Title: 30 Music Startups Set to Rock Midem

Excerpt: The event’s startup competition, Midemlab, has previously helped launch such notable companies as audio sharing platform SoundCloud, concert information service Songkick, and smart music data manipulators, The Echo Nest – the company powering Spotify’s new radio app, EMI’s API and other recent exciting developments.

Excerpt: The startups taking part in 2012 have been announced, and they’re divided into three categories: Music Discovery, Recommendation & Creation; Marketing, and Direct to Consumer Sales and Content Monetisation. We’ll be taking a closer look at the best of the bunch when we touch down in Cannes for the event in January.

Title: Billboard Women In Music 2011

Excerpt: Billboard editorial director Bill Werde said he has been repeatedly asked why Billboard ranks its Women In Music honorees, which was expanded from 30 to 40 (actually 41, due to a tie) this year. "We believe in taking an editorial stance to keep the industry striving to work harder," he said. You can read about the honorees here, and here's a list of the other fine women executives who were nominated.

Title: Spotify Is Good For The Music Industry, Its CEO Says

Excerpt: Some industry watchers see Spotify's offering as the end of the music download business. But Daniel Ek — the company's Swedish-born, 28-year-old founder and CEO — feels differently.

Excerpt: "I don't want to be characterized as an iTunes killer," Ek tells Weekend Edition host Audie Cornish. "What we really are trying to do is move people away from piracy into a legal model that contributes revenue back to the music industry. It's really that simple, and I think the key is by creating more convenient products."

Excerpt: Though the service may be convenient, some artists would rather their fans download their music or purchase physical copies. A few high-profile acts such as Coldplay and Adele have kept their latest releases off Spotify and other streaming music subscription services, since artists make tenths of a cent every time one of their songs is streamed.

Title: New Grammy rules set off more grumbling

Excerpt: Grousing about the Grammy nominations is a time-honored practice in the music industry, but those who felt overlooked, snubbed or robbed this year had new ammunition to bolster their complaints: a change in the rules that eliminated 31 award categories, assuring far fewer nominees than in recent years.

Excerpt: Nominations in the R&B categories, which were cut from eight to four by the new rules, seemed to favor tradition over Top 40. Despite major releases from Beyoncé, herself a longtime Grammy darling, Jill Scott, Ne-Yo, Jazmine Sullivan and Keri Hilson, nods went to quieter releases from Kelly Price, Ledisi and El DeBarge. There were complaints that the new rules left little or no distinction between contemporary and traditional R&B.

Excerpt: Recording Academy President Neil Portnow said Thursday that the rule changes, announced last April amid controversy, were necessary because the number of awards had ballooned unreasonably, but suggested they would be reexamined again.

Title: How the Universal-EMI Deal Will Change the Music Industry

Excerpt: A little more than a decade ago, there were six powerful major labels. Now, with the sale of EMI's recorded-music division – home to the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Coldplay and Katy Perry – to Universal Music Group for $1.9 billion, the record industry will be reduced to just three. The deal is pending regulatory approval from both U.S. and European agencies – but if it is approved, just one label, Universal, would control more than a third of overall sales, leaving many in the industry nervous about its clout. "It's going to be damaging in the end," says a veteran major-label executive. "There's going to be another whack-down of artist rosters. It happens again and again. How can artists and their managers fight for priority attention? It's tough."

Excerpt: Both the label and publishing sales are expected to be approved in eight to 10 months. In the meantime, EMI executives have said they plan no short-term layoffs – although eventual staff cuts are all but inevitable, as the combined companies eliminate redundancies. "We've been assured that the commitment and investment will remain," says Caroline Prothero, manager of EMI dance-music star David Guetta. "I want this situation to allow new artists to come through, and I want the people that have worked with us to keep their jobs."

Excerpt: But given the reduced power of the majors, many in the business are surprisingly unfazed. "It's just another merger,"says Bob McLynn, who manages acts from Train to Hole. "You have to work with your artist and soldier on and not worry about the surroundings."

