• The European Union has proposed extending copyright on sound recordings to 95 years from 50 years. Here's a good overview of the situation and Britain's desire to stick with 50 years and EMI's (read: The Beatles') desire to extend copyright. (Times Online)

• Here's another article about the increase in sales that comes with being included in the video game "Guitar Hero." Digital sales of Cheap Trick's "Surrender" tripled, and Kiss' "Strutter" rose almost sixfold. (USA Today)

• UK ISPs are resisting government suggestions that they should monitor their traffic and sniff out piracy. (BBC.com)

• Country Music Television has opened its first retail store -- in the Nashville International Airport. (CheapFlights.com)

• I link to this short article on the rock band Collective Soul only because they took their career into their own hands -- and prospered -- well before Radiohead ever put out its tip jar or The Firm released albums for its clients. Artists have been able to be DIY for years...if only they assumed the risk. (liveDaily)

• Wait...the CD isn't dead yet. (Green Bay Press-Gazette)

• An interview with RCRD LBL co-founder Peter Rojas. "We’re not trying to sell the music. It has to be good, otherwise people won’t pay attention. With most marketing related to music, like Coca-Cola sponsoring a Jay-Z video, you have to wonder as a brand: are you helping sell more cans of soda, or are you helping Jay-Z sell more CDs? With us there’s no conflict. It sounds kind of crass, but this is the reality of it. There’s more of a halo effect so to speak, because the music’s free and the sponsor is enabling the consumer to enjoy it." (FMBQ, via Hypebot)

• A critique of the International Intellectual Property Alliance. "In the United States, we have been waiting since 1998 for a working digital marketplace, after granting to IIPA’s members extensive rights in the DMCA on the promise that once the laws were in place, copyright owners would create the market. They haven’t: we are still nowhere close to even a nascent digital marketplace, much less a working one. But why not, since the laws are in place? The answer is content owners already have what they wanted, which is control over whether a legitimate marketplace will ever exist; but if it does, it will certainly be on their terms as IIPA clearly indicates. The purpose of the DMCA from their perspective was not to facilitate the actual development of a digital marketplace, but to give them veto power over whether one would ever exist, and if so, what it would look like. That’s why the DMCA represented a fatal blow to copyright as a system: rather than adapting copyright rights to the digital environment, the DMCA gave copyright owners the right to control the environment itself, with consequences that were entirely predictable given the past track record of the industry’s suits against innovations from talkies, to cable television, photocopy machines, and VCRs." (The Patry Copyright Blog)

[music jobs] Brand and Online Marketing Manager at The Ascot Club/Am Only; Brooklyn, NY.