John Lennon: A Mail On Sunday hero is something to be

Nobody ever bought John Lennon's working class, man-of-the-people shtick, but when he was alive he'd never have been quite so careless of trying to maintain the illusion as to let the Mail On Sunday give away a compilation of his tunes.

Tomorrow, the Mail On Sunday is giving away a compilation of his tunes.

MIDEM 2009: Can ISPs and music companies play together nicely

One more dip into Music Ally's excellent coverage of Midem, and in particular a panel exploring the chances of ISPs and copyright companies finding ways of working together constructively. Gerd Leonhard was one of the panelists, attempting to share some of his insight into the remaking of the music industry online. And what does he get for his pains?

Feargal Sharkey, that's what:

He cautions that the industry needs to remain acutely aware of music’s role in the bigger picture of “a digital economy and a digital culture”. And now he takes aim at “pseudo-intellectual cyber-professors”. Cor! “This is a creative and commercial challenge that can and should be solved by creative and commercial solutions,” he says.

Oh, yes. God forbid that the music industry should pay any attention to what people who understand the web and where it's going might have to say. After all, if they'd fallen into that trap back in the 1990s they might have forseen Napster and done something about it before their business models got smashed to pieces.

This smug, rude embrace of ignorance and the belief that experience of flogging vinyl in dump bins at Our Price is of more value than having studied the market place has already holed the music industry. How does Sharkey think that record labels or collection agencies can shape their "creative and commercial solutions" if the choose to ignore the people who can explain how going online changes people's behaviour, or who are already exploring the implications of the next wave of internet developments?

Sharkey's snarky reminds me of the people who turn up on Property Ladder and then set about ignoring all Sarah Beeney's advice because - while she might know what she's talking about - they're the ones who own the house.

Something else Sharkey said caught my eye:

the value of music has been sucked away through unlicensed unapproved copying and sharing

But, clearly, that's double-decker nonsense. Upstairs, it's wrong because billions of songs are being sold online, and record labels are still making millions of pounds, and advertising agencies are licensing tracks for thousands of campaigns. Downstairs, it's rubbish because Sharkey has been wearing suits too long, and can apparently only conceive of the value of music if it comes in a form which can be measured in pounds, shillings and pence. Nowadays, if someone told him that hearing Teenage Kicks made John Peel pull his car over and cry, Sharkey's response would be "but how can I monetise those tears?"

Also on the panel was the UK ISPA's Nicholas Lansan, who effectively spent his allotted time stressing that making laws wasn't going to stop file-sharing, and had this to offer:

[A]mong consumers, there’s a lack of understanding of copyright issues, and frustrations with DRM.

The second half, perhaps, Mr Lansan. The first half, though, is probably wrong: Consumers generally do understand copyright issues. They just don't care. They don't believe that filesharing a cheeky track or two will mark the end of music as we know it. They don't care that Paul McCartney and the ghost of John Lennon have issues they need to talk through with Apple before you can legally download Please Please Me; they just want the track now. The belief that the public don't understand is patronising, and attempts to shift the blame for the spread of free music on the public. The people who don't understand copyright issues are actually the ones who hold the copyrights, and what they don't understand is that if they choose not to share, their copyright ceases to have any value whatsoever.

Neko Case weekend: Mood To Burn Bridges

The place is the Crocodile Cafe; it's August 2000, and Neko Case And Her Boyfriends are in a Mood To Burn Bridges:



[Part of Neko Case weekend]

Napster start to get all sharing with their data

Following on from Best Buy's purchase of Napster last year, the music-sharing service has decided that it'll shovel all its subscriber's personal data to Best Buy. The only way to avoid this is by canceling your account before February 17th. Turning a dodgy move into a squalid one, Napster are simply going to assume you're happy with a consumer electronics store knowing everything about if you remain one of their customers.

MIDEM 2009: MySpace waft out their music CEO

Music Ally continue to bring the freshest coverage of MIDEMNet, covering an appearance by Courtney Holt, who has arrived to run MySpace's music offering from Universal.

