music discovery

• Sirius XM posted a $4.88 billion loss in Q3 that included a $4.75 billion impairment charge. Subscriber growth is slow, and the company has almost $1 billion in debt due next year. (Wall Street Journal)

Lala, the frequently changing streaming service/download store/online music locker has made some changes aimed at an easier user experience and music discovery. Whether or not it will connect with consumers, the new Lala has set itself apart. More serious music fans should take notice.

After 24/7 Entertainment's Frank Taubert said at the Popkomm conference that only 3 million out of the service's 4.5 million tracks had ever been downloaded, eMusic, the ultimate long tail retailer, went on the offensive.

• After the city council voted 7-2 in favor of zoning changes that will allow Live Nation to move ahead with its plans for a new Fillmore venue in Silver Spring, MD. It's a sweet deal for Live Nation. The the council and the Maryland legislature will spend $8 million to build the venue and Live Nation will rent the venue from the county.

Even though the music player takes much longer to load than did the previous version (thus ruining the one bright spot of any band's page) and the entire product is still half-baked and clumsy, at least MySpace Music is trying. The main page has a fresh rotation of highlighted artists, videos and playlists -- a stale front page would be a problem.

• At the end of the third quarter, album sales totaled 297.9 million units, according to SoundScan. That's a 12% drop versus last year. As I pointed out yesterday, September was a horrible month for album sales. This year's fourth quarter will have some big releases.

• The secondary ticket market just heated up. TicketsNow has announced a new serviced, Sell Your Tickets on TicketsNow, that allows people to sell their tickets through the TicketsNow site. TicketsNow is owned by Ticketmaster.

Mininova, the torrent search engine and directory that has often drawn the ire of the recording industry, is now offering a free content distribution service.

The Wall Street Journal's Katherine Boehret compares two new music discovery tools, Zune's Mixview and Apple's Genius, in today's "The Mossberg Solution" column. Boehret found both positives and negatives with both tools and had better things to say about Mixview.

Starting with the topic of Atlantic's "artificial scarcity" experiment with Estelle's album Shine, the LA Times' Jon Healey veers off into a thought-provoking post on pricing, demand and digital downloads.