listening post

The loudness war has been raging for years, and today it's on the front page of the Wall Street Journal (along with a picture of Rick Rubin, who did not comment for the article).

• Ticketmaster has broke away from IAC and is now a standalone company. The company's stock rose 13% on its first day of trading yesterday. The company will lose its largest client, Live Nation, at the beginning of 2009. (Wall Street Journal)

• It has been reported that bankrupt indie TVT Records will sell its recorded music division and other assets to digital distributor The Orchard. Greg Scholl, president of The Orchard, said he does not anticipate signing new artists. (New York Post)

• Parties have reportedly agreed upon two of the five royalty rates -- for limited downloads and Internet streaming -- that are set to be determined by the Copyright Royalty Board. The rates will be confidential, however, until they are presented for approval to the three judges sitting on the board.

• Record labels have sued Spanish P2P developer Pablo Soto for making available software that can be used for piracy. The meat of the complaint appears to be in the company's marketing pitch: Users were lured with promises of free music.

• Usher's Here I Stand debuted at #1 on the album chart with sales of 433,000, less than half of the debut week of his 2004 smash, Confessions. At 7.24 million units, album sales were down 13% versus last year. (Billboard.biz)

• Chrysalis lost $25.7 million in the seven months ending in February 2008. Revenues were down $800,000 to $56.6 million. The company spent $1.78 million on advisers in its bid to be acquired and took at $23.3 million charge in a buyout of its pension scheme.

• Chrysalis has ended discussions for its music publishing after it could not get a bid it found to be appropriate. EMI was said to be one of the last companies in the bidding, but Chrysalis rejected a revised offer of £104 million that EMI had lowered from £150 million.

Pitchfork,tv launches this Monday.

The title is about as excited as I can get about Omnifone's MusicStation mobile music service, which got a pretty thorough review by Listening Post. It sounds great. Downright promising.