He talked a little about how MySpace will try to make money from online music, given that he sees free downloading as the "main competition". It's all about adding value:

The MySpace Secret Shows are one example, he says, where bands play smaller gigs for their fans. “Those types of programmes are really relevant, we’re going to expand into more of those,” he says.

Curiously, then, the main driver for marketing MySpace music - which offers the chance to put your music in front of the largest imaginable audience - is a series of teeny tiny gigs where you play music to the smallest possible audience. I'm not sure they've quite thought this one through.

Are they selling much?

Amazon is proving a good partner, although “we need to make the intent to buy and the purchase a little bit easier”, although MySpace is seeing “increasing intent to buy”.

What’s that? “People are clicking on buy links,” he says. “It’s gonna take some time, we know that’s challenging, but it’s also important to all of our partners.”

That, of course, is the sticking point: are MySpace making any money from this? Are the labels? And are the labels as prepared to wait as long as News International to see the massive MySpace audience start to turn into big piles of cash?

It turns out that MySpace has one strong card in persuading patience from its RIAA partners - not being Apple:

“The terms that we’re cutting with everybody are fair deals for us to be able to run this business. The labels do want to see other people survive as digital music offerings [than iTunes], they want to diversify their revenues.”

This, though, might prove a problem in the long run - if MySpace hope to replace Apple as the dominant music retailer on the web, the record labels would be just as unhappy as they are with the idea of Apple dominating.

Neko Case weekend: Middle Cyclone

Due out on the third of the third:



[Part of Neko Case weekend]

Aerosmith gig kneecapped

One of the problems that, it's fair to say, never hit rock in the first days of the music: Aerosmith have pulled a gig because LeeJoe Perry is having trouble with his replacement knee.

[UPDATE: Mixed Perrys]

MIDEM 2009: Comes With Music, but that's easily dealt with

The pre-Midem MidemNet digital music conference is underway down in the South Of France, where somehow these companies who have to fight for every cent have managed to send their executives and sub-executives to find out stuff they could get for free on the internet.

Musically has been liveblogging an interview with Dr Tero Ojanpera, the EVP of "entertainment and communities" with Nokia. He has, obviously, been talking mostly about Comes With Music, giving an interesting little nugget about the "fair use" limit, and how it's not just us who is curious to see exactly where that limit might lie:

“We are seeing some people downloading hundreds of tracks a month initially, but when the base expands this will be even more like a bell curve. There were some bloggers who went and downloaded a lot, but once they noticed Nokia was not doing anything, they gave up! We are not really seeing anybody who is abusing the service. It’s validating all the research that was done before - this is how people will use it - some will use a lot, some will use a little, and it will average out.”

You'll notice he doesn't say that Nokia believed that the exploratory downloaders failed to breach a limit of fair use, just that Nokia chose to not do anything. Sadly, nobody seems to have bothered asking Ojanpera why the company won't just come out and say what it considers to be fair use of its service, and why it childishly keeps the figure secret.

Why doesn't it trust its customers with the actual rules for a service that they're paying for? It just seems to be cussed secrecy for the sake of it.

Also interesting is that some people are buying Comes With Music handsets, and not bothering with the music:

“What we are seeing three months in in the UK is that the consumption pattern is like a bell curve. There are certain users that don’t activate, and then a really nice bell curve where we are seeing good downloads in the middle and…”

[Moderator Bill] Werde [of Billboard] interjects - why are some people not activating? Ojanpera says some simply missed the offer. Bizarre.

I'll agree with Music Ally's "bizarre" response - given that the marketing is garishly insistent about Comes With Music, the suggestion that people might not realise that their Comes With Music phone comes with music seems a little odd. Surely the other possibility - that you can offer people unlimited music for no extra money, and they can't even be arsed to explore the offering - is far more fascinating. And worrying, for the music industry. And psychologically fascinating.