Title: Transparency On Music Streaming Rates

Excerpt: Major labels may be hoping that new-wave digital music jukeboxes can make up for slowing downloads growth. But a drip-drip of labels pulling out of the services in protest at low fees is continuing, and may grow to more than just indies.

Excerpt: Spotify tells paidContent: “I’m afraid we can’t give any detail. It is important to note that Spotify does not have a direct relationship with artists - we pay revenues to the rightsholders, and the authors, composers and musicians they represent.” Rdio, too, says it cannot talk about rates thanks to confidentiality clauses in label deals.

Excerpt: But the incongruity has reached an effective crescendo with one of the world’s biggest groups, Coldplay, contrary to its labelmates, withholding now its latest album, Mylo Xyloto, from streaming. When you scale up streaming rates to an act as big as Coldplay, it seems to throw the gap to actual purchase in to stark relief. And that could redefine what streaming is actually for - for actual consumption or for promotion?

There is no risk of major labels pulling out of Spotify. But if their individual acts like Coldplay can win opt-outs, the landscape could get fragmented indeed.

So what do the industry’s power brokers have to hide? If the rates really are fair and have merit, it would serve everyone better to get them out in the open now.

Title: Google Music's Artist Hub

Excerpt: When Google Music launched last week, much of the attention focused on the “Artist Hub” feature that allows unsigned bands to create a profile and sell music direct to fans.
Okay … And?
This is a nice “+” in Google terms, but it’s not earthshaking. There are three players here — the artist, the middleman and Google.

Excerpt: So let’s say an “unsigned” DIY artist wants to generate revenue on the top six digital retailers. Here’s what they’d have to spend to get their stuff there:
iTunes, Amazon, Spotify: $50 via TuneCore
YouTube: No distributor offers this on a flat-fee basis, so let’s guesstimate this will cost $25 a year, based on average $1 RPM and 30,000 video views
Deezer (What? Never heard of them? Huuuge in France); CD Baby: $59 plus nine percent (it’s a given you’re gonna need a barcode)
Google Music: The aforementioned $25
Total: $159. Honestly, not that much money if you’re a professional artist. And if an artist isn’t recouping that in sales each year, then he is a hobbyist.

Excerpt: But let’s be clear: Google Music and the Artist Hub is a good move for Google. It helps them:
Build up Google+ using consumers and bands to build trust and engagement.
Build up Google checkout and card gateway. If you’ve paid $25 to Google to sign up, now maybe you’ll buy something from them. And they’re already used to paying out tons of small cash increments via AdSense — not an accounting hassle for them to assume.
Challenge their newest direct competitor — Amazon’s own entertainment marketplace, available online — on Kindle Fire, and presumably on next year’s locked-down, Android-powered smartphone.

Title: How Mobile Has Changed The Music Industry

Excerpt: Mobile devices have completely changed the way we consume music. It wasn't so long ago that I would physically go to a store to browse for an album. Today, I can stream pretty much any song ever recorded on my smartphone, for free, anywhere I have access to the Internet.

Excerpt: "Smartphones have created new distribution channels, and the ability to reach targeted or wider audiences," says David Tisch, Investor and Managing Director of TechStars NYC. In the last year we have seen an explosion of startups taking advantage of this opportunity, namely subscription services like Rdio and Spotify that are changing the entire notion of your music "collection."

Excerpt: I've singled out the opportunity in music because I truly believe we can, and will, do better. Consumers are just getting used to the unlimited access to music provided by the mobile web, and the industry establishment is decades behind the early tech startups. The convergence of technology and music is moving so fast that even successful innovations are getting left in the dust in a matter of a few years.

Title: Google Music Store Chases Apple’s ITunes 8 Years Too Late

Excerpt: Google Inc. is entering the online music market almost a decade too late to pose a threat to Apple Inc., the largest seller of songs on the Web.

