Canadian music industry doesn't want iPod levy

For years now, if you buy blank media in Canada, part of the price has gone to the local music industry to make up for the "losses" home taping and CD burning have caused it. Some well-meaning Canadians have started moving plans that will extend this levy to mp3 players and the like.

The Canadian Music Industry is rushing to try and stop this happening.

Yes, you heard: to stop it. As they've realised that it would effectively mean peer to peer fiel sharing in Canada would be perfectly legal, even for copyrighted material.

It's caused something of a split between the board which oversees the levy, the Canadian Private Copying Collective - which wants the lucrative "iPod tax", as there's not much future for it in levying blank tapes and CD-Rs - and the CRIA. A knock-on effect is the bringing into the open of a disjunction between the artists who have been recompensed under the exisiting scheme, and those who have had their work copied. In other words: Canadian artists have been getting an unfair slice of the levy pie all these years.

Cushioned excitement

Silverchair have returned to the studio, with the intention of breaking a record for the most Australian number one albums, although NME reports the record is currently shared between Midnight Oil and Cold Chisel - so, surely, the best Silverchair could be doing is trying to equal the record rather than break it?

Still, it sounds, uh, thrilling:

[W]hen recording the new album songwriter Daniel Johns reportedly wrote "more than 20 songs" about insomnia.

Then he decided to try Horlicks, which worked.

Taping Travis

Fran Healy is, refreshingly, taking an anti-Prince stance, happily ensdorsing fans who tape their stuff when they play live:

“From a purely selfish view it helps me. I can go onto the internet and check out a song - at any given time you have 100 amateur cameramen taking a picture of your show from a variety of angles.

"It's a great way of finding out what works and what doesn't. The quality may not be great, but you get the vibe."

Of course, this means we're heading towards an internet in the future which has everything Travis has ever done, and nothing Prince has ever done. Is that what anyone wants?

Hard for me to say I'm sorry

Having almost destroyed herself on a major awards show televised live, coast-to-coast, can Britney Spears really be considering trying to regain the advantage by, erm, going on another live, coast-to-coast awards show?

The idea, apparently, would be that Britney would say "sorry" (To whom? For what?) on the Emmys. It all sounds a little unlikely - her people could barely manage to get her to go and open and close her mouth in time to a backing tape last week; are they really able to deliver a coherent live apology this weekend?

Libertines unbound

NME.com is giving away a free chapter from Anthony Thornton's excellent Libertines Bound Together biography. You have to download it off the NME site, though, you can't just go into Waterstones with a Stanley knife and chop out the chapter.

Mindy McCready is off the streets

Mindy McCready has been sentenced for her probation violations - a hefty year in jail. We're not quite sure if this would have been the outcome she was hoping for when she pleaded for leniency:

"Your honour, I can honestly tell you this - this has been the longest two months of my life... not being able to hold my son... has been excruciatingly painful," she said.

"I could only say I'm sorry. Please give me a chance to make things as right as they can possibly be."

First, though, the judge decided to give her the chance to have a go on the big clothes press in the laundry.

Radio One More Time: Those who also entertained

Radio One has had, in its time, some unusual choices presenting programmes. Some were surprising and right, some surprising and wrong. Some were Kelly Osbourne.

Mark Ellen used to present occasionally, sitting in for Annie Nightingale, heralding his appearance with rhyming trailers. This was a good thing.

Emma Freud, for some reason, was in charge of the lunchtime programme for a ridiculously long time. We have a soft spot for Emma, but the one thing that spot is not is a two and half hour spot on a pop radio network.

Muriel Gray did a few swing shifts for Janice Long; we quite liked her, but Radio One at the time had problems with women doing radio, never mind Scottish women.

Tom Watt also did Night-time a few times - now that he's doing lots of football programming, it's not so odd, but when he was still Lofty off EastEnders, it felt wrong having him turning up to play Housemartins sessions.

Lenny Henry was recruited for some weekend work - we imagine the thinking was "an anarchic force in the mould of the young Kenny Everett". He wasn't bad, but he didn't stick around overlong.

Jamie Theakston turned up at One FM as part of the ongoing attempt to turn TV stars into radio personalities - while it worked with Zoe Ball, and people seem to have accepted Vernon Kay, Sara Cox and Fearne Cotton despite shows which can be as cold as Gazpacho Soup outdoors in Iceland - he was one who didn't take.

An even stranger presence, though, was Greg Proops, who we seem to remember having a crack at being Mark Radcliffe for a week or two. It turned out he really was at his best when Clive Anderson could sound a buzzer to get him to move on.

Tom Robinson was another "in for Janice" choice; his style, and introduction of Then Jericho and "the devastatingly handsome Mark Shaw" was encouraging, but felt a little off-key for Radio One. Still, Tom only had to wait another fifteen years or so for someone to invent 6Music to give him a home.

[Part of Radio One More Time]

Bono helps the Africans

We're a little behind the loop on this one, but we've just seen a physical copy of the Bono-edited edition of Vanity Fair - you remember, with Madonna and George Bush and the like on the twenty "collectors" covers (encouraging you to buy the same fashion magazine 20 times; that'll raise spirits of people living on less than a dollar a day).

There, slipped inside, was a Jewellery supplement, advertising gold and diamonds and multinational couples dealing in precious metals and gems.

Pregnant query

Yesterday, we had Dannii Minogue bravely announcing that she has "nothing against pregnant women"; today, we have Victoria Newton applauding Christina Aguilera for coming out:

CHRISTINA AGUILERA flashed her preggers ’n’ proud look as she and husband JORDAN BRATMAN dined out at Toscana Italian restaurant in California.

(For anyone over the age of nine, we should point out that "preggers" in nursery-speak for "pregnant.")

Pregnant and proud? Since when did pregnancy become something to be ashamed of so much that it's required a Gravid Pride movement? Is that adopting from the developing world has become so commonplace in Hollywood that people who actually give birth to their own children are seen as being impoverished in some way?

[EDIT: It was Minogue and not Louis Walsh who apparently doesn't have anything against pregnant women]

Ricky Gervias and the first rule of comedy

Former new romantic popstar Ricky Gervais has been entertaining his famous chums again, reports The Sun:

PRINCES William and Harry sneaked into Ricky Gervais’ stand-up show — and roared with laughter at a joke about their gran WEEING.

Office star Gervais, 46, poked fun at the Queen’s toilet habits, despite knowing the two fun-loving royals were in the audience.

It's heartwarming to hear that Gervais' act has now caught up with that of younger comedians and, in particular, Ted Bovis' "famous people on the toilet routine" that always went down so well at Maplins.