And are people buying in to the service in large numbers?

So, the UK then. The price point of the 5310 has lowered, and reports suggest sales aren’t good. Why? “I don’t want to put you on the spot” says Werde. Why not?!

Anyway, Ojanpera’s response, pointing out that Nokia has been expanding the device base for CWM in the UK. “Our target is not any more about ‘this is a few specific devices’, but going forward we will have this in all price points, and make this a mass-market phenomenon.”

Surely, if you can have Comes With Music in the cheapo end of the market, that must mean the money that's flowing to the labels, and then on to the artists, must be piffling beyond belief?

And what about the simplicity of the offering?

Is the offer simple enough, asks Werde? “One thing is of course, this comes back to the marketing, and that needs to be fine-tuned all the time. The actual product is so simple - one year of music, unlimited downloads in your phone and your PC. That’s simple enough, and a great offer.”

Of course, the offering isn't simple at all, when you look at it - and get down to fine details of owning the tracks forever, but requiring a DRM key, which you can only change once past the subscribing period. It's not that this is a totally unfair rule from Nokia's point of view - if you run DRM servers, you're not going to want to commit to long periods of fiddling for people who aren't paying you any more - but it complicates the offering more than it should. Interesting, then, that Nokia don't seem all that bothered about trying to crawl out from under the DRM tarpaulin.

Public service announcement: Gomez

The news that Gomez have scheduled a late March US release for their new album, A New Tide, doesn't entirely thrill me, but given that they're popular with some No Rock regular readers, it would be churlish to not to mention it. Presumably there's a UK release scheduled for roughly the same time.

Neko Case weekend: Things That Scare Me

Recorded live at 2007's Calgary Folk Festival, Neko Case does The Things That Scare Me, which is the opposite of The Sound Of Music's My Favourite Things:



[Part of Neko Case weekend]

Gordon in the morning: Playing Scrabble with Amy Winehouse

After last weekend, when the News of the World crashed Amy Winehouse's holiday, it was probably only a matter of time before The Sun sent someone along for a look-see, too. So it is today that Gordon carries a dispatch from The Sun's US editor Emily Smith.

Yes, the American editor of the Sun has flown to St Lucia to, erm, play Scrabble with Amy Winehouse. It's not like there's anything happening in the US in the next few days that might require the most senior staff member to be in Washington.

And the price of the tickets? They paid for themselves, with this sort of quality report:

Our game ended when she patted a bump on her tiny tummy and said: “My stomach feels bloated,” before saying she needed the toilet and bolting for the loo.

Winehouse goes to the lavatory! Whoever would have thought?

Celebrity Big Brother: Hole in the house

Mutya, having failed to be evicted, has walked from the Big Brother house. She says she couldn't stand being away from her child any longer; the reality, and there's no shame in it, is that she wouldn't want to spend another second listening to the self-obsessed perpetually-confused Coolio. Coolio's defence, when challenged on being as boorish as he is balding, is that he's playing a character, or playing games. Clearly, he doesn't like himself much, either, the speed with which he denies himself.

Embed and Breakfast man: Neko Case

With a new album and charity-powered free download all over the place, what better time for a quick trawl through the marvelous Neko Case's solo work?

Case really battered her way into people's minds through her work with the New Pornographers - which was kind of the wrong way round, as the band was meant to be a side project and not a flagship. Still, it did allow people to discover her solo work - both with her Boyfriends backing team, and without. This weekend, we'll just focus on the solo stuff.

