Ticketnews.com reports that a recent investigative report by Phil Williams, chief investigative reporter for NewsChannel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee, uncovered ticketing documents to an upcoming show on Justin Bieber's Believe tour that shows members of Bieber's management were withholding tickets from the general public and selling them on the secondary market for a huge mark-up, leaving fans to purchase tickets well above face value. Another day, another potential ticketing scandal!
Apple and Pandora have topped a new survey of digital platforms, with Apple's iTunes remaining the dominant player in the paid for music download service sector, with a 64 percent share of the market in the second quarter of 2012. Amazon's MP3 Store comes a distant second with 16 percent, and no other purveyor of paid downloads exceeds 5 percent. Google Play, eMusic, Zune Music Pass and all of the others combined only account for 20 percent. The NPD survey also said that 50 percent of US internet users were aware of Pandora’s free ad-supported radio service, and a third of them also knew that Pandora offered a paid subscription service. Clear Channel’s iHeartRadio had 25 percent consumer awareness, followed by Spotify with 19 percent.
UK-based music publisher Reverb Music has been bought by New York-based Reservoir Media Management. Under the deal, Reverb will continue to operate as normal in the UK and Europe under that name, but will also work in partnership with its parent company's publishing business in America. The London office will still be led by Reverb MD Annette Barrett.
Universal Music has paid just under a billion of
the £1.2 billion that it committed to pay Citigroup for EMI's recorded music division,
according to parent company Vivendi. Decisions by EU and US competition regulators
are nearing completion with at least some divestment of catalogues such as Parlophone
and Chrysalis mooted for the EU if the sale is to go through.
Following
on from the Olympics where it seems numerous musicians were expected to perform
for free, the UK’s Trade Union Congress, meeting in
Brighton this week, has backed a motion by the Musicians' Union which states
that professional musicians should not be expected to work for free with MU
Gereral Secretary John Smith saying "This summer's Olympic Games brought
the issue back to the fore. Despite the agreement between LOCOG and the TUC