• The U.S. leg of Madonna's Sticky & Sweet tour had a gross of $91.5 million on sales of about 550,000 tickets. For those of you keeping score at home, that's an average ticket price of $166. By my math, the average ticket price on on the U.S. leg of her 2006 Confessions tour was $183. The total Sticky & Sweet tour is on pace to gross around $282 million. (Billboard)

• Labels fret as Woolworths Entertainment UK, the distribution arm of Woolworths, has gone into adminstration. The company is said to be responsible for up to 30% of physical sales in the UK. (BBC News)

• An article on the new owner of LA club The Viper Room, with requisite pun title. The owner, by the way, says he "absolutely" plans on creating a Viper Room franchise. (Washington Times)

• Songbeat Player is a new application that scans multiple search engines (such as Seeqpod and Project Playlist) for music. The paid version (about $30) offers unlimited streaming and downloads -- but nothing for copyright owners. The marketing of this product (pay for unlimited, maybe-maybe not legal downloads) is similar to the way P2P applications used to be marketed before the Supreme Court's Grokster decision. (TechCruch)

• RIM's new Blackberry Storm isn't much of a music device. (Digital Noise)

• Concord Music Group will develop Ray Charles' post-1960 catalog. There will be six catalog reissues in 2009 and some digital-only releases as well. (Press release)