Let's start with The Boyfriends in the room. This is Furnace Room Lullaby, which turned up - according to the caption, anyway - on the soundtrack of psychic-crime-busting schlocker The Gift:

More on Neko Case

Neko Case on No Rock
Neko Case official site
Neko Case MySpace
Neko Case on iLike
Neko Case on Wikipedia

Buy Neko Case

The Tigers Have Spoken
Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
Blacklisted

Download Neko Case

The Tigers Have Spoken mp3s
Fox Confessor Brings The Flood mp3s
Furnace Room Lullabys mp3s

More videos over the weekend

Things That Scare Me live in Calgary
Middle Cyclone
Favourite live in California
Deep Red Bells live in Park City, Utah
Knock Loud live in London

Mott The Hoople roll away the stone

It's been 40 years since the first stretchings and mewings of Mott The Hoople. And, to mark the passing of those forty years, Mott The Hoople are reuniting.

This is a proper reunion - it's been 35 years since they played together as a band. Thirty-five years is a decent period before getting back together. Blue might want to think about that.

Circuit City unplugs

To be fair, I can't take much delight in the news that Circuit City is closing its remaining stores. That's despite having a really bad customer service experience in one of their stores just after Christmas. Like, really bad. British standards of service bad. It was kind of curious, though, that a company which needed all the love and support it could get basically treated people trying to buy things as if they were irritants.

The company management has signaled that there's no way back for them:

"We are extremely disappointed by this outcome. The company had been in continuous negotiations regarding a going concern transaction. Regrettably for the more than 30,000 employees of Circuit City and our loyal customers, we were unable to reach an agreement with our creditors and lenders to structure a going-concern transaction in the limited timeframe available, and so this is the only possible path for our company," said James A. Marcum, vice chairman and acting president and chief executive officer for Circuit City Stores, Inc.

It's a sad ending but the loss of a second major competitor in just over a year will presumably make Best Buy feel a bit more confident about its future.

Are you sure that's what you mean?

After the horrors Jennifer Hudson went through last year, it's unlikely that a poorly thought-out NME.com headline is going to make things much worse, but didn't anyone think that this makes it sound more like a grisly programme of events rather than a return to work after a tragedy?

George goes down

As someone - probably on Popbitch - observed: he's not a man without convictions any more.

Boy George has been given a fifteen-month sentence for charges relating to chaining up a bloke in his flat:

Judge Radford said: "Whilst I accept that Mr Carlsen's physical injuries were not serious or permanent, in my view there can be no doubt that your premeditated callous and humiliating handcuffing and detention of Mr Carlsen shocked, degraded and traumatised him.

"He was deprived of his liberty and human dignity without warning or proper explanation to him of its purpose, length or purported justification."
Family and friends react outside the courtroom
The singer's family and friends were angry at the sentence

He also ordered the singer, who had decided not to testify, to pay £5,000 costs.

Still, at least Boy George spared his mother, apparently.

IFPI: Adding up the downloads

That IFPI report? The NME runs a chunk of the findings:

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) Digital Music Report 2009 estimates that 40 billion files were unlawfully shared online in 2008 alone.

The report states that the IFPI removed three billion links to such files in 2008, up from 500,000 in 2007.

Actually, the report states three million, which is a little more credible.

And do the IFPI really mean 40 billion files are being "unlawfully shared", or are they adding up the number of times a smaller number of files have been accessed? You have to actually go to the full report to find out. The advantage, of course, is that you do get unfunny cartoons as well.
So, what do they actually say about this forty billion files?

Estimates on the impact of internet piracy vary but are consistently huge in scale. IFPI, collating separate studies in 16 countries over a four-year period,
estimated unauthorised file-sharing at over 40 billion files in 2008. This means that globally around 95 per cent of music tracks are downloaded without payment to the artist or the music company that produced them.

Hang about... this isn't just any old made-up figure, then, but one that has been hammered together from just sixteen countries, a bunch of studies which will use a range of different methodologies and from over a four year period. Which is more or less forever in internet terms. So even if it wasn't a made-up figure, it would be a totally pointless. The IFPI doesn't provide any further indication of how it made-up the number, nor even the studies on which it built its figure. It doesn't even define its terms, so we don't know if there are forty billion supposed downloads of unlicensed files, or if there are forty billion files available for download and possibly being sucked off the internet hundreds of times.

