Wednesday’s Music Briefing: EMI Layoffs, MySpace Inflators & More
> The layoffs continue at all EMI labels. I hear new sad stories almost daily coming from almost every corner except publishing and digital. Artist managers are telling me they have no one to talk to and see few left to market their releases. Inevitably this is a transition for the label group, but at this moment with blood everywhere and an an empty top executive suite, its hard to imagine a bright future for EMI and those left to run it.
> A look at the world of inflated MySpace play counts and who site OurStage may be the new A&R source of choice. (Listening Post)
> Spiral Frog has added an automated update to Windows Media Player 11 which helps the service run better. (press release) 1) Is this press release worthy? 2) Isn’t this admitting your platform isn’t very felxible? 3) Don’t you know that anything that updates something on their computer automatically makes people nervous?
> 7digital.com is giving away a Tricky track celebrating launch of the new album, "Knowle West Boy". The UK based download store is also streaming the album free, a week before the release.
> WORTHY CLICK: TheBizmo.com lets you create a UK based web store to sell downloads, images, ringtones, tickets, merch and more.
I’m guessing that Spiral Frog update has nothing to do with making things run better, but everything to do with the fact that you can easily strip the DRM off their tracks if you’re still using an older version of WMP.