music distribution

• Handleman shareholders have approved the company's liquidation and dissolution. Due to the downturn of physical music sales, the company decided earlier this year to get out of the music distribution business. It sold its Canadian operation to Anderson Merchandisers, its Artist to Market Distribution to Eurpac and its European operation to grocery giant Tesco.

In an article about digital music, Wired editor Nancy Miller proclaimed the CD to be "dead and gone" and advised record labels on how best to sell their products. "At a certain point record companies are going to have to go with what is the cheapest way of distribution, and that's digital," she said.

The Toronto Star has a collection of comments sent by readers about the ISP tax proposed by the Songwriters Association of Canada. Is $5 a month a good deal for unlimited file-sharing? Either the "no" side of the debate was the only one to write in, or the editors filtered the responses. In either case, it's clear many Canadians don't like the idea.

A post at paidContent says News Corp is working on a music portal as a joint venture with music content providers (as in the four majors). The site would be similar to Hulu, News Corp's video site that is a joint venture with NBC Universal. (In my experiences with Hulu's private beta, I've found it to be a wonderful product. Hopefully a music venture would b