End of the Road: Dublin store closes

More grim news from the cash-strapped world of music: Dublin indie store Road is closing. Dave from Road has a list of reasons:

1. Regardless of what I have thought over the years downloading has effected our business, probably more so the illegal side of things, filesharhing and the likes. I speak as a shop on this one but god knows how much small bands suffer because of this aswell.

2. Below cost sellers online, everybody wants a bargain and its hard to take the moral highground on this one, but everytime a purchase is made to the likes of Play etc is a nail in the coffin to the indie store, these online sellers don't care one hoot about indie bands and music, they just need to sell in bulk and as quickly as possible. They will never put any money or effort back into indigenous music, try asking them to sell 50 copies of a beautiful hand made cdr release.

3. The city centre just does not have the same volume of people walking around it anymore, its a simple fact, less people means less sales. We have noticed a massive downturn in the amount of people visiting the store in the last year.

4. Kids don't buy music anymore. That sounds like a fairly broad statement to make, I know there are still some out there but we don't see any young people in the shop anymore so as we lose older customers we don't gain any new ones.

5. Obviously this country is going through a recession at the moment so it would be stupid of me to claim that this wasn't having an effect on our business but having said that things were already beginning to change long before that.

6. The deal with selling independent local releases always had to be a two way exchange for us, we never made much money from local releases [and that was never the idea] but we always sought the support of bands. By that I mean if we were selling your music then we would always appreciate the bands making a purchase in the store in return, sadly that did not always happen, and before you jump at me for making this statement I do accept that plenty of you out there were very supportive of us but take if from me we did have quite a lot of bands coming in to us with their own release to sell whilst also carrying a hmv bag with a purchase they had just made, simply because it was cheaper there.

7. The cost of running a store in this city has increased dramatically in the past 4 / 5 years, rents have gone up so much, insurance increased, bank costs and so many other things that over the years it has become increasingly more difficult just to meet our costs on a week to week basis.

8. Whilst this one may not seem so obvious the cost of an average cd or record in the store is now less than it was 5 / 6 years ago and that is a good thing to the consumer but it has also seriously dented our chances of making a living in any way, it just means we have to sell more to cover our costs but as I mentioned with less customers coming through the door that has not been possible.

The store has been trading at a loss for six months and the team at Road have simply run out of the means to support a shop in the face of insurmountable odds; especially worrying would be the anecdotal evidence that kids aren't buying music any more - or not from shops. The other factors make things difficult, but that points to a change in culture which would seem to be fatal.

[Thanks to Barry S for the story]

Venuewatch: Charlotte in administration

With The Astoria now closed, and attracting the attention of the Today programme [8.24, near the bottom of the page], there's grim news from a far more important venue.

The Leicester Princess Charlotte has gone into administration:

Andy Wright, who has run the venue for 20 years, has put its operating company, The Princess Charlotte Public House Ltd, into administration, because it did not have enough money to continue.
He is now seeking talks with Punch Taverns, which owns the building, about a possible financial lifeline.

Mr Wright said: "Basically, if they are not prepared to support it and prop it up, it's the end of an era. If Punch decided not to support the venue, we would need someone to come in, and put in some money.

"Something has to be approved by the end of the month or it will close. It's a legendary venue. It would be a big shame to see it go."

It would be much more than a shame to see it disappear - there aren't many venues outside of London which have successfully supported live music for decades, and a list of bands who have played the Charlotte would be, pretty much, a list of any British guitar-based act who did alright for themselves - and every band from Leicester since the late 1980s. It was that mix of support for local acts with bands quivering on the brink of national breakthrough that made venues like this so special.

I once went there two nights running, despite living in Liverpool, due to a mix-up on a band's touring schedule which said they were playing on the wrong night; and I have vague memories that at one point to gain access to the venue part at the back of the pub you had to more-or-less walk through the gents' toilets. But surely that can't be right?

