• The FCC has set September 20 as the date for a media ownership hearing in Chicago. It will be held at Operation Push National Headquarters on East 50th Street, from 4-11 p.m. This will be the fifth of six such town hall meetings. Here is my post on the hearing I attended last year in Nashville. (Radio Ink)

• Brit retailer HMV has experienced positive sales growth over the last 18 weeks. Total sales rose 12.2% over the period while same store sales grew 5.8%. Strong sales of DVDs and video games -- not music sales -- were behind the increase. (Billboard.biz)

• Ad-supported download site SpiralFrog has licensed the IODA catalog. That deal pushes SpiralFrog's catalog up about 1 million tracks to roughly 1.7 million (from 700,000). (Press release)

• Universal Music Group, which was preemptively sued by video site Veoh last month, has returned the favor by suing Veoh. The video site company, which counts Time Warner as an investor, has been blamed for "rampant infringement" and for following in the footsteps of "other recent mass infringers such as Napster." (Bloomberg)

• Some CD Baby stats posted by president Derek Sivers: 194,385 albums in stock; 170,379 (or 87%) have sold at least one copy; 129,014 digital albums offered; 123,168 (or 95%) of those digital albums have sold one or more units. Here's my favorite: 12% of CD Baby artists account for 90% of its sales. (CD Baby, via Digital Audio Insider)

• Jeff Leeds on how MTV is trying to remake its Music Video Awards as it's in a four-year ratings slump. "In shaking up its showcase event, the channel is not only aiming to reverse declines in the awards show's viewership, but also to generate buzz about several new efforts to connect with tech-savvy young viewers drawn to upstart brands like YouTube. ... MTV's own correspondents, as well as fans at the awards show, will snap candid camera-phone moments and post them on a new area of MTV's Web site called "You R Here." The most compelling photos or video recordings from Las Vegas may be presented during the channel's news segments." (International Herald Tribune)

• Eighteen Grateful Dead tracks will be available for download via the video game Harmonix video game Rock Band. Harmonix is a division of MTV Games. (The Escapist)

• Former FCC chaiman Mark Fowler supports a Sirius-XM merger. "If the two satellite radio companies, each only several years old, need to combine to be more effective competitors in an audio entertainment marketplace teeming with technological change and innovation, the government should not stand in the way." (Radio Ink)