BUSINESS BRIEFS: YOUTUBE, ORIGAMI VINYL, TICKETSNOW AND MORE

- EMI has launched Your Soundcheck, "an exclusive
online research community of people with
a passion for music." It appears to be a continuation
of the mission to learn about consumer behavior
that was started with the consumer-facing
EMI.com. Hopeful registrants are taken through
a five-minute questionnaire. (Your registration
will be denied as soon as you indicate you work
in the music industry.) What will be learned from
Your Soundcheck that could not be gleaned from
the various Web sites of EMI artists, conversations
with technology partners or expensive market
research reports? Perhaps how valuable
consumers email addresses are to direct marketing.
(Your Soundcheck)

- A familiar refrain: digital site losing money,
artists demand better royalties. In this case, the
site is YouTube (estimated 2009 loss: $470 million)
and the artist is singer-songwriter Billy Bragg.
(Digital Music News)

- Echo Park in Los Angeles has a new record
store, Origami Vinyl. Vinyl-only stores are becoming
more commonplace. Sales continue to increase
and LPs offer better margins than do CDs.
For the first three months of 2009, vinyl sales are
up nearly 55% according to Nielsen Soundscan.
(LAist)

- David Harrell, who writes the excellent Digital
Audio Insider blog, was interviewed by Fingertips
about digital music, being an artist in the
Internet era, etc. An excerpt: "I'm not arguing that
musicians don't deserve a living wage, but it's a
simple fact that--and this is the case with any creative
field--you have more talented people than
the market for their collective talent can reasonably
support. And you've got more of them every
day, as it's easy for anyone to release music today,
even if it's just putting some songs up on My-
Space. The result is more and more competition,
not just for the dollars of music fans but for their
time and attention." (Fingertips)

- Regional Mexican artists are having success
with mobile phones. "In the Anglo market the
majority of digital sales take place online; in regional
Mexican music an estimated 85 percent of
digital music is purchased on cellphones." (New
York Times)

- MicroMu is a Chinese Web site that promotes
concerts by local independent artists and posts
live recordings that are free to consumers. The
artists get a share of the advertising revenue. (Beijing
Review)

- A broad coalition - some of its its members
usually sit on the same side of digital rights issues
- is urging President Obama to appoint "policymakers
who will protect new tools and new
artistic works" and create new positions at the
Patent and Trademark Office, the United States
Trade Representative and the Department of State.
The coalition includes the Electronic Frontier Federation,
Consumer Electronics Association, the
American Library Association, and the Wikimedia
Foundation. (Press release)

- Nearly half of Canadians polled by the Angus
Reid Global Monitor believe secondary ticketing
service TicketsNow should be closed because they
believe Ticketmaster is using the site to overcharge
fans. (Ticket News)
—Glenn Peoples, Nashville