Let's hope that something turns up for the Charlotte - and it doesn't involve being swallowed into a soulless chain which slaps a sponsor's name outside. There is some encouragement:

A spokeswoman for Punch said: "The Princess Charlotte is an important venue to the Leicestershire area and we are committed to its future."

But then Punch isn't having the greatest time of it, financially, at the moment.

[Thanks to Simon T for the tip]

Boy George: Keeping mum, keeping Mum happy

The puzzling decision of Boy George to not offer the obviously plausible explanation for what the escort was doing chained to his wall has been explained by his brother, David. I say "explained":

His brother David said the troubled star told him: “I know the likelihood is I’m going to prison, but I couldn’t do it for mum’s sake. She’s dying.

“The only reason I didn’t give evidence was for her. She’s been through too much in her life already.”

While that's touching-shading-into-heartbreaking, it doesn't actually make any sense, does it? It implies that George could have cleared up the whole silly business, but the explanation would have been more upsetting to his mother than the idea that her son is a vindictive idiot with anger issues who chains male escorts to his walls and who is going to prison as a result. It's hard to imagine a proof of innocence that could look worse than that, surely?

Digital sales rise; RIAA-IFPI still unhappy

Some good news blinking through the gloom of the economy this morning - worldwide, digital music sales rose by 25 per cent in value over the last year.

Naturally, the RIAA spin-off body the IFPI isn't going to take this good news well:

However, the rapid rate of growth has inevitably slowed -- digital sales grew by more than 30 percent in 2007 -- and the scale of the piracy has eaten into traditional revenues, meaning the overall music market for 2008 is expected to be down about 7 percent.

Disaster! Doom! Last year the download market grew by a little under a third, this year it only grew by a quarter. Quick, to the bailouts!

And, yes, the total size of the music market in revenue terms might have shrunk a little - although the IFPI might have read about other industries struggling a little right now; and, indeed, they seem to have neglected to share any details about what might have happened to costs now that even more of their sales come through a business model with lower overheads.

No, let's just concentrate on the falling sky:

The report showed about 95 percent of the music downloaded in 2008, or more than 40 billion files, was illegal and not paid for.

As if, of course "illegal" and "not paid for" are the same thing.

Still, there are a few kind words:

"A percentage of the existing business is not the way to measure the growth of the digital business," Rob Wells, the senior vice president of digital for Universal Music Group International, said on a conference call.
"This is a brand new business and I won't be satisfied until the business is bigger than it's ever been and I think that's something we can achieve within the next five years."

Woo, steady on there, Rob - that sounds almost positive. Can't you at least throw in some words about the needs to rip the hearts from filesharers, just so we know you really work in the music industry?

More good news from CD Baby, which reports that its artists took home some $34million this year, a 28% rise on the year before.

Gordon in the morning: And she's a fun-loving health-scare beating pop pixie...

Bizarre this morning is leading with a piece by Sharon Hendry:

He's tall with smouldering Latin looks ... and a fear of commitment. Is it true love for Kylie or ... DEJA PHEW!

And that's just the headline.

He is called Andres Velencoso Segura, he may or may not be seeing Kylie, and that may or may not be a problem:

[W]hile many women would not be distracted in the arms of smouldering Spanish supermodel Andres Velencoso Segura, Kylie can’t ignore the fact that he is the spitting image of Olivier, the French actor who nursed her through breast cancer.

Presumably Europeans are the last people about whom it's permissible to say "they all look the bloody same to me".

Still, it's great for The Sun, since nobody hear knows anything about Segura, allowing acres of space-filling with biography and clumsily-translated old interviews which may, or may not, be significant in light of his possible romance with Kylie:

Andres, who lists his hobbies as scuba diving off the Costa Brava, cycling, Pilates and photography, is also not shy of showing off his impressive body, even having modelled in the nude.

A model who isn't shy of showing off his body. Whatever next, eh?

While some readers might be delighted with the bluffer's guide to Segura...