Excerpt: Google’s new challenge to Apple escalates the rivalry between the two companies, already locked in a fight for smartphone users and mobile-advertising customers. The Internet- search giant also faces budding competition from Amazon.com Inc., which has bolstered its music-download and storage service, and Spotify Ltd., whose partnership with Facebook Inc. has buoyed U.S. membership this year.

Excerpt: Even if it takes a while for Google to secure an agreement with Warner, whose artists include Green Day and Madonna, the company’s reach on the Web may help it succeed. Google’s network of websites had the most visitors worldwide in September with 1.1 billion, according to ComScore Inc. Microsoft Corp. sites had 914 million, and Facebook was No. 3 with 770 million.

“I doubt they’ll meet with immediate success,” Valdes said. “If they fail, it will take a while for that to become evident because they have enough presence to make at least slow progress for some time.”

Title: EMI Is Sold for $4.1 Billion, Consolidating the Music Industry

Excerpt: EMI, the venerable music company that is home to the Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Motown song catalog, has been sold for $4.1 billion through a pair of deals that usher in a new wave of consolidation in the music industry.

Excerpt: The split of EMI completes the biggest shift in music’s corporate structure in almost a decade, reducing the number of major record companies from four to three and allowing Sony and Universal, already the biggest forces in music, to become even bigger.

Excerpt: With Universal and Sony now far outweighing the third major, the Warner Music Group, the competitive landscape of the industry is expected to shift. Warner, which was sold for $3.3 billion in May to the Russian-born investor Len Blavatnik, had offered about $1.5 billion for EMI but dropped out of the bidding two weeks ago over a disagreement about the price.

Excerpt: Sony’s $325 million investment gives it a minority stake in the venture, which will keep the EMI name. It will be run as an independent unit within Sony by Sony/ATV, the publishing company owned by Sony and the estate of Michael Jackson. “It has been a long process, but something that people have viewed as difficult — the problems in the financial markets — ended up accruing to our benefit,” Mr. Wiesenthal said. “We found long-term investors, who are not just looking at the short-term returns typical of private equity.”

Title: Non-Jamaican Reggae: Who's Making It And Who's Buying It

Excerpt: Reggae music and the island of Jamaica are inseparable, right? Lately, a crop of artists from places like Hawaii, California and Italy are proving that hit reggae can come from anywhere. In the process, they're raising some complex questions about culture and ownership.

Excerpt: Alborosie was the first white artist to be distributed by Bob Marley's label, Tuff Gong. This summer he released his third album, but he says being embraced by the Jamaican music community did not come easily. "Culturally you have to do a lot of things to get accepted," he says. "I'm always a white man in Jamaica, so I try to move around and respect everybody."

Excerpt: On our shores, Hawaii and California are the biggest breeding grounds for reggae bands. iTunes even bestowed its 2010 "Best Reggae Album" title not on a Jamaican, but on the debut from Hawaiian band The Green.

A lot of non-Jamaican artists create musical hybrids, blending reggae with rock and pop. Ziggi Recado was born in Holland to a Dutch father and a mother from the Caribbean island of St. Eustatius. He says non-Jamaican reggae sounds distinct.

Excerpt: But others worry that when it comes to the bottom line, Jamaican artists are losing. Japan, for instance, has long been a big market for Jamaican music. But these days local Japanese reggae acts outsell most visiting Jamaican artists. That frustrates Jamaican dancehall deejay Demarco.

"What I want to see are the reggae artists in Jamaica make the same amount of money like an American who would take up our music and sell millions," Demarco says. "We can't sell millions? I don't understand that. We are probably doing something wrong."

Title: The New Economics of the Music Industry

Excerpt: Those were such simple times. Today, music fans play free music videos on YouTube, stream songs for free on Spotify, MOG or Rdio, customize Internet radio stations on Pandora or Slacker and consume music a zillion different ways. The fractions of pennies artists make for each of these services are nearly impossible to track – at least for now. "People like to simplify this and say, 'There's no money in it,'" says Jeff Price, founder of TuneCore, which charges artists to place songs directly into iTunes, Spotify and others. "But it's complex, it's complicated and it's still being worked out."