• BusinessWeek.com's Olga Kharif has a good overview of the recorded music industry's attempt to get terrestrial radio to pay royalties. "Aside from the occasional royalty scuffle across those decades, the music industry has always been happy to let radio stations play songs for free, treating it as a necessary marketing expense for the songs and albums they wanted listeners to buy. ... But with more music lovers consuming their passion over the Internet and through satellite broadcasters XM Satellite Radio (XMSR) and Sirius Satellite Radio (SIRI), the free exposure offered by FM and AM radio is no longer quite so valuable." (BusinessWeek.com)

• iTunes is sale pricing albums at $5.99 to $6.99 under the "Next Big Thing" banner. (Digital Music News)

• The Economist has an article on the new approaches of old music companies. "Record labels have come up with a remedy: the '360° contract'. Instead of settling for a cut of CD sales, they increasingly offer artists broader contracts that encompass live music, merchandise and endorsement deals. Such deals, also known as multiple-rights or all-rights contracts, are particularly important in regions with rampant CD piracy, such as Africa, Asia and Latin America." (The Economist)

• U.K. marketing firm MAMA Group has put it a bid to acquire six London concert venues from Mean Fiddler. (Billboard.biz)

• AllofMP3.com and MP3Sparks.com are out of business, but now there's word that customers of those two download stores can purchased music at Alltunes.com. (Slashdot)

• Nashville might be looking at country's 29.6% slide in album sales at 2007's midpoint. That drop is certainly larger than the overall album drop of 15%, but it was bound to happen in a year that followed smashes by Rascal Flatts and Carrie Underwood. MusicRow.com has a graph that compares the big country debuts of 2007 with the first-week sales of those artists' previous releases. (Music Row)

• Lala.com's online streaming service, which debuted to much fanfare a few weeks ago, is down for the count. Said Lala's John Kuch, "Many of our unique, forward-looking features have generated significant consumer excitement but have also generated an overwhelming load on our systems. To avoid falling short of consumer expectations, we're holding off on upgrading and returning some aspects of our offering until we can provide a fuller catalog that meets the demand of consumers and includes music from a broader cross section of the industry." (Ars Technica)

• Any implications on selling music online? Jupiter Research says social networking sites have little impact on where people shop online. (Silicon.com)

• iLike.com has a fun "name that tune" game called Challenge. I played once, got 17 out of 20 and made the rank of Music Intern. My advice is not to rush the songs you're not sure about. (iLike Challenge)

[music jobs] Boosey & Hawkes is looking for a Royalty Tracker.