KYLIE came to fame as Jason Donovan’s wife in Neighbours.

... they might not be quite so much in need of a Kylie guide.

Today's pages have the air of Gordon being elsewhere - perhaps he's had to get a second job to help his employers pull some cash together to give to Sharon Osbourne - although the non-story that Simon Cowell is supposedly going to release a Russell Brand novelty single looks a little Gordonesque, in that it's a bold claim with scant actual support and a hell of a lot of padding and clod-headed claims:

It could be 2009’s answer to WHIGFIELD’s Saturday Night.

But that wasn't a comedy song. Gordon really needs to read some guide to songs by comedians. Luckily, he's dumped one into the very same piece:

Over the years loads of comedians have trampled the same path.

ALEXEI SAYLE wrote Ullo John! Gotta New Motor? NEIL from THE YOUNG ONES had a No2 with Hole In My Shoe.

VIC REEVES AND THE WONDERSTUFF topped the charts with Dizzy.

FRANK SKINNER and DAVID BADDIEL wrote some song about footie’s European Championships and PETER KAY has had a couple of chart-toppers in the past few years.

Ah, the joys of two minutes on Wikipedia, eh?

Still, thanks to the Sun's "I have nothing to add but I shall type it anyway" looky-at feedback feature I Reckon This, Gordon isn't the least well-informed person on the page:

Posted by: carolmumof4

Well you have to be a nonce, an idiot, Ignorant and stupid to be called a "celebrity" or make a CD in Politically correct creeping, stupid, yellow livered Britain. Country is down the pan.

So, if you're smart and you want to get a CD release in Britain, the only way to do is by sexually abusing children?

Zavvi dumps online plans

Amongst all the news items detailing the break-up of Zavvi, this is the one that confirms the store is on its way to the knackers' yard: Ernst And Young have dumped the company's plans to launch a download store. Nothing says "managed decline" more than that.

Franz Ferdinand decide they don't like pirates after all

Back in August 2007, the BBC released a collection of cover versions to mark Radio 1's 40th birthday. Franz Ferdinand suggested that, rather than buying it, it would be more apt to help yourself:

"The whole shabang doesn't appear to be for charity so point your browsers towards Limewire soon, kiddies!" the band said in a statement.

It's all fun and games until... oh, it's your own label whose music is being pirated. Now, the band are sending WebSheriff after fans who have posted Tonight onto the torrents:

On behalf of Domino Records and Franz Ferdinand, we would kindly ask you not to post copies of ‘Tonight’ on your site. We do appreciate that you are fans of / are promoting Franz Ferdinand, but the label and artist would greatly appreciate your co-operation in removing your links to the pirate files in question.

Web Sheriff have also instructed the people getting letters - sometimes simply for posting links to other sites which had long since taken down the actual files. Oh, and demanding apologies:

You must also arrange for the following apology to be published on the relevant page of the site for a period of seven (7) days : “RSLOG wishes to apologies to Franz Ferdinand, Domino Records and Web Sheriff for the disruption caused to their sales, marketing and promotion plans by our publishing of pirate file details relating to the unreleased album “Tonight”.

It's not just the complete change in attitude from the Ferdinand camp; but if they do feel the need to chase down filesharers, couldn't they find a less embarrassing way of doing it?

The Zune will go on

Microsoft? Thinking of dropping the Zune? Why, nothing could be further from the truth, apparently:

"Basically, what happened last week, Steve [Ballmer] said a couple of things about the category," said Adam Sohn, head of Microsoft's Zune marketing division, causing speculation that Microsoft would stop making Zunes. However, he clarified, "we're not getting out of the hardware business at all," adding that Microsoft is "deeply committed" to continuing to its Zune hardware strategy.

So, you've got Steve Ballmer, who runs the show, suggesting that Microsoft might be less interested in making Zune players; you've got the guy who runs the bit of the company that sells Zunes insisting that the Zune player has a happy and rosy future, and certainly you shouldn't not think about buying one. Oh no.

