NOBODY MAKES the EFFORT: Even with the Maker dead, the NME has still managed to lose nearly one in ten of its readers in the past six months - and if we assume that at least some MM people have transferred to the big brother, that would imply the flight from NME has been even greater. Mike Soutar has said that the magazine will "broaden" its appeal (Atomic Kitten posters? Patsy's tits?) and that after two years of looking after nme.com, it's time to give some attention to the magazine. This we take as an admission of how shit the paper's been for the last couple of years.
Media Guardian - you're a monopoly, so why head for the overcrowded dance market?

THINGS YOU CAN'T FIND ON NAPSTER:
Bradford - Boys Will Be Boys
anything by The Siddeleys
Brighton and Hove Albion's FA Cup single
anything by The Charlottes
Ride - Ride Mindfuck

MAYO'S GONE OFF: Today, really, marks the end of some sort of era as Simon Mayo - the only major player to have survived the Bannister years unscathed - removed his headphones for the last time prior to his move from Radio One to Five Live. Amongst the 'surprises' on his last show was Diane Oxenberry and Rod McKenzie - erstwhile brekafast show cohosts - reappearing, and, good god, The Proclaimers doing their first live programme on Radio One since, ooh, the days of Liz Kershaw at the very least. Sniff. I'll miss you, Simon...

LOU BOOKS: Lou Wener - yes, you do, out of Sleeper is apparently re-inventing herself as a novelist. Her new publisher has been quoted as saying that she's "not laddish, but more like Nick Hornby." So, that'd be not laddish in the style of a writer who specialises in football, record shops and commitmentphobia, then.

Just said to me, as I play Clare Grogan: "These are all student bands that you're playing..." Sigh. If only...

LOVE MISSILE ON CHICKEN IN THE BASKET: Nice to see Sigue Sigue Sputnik back, especially since their self-aggrandisment is still in place despite having taken something of a knock having been laughed off the face of the charts back in the 80's. Talking to the press at the weekend, Degville and co claimed their resurrection came when they discovered in 1996 that there were "5,000" Sigue Sigue Sputnik sites on the web. Bizarrely, accoding to Yahoo!, 4,993 of these must have gone out of business in the past five years - maybe they were all hosted on redhotant or something. What's quite sweet is the Sputniks are clearly hoping that nobody will notice the band is playing on the same circuit as The Christians and Tony Hadley.

YOU'RE NOT JUST BUYING A STEPS ALBUM, YOU'RE PAYING FOR OUR MISTAKES: The DTI has followed the European Commission and announced another investigation into the pricing of CDs in the UK. While the EC is staring beadily at how come little silver discs cost so much more on this side of the Atlantic, the DTI are investigating the discrepancy between UK and continental prices. The BPI is blowing dust off the "subsidising new artists" argument even as we speak, we expect.

DECEPTIVE ENDING: Deceptive records, home to the lax-emperors Elastica and others, has decided to call it a day. Presumably couldn't face another five year wait for Justine to cobble some tracks together again.
Deceptive online - hey, we've closed, why worry about misfiring frames?
also calling it a day is the Internet Underground Music Achive, which is unplugging its equipment following parent eMusic's cash crisis.
Announcement of closure - though check out the front page. They use a picture of Titanic, because, in our sense of proportion, the closure of an MP3 dump is akin the to drowning of hundreds of people

NO ANGLE: Dido, interviewed on Smash Hits TV, and asked about being nominated for a Brit, admitted that the whole thing was ridiculous -"the album wasn't even out", she observed. Which is pretty much what we said, so Dido gets a 'too honest for her own good' ten out of ten rating.