More Music Industry News: New Sales Low, Spotify Delays, Best Buy, EMI vs. Citi, TuneUp & More

The story of a makeover at eMusic broke yesterday. Deals with more major labels appear imminent along with other shifts that will fundamentally change the subscription music service.  That the major labels will effectively sell downloads to eMusic subscribers for 50 cents or less is testimony to how experimental the recorded music industry is finally being foreced to become.  Somehow it feels like too little too late, but these certainly continue to be interesting times. And check out my interview as part of a series that also features Derek Sivers and David Sherbow on branded music over at MicControl.

• A New Low: This was the lowest sales week in history of SoundScan. For the 3rd time this year, weekly album sales dipped under the 5 milliion.
• Will Spotify miss another deadline to launch in the U.S.? (CNet) Greg Sandoval correctly makes the point that some labels are getting less excited about Spotify as they get more excited about Google Music. In truth, they need to fgure out how to do both deals and more.
• Best Buy will cut more CD and DVD self space from their stores. (Investors)

More Music Industry News & Commentary:

• A NY judge ruled that Terra Firma's lawsuit against Citigroup over the EMI purchase will go to trial next month. Only 2 of the 4 arguments originally brought by Terra Firma: fraudulent misrepresentation and fraudulent concealment will be heard. Negligent misrepresentation and tortuous indifference, were rejected. (Billboard)
• MOG is now also available via ROKU.
• TuneUp, a plug-in for iTunes, has raised a $4.3 million Series C round of funding, led by IDG Ventures along with KPG Ventures.
• To Pay or Not to Pay? How to talk to your guys about the dilemma of downloading. This is a pretty funny take on how Scout Leaders should talk to their young members about file-sharing and the ethics of stealing music. (ScoutingMag)
• Little Big Bands: How the Northwest's premier summer music festivals reflect the redefinition of "indie." (SeattleWeekly)
• Rhodri Marsden: Will Ping change the way we share music? (Independent)
• Steve Jobs preparing to revolutionize the newspaper business? (ChristianScience)
• Bandcamp Update: "As suggested…, we’re going to refresh everyone’s free download credits every month (so, if you have less than 200 downloads remaining, we’ll just bump you up to 200 again). This still accomplishes our goal of keeping the costs of large-scale free download campaigns where they should be (on the people actually doing them), while also giving early-stage artists room to comfortably get started." (Bandcamp)
• What does Google Music mean for artists? (Guardian)
• Disruptive Technologies Part 1: How music editors are related. (TheRoots)
• From Radio to Jukebox: Slacker Plans to Launch On-Demand Music Service. (ReadWriteWeb)
• Google sites to add social netowrking to its sites in layers. (Reuters)