."The other thing Steve said, which is spot on with our strategy -- and unfortunately I think a lot of people we haven't talk to sort of took it and ran in the wrong direction -- is that we do think the Zune device is not the only place you will access the Zune experience," said Sohn. "A lot of people jumped to an 'either/or,' when in fact it's a 'both/and' situation."

Microsoft's first order of business is to deliver the Zune music service to Xbox and Windows Media Center. "We would be thinking about nailing experiences in our own platforms concurrently with, if not before we're thinking about going beyond that," said Sohn. The mobile space represents a particularly interesting opportunity for Microsoft, since it could involve developing apps for competitors like Apple and Google.

Talk of a Zune experience - and especially nailing those experiences - does at least leave you in no doubt that Sohn is a marketing guy. The question he doesn't address, but which hangs in the air, is if "the Zune experience" is about interacting Zunely with tunes through a Zune interface, then why would Microsoft continue to pour money down the drain on a loss-making hardware strategy?

American Idol straps on waterskis, looks for marine mammals

Is American Idol entering its decline phase? Although the return was the most-watched programme so far this year on US TV, it hasn't had a starting audience this low since 2004. Even the defence of the audience size isn't that spirited:

A spokesman for the show said it was not surprising for the popularity of a show, even one as big as American Idol, to fall after eight seasons.

He added that a bigger chunk of the audience had started recording the two-hour programme.

But isn't one of the attractions for broadcasters of this sort of programme that it has to be watched more-or-less live, that it's appointment television like what they used to have in the old days? Do advertisers want to know that more and more viewers will be spooling through the adverts?

Could it just be that a simple-minded programme is now creatively running dry?

Viewers watched hopefuls auditioning in Phoenix, Arizona. They included a contestant wearing only a swimsuit who earned the nickname Bikini Girl.

An astonishingly sharp and inspired nickname. Bikini Girl - because she's a woman, and she's in a bikini. When you have it explained to you, it's quite clever, isn't it?

Darkness at 3AM: Clumsiest headline ever

Take That's Gary Barlow a dad to baby Daisy after wife goes into labour as he's on a video shoot

Someone should be fired - surely they could have crammed in Barlow's age, his wife's name and a weight of the child in there, too?

The Sun pays out to Sharon Osbourne

Although it's easy to forget, Sharon Osbourne is just flesh and blood and as capable of being mortified or embarrassed as the rest of us. As, indeed, she was when the Sun ran a story claiming she was working Ozzy to death:

Osbourne's solicitor, John Kelly, told Justice David Eady that the article alleged that former X Factor judge, who has been married to Ozzy for 26 years, was putting her husband's life at risk by forcing him to perform a series of live shows when he was not well enough, and that her motivation for doing so was to fund her "exorbitant spending".

"The article wrongly alleged that the claimant was 'driving her frail husband Ozzy Osbourne to destruction', was working him 'so hard she will kill him' and that 'Sharon will keep Ozzy on the road until, like Tommy Cooper, he dies on stage'," Kelly told the high court.

"These allegations are entirely without foundation and were obviously extremely distressing, hurtful and damaging for the claimant. The claimant's distress was increased as a result of the claims in the article being made by the claimant's estranged brother David Arden, and tagged with the words 'Chilling warning from brother of X Factor Sharon'.

The article was originally credited to Grant Rollings. News International are to pay "substantial" damages.

New Kids On The Dock

James P emails to alert me to the forthcoming New Kids On The Block cruise liner gig:

The band seem quite defensive, saying "this is not a step back" and that a cruise ship concert is "not a cheesy thing". The cruise leaves Florida for the Bahamas in mid-May, and is open to all fans of songs heavily reliant on the word 'Oh'.

James somewhat cruelly suggests this is the band following the Jane McDonald career path. That's well unfair, seeing as Jane started on the ships and then came ashore, while the New Kids used to be quite famous and are now cast adrift.