles continue as they suspend the sale of Delphi XM SKYFi2 and  Audiovox Xpress receivers to make modifications aimed at fending off a widening FCC probe into legality of these devices. (SEC Filing)

– Japanese download sales jumped 71% to 89 million tracks in 1st Q ’06 with mobile downloads accounting for a whopping 93% of the total. Overall digital sales are now 10% of the Japanese market; twice the percentage that they were a year ago. (Digital Music News)

– P2P users take note: Salesforce.com announces goal to become the iTunes of business software complete with software mash-ups. (InfoWorld)

– Zero 7 will be bringing two laptops on stage for new tour rather than more musicians. (Reuters)

– The China Audio-Video Association predicts that despite piracy the market for digital music in China will grow from $450 million US in 2005 to $1.6 billion US by 2010. (People’s Daily)