Thursday’s Music Brief: Twitter Research, Sales Fall Fast, Live Nation Tickets, Ditto & More

Our man Virgil is headed off to NARM. Try to say hello and share your NARM stories with us.  Twitter and Google continue to make music marketing headlines and 2 more music magazines have gone under. I should have Part 3 of the Music & Creative class series ready for tomorrow plus a great essay by Martin Thörnkvist (The Swedish Model) titled "What Will A Record Label Look Like In 5 Years?". Kyle tells me he's got an interview with the guys behind the New Rock Star Philosophy blog coming on Monday. Onward to a great day!

HYPEBOT FEATURES:

• Twitter Research: Most Seldom Tweet And Men Follow Men
• Album Sales Drop Accelerated To 18% In May
• Google Wave: What Is It And What Will It Mean To Music Marketing?
• Virgil's Headed To NARM. Are You?
• Radio & Records And Performing Songwriter Stop Publishing
• AdWeek's 5 Best & Worst Ad Songs of All Time
• Hip Digital Offers Downloads To Non-Music Retailers

MORE MUSIC INDUSTRY NEWS:

• Though Sirius XM is unable to raise its rates for a while as a condition of their radio merger, subscribers could see some additional fees starting this summer. Subscribers will likely see their bill upped $2 a month, as satellite radio royalty rate increases are be passed along to the consumer. (FMQB)
• No Free Lunch For Ticket Fees: Live Nation's summer promotion may cut service fees on tickets to select shed shows this season, but that doesn't mean all other fees are pulling a disappearing act. (Pollstar)
• EMI and Warner Music should simply bite the bullet and merge.
  It is the story that's been running for a decade and once again the "will
  they, won't they" talks between EMI and Warner Music have failed to
  reach a deal.Telegraph U. (Telegraph UK)
• Innovative UK based indie and digital distributor Ditto (kind of like TuneCore on steroids) has added their catalog to Spotify. (press release) Ditto says that 7 of their distributed albums have reach the Top 40 in the UK and another 7 in Ireland.
• MySpace has brought in Sam Wick from AOL as SVP of Strategy. He will be in charge of  trying to make money at MySpace Music.  Wick's previous poisitons included stints at AOL’s Userplane, MP3.com and Sony Music. 
• Tips for Boosting Audio Quality on Digital Music Files (Cybergrass)
• Cher's $5 Millin UMG Lawsuit Highlights How Record Labels Screw Over Artists. (Techdirt)
• R.I.P. Blues legend Koko Taylor.