• Tower Records founder Russ Solomon is readying R5 Records in Sacramento for a soft launch in the next few weeks. "There are things that need to be tried. And since I was preaching against a wall the last two years that what Tower was doing and what the industry was doing was misdirected and wrong, I owe it to myself and to the business to do it my way." (Sacramento Bee)

• Digital sales in India are higher than physical sales, a first in the world according to the article. Soundbuzz predicts that by 2009 Indian consumers will purchase nine times more mobile music (in terms of revenue) than any other format. (Deccan Herald)

• Here's an article about EMI's and Sanctuary's difficulties selling British music in America. Seems this article would have had better timing before KT Tunstall, Lily Allen and Corrine Baily Rae, but whatever. Here are some good stats from the article: U.K. artists accounted for 8.2% of U.S. album sales in 2006, up from 7.6% in 2004. That figure was 32% in 1986 and less than 1% in 1999. (International Herald Tribune)

• A profile on Integral, a UK company that offers marketing and financial assistance to independent labels and rights holders. (The Independent)

• Hollywood is getting more frustrated with YouTube and its continued level of infringing material. "Clearly, this is not a resource constraint," said one executive. "This is a function of will." (News.com)