• The Orchard has inked a deal for marketing and digital distribution rights, outside of North American, to all Sony/ATV Music Publishing owned master recordings. The deal covers labels Dial Records, Four Star, Hickory and Challenge Records. (Press release)

• The Rodgers & Hammerstein Music Publishing business has been put on the market with a price tag of $250 million. (Variety)

• Live Nation-owned House of Blues will open a new club in Houston on October 18. The opening night concert will feature The Blues Brothers with Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi. (Houston Business Journal)

• Ahead of its earnings release this week, Warner Music Group's stock took a dip after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst Ingrid Chung downgraded the stock to "sell" from "neutral." WMG fell as much as 12% during the day and closed down 7% at $7.68. (Crain's New York Business)

• eMusic's catalog now exceeds four million tracks from over 40,000 record labels and 3,500 publishers. Audiobooks, which frequently exceed 100 tracks per title, are included in those four million tracks. (Press release)

• Warner Music Group's Rhino Records has given the "Rock Band" video game an exclusive on the debut album by The Cars. The label says it will license more full albums for sale through "Rock Band." (Newsweek)

• Sports teams are increasingly buying concerts from promoters rather than rent their venues. In effect, the teams are assuming the risk that is specific to any one show, something major promoters reduce by buying entire tours. One reason it can make good business sense is the NFL and MLB do not require teams to share such revenue with the league. A Kenny Chesney concert, for example, was purchased by AEG from the Baltimore Ravens. Ticket sales from the show totaled $3.56 million. (Sports Business Journal)

• Metallica will release its next album, Death Magnetic, on Friday, September 12. Yeah, a Friday. Might as well officially "break" a Tuesday street date rather than have it happen without sanction. (Billboard.biz)

• 7digital's CEO told paidContent UK that a number of British ISPs have contacted the online retailer about creating services similar to the one planned by Universal Music Group and BSkyB. "Some want a standard white label service, but some want to bundle content in with their subscriptions," he said. "We’ve had interest from the big six as well as some of the others." (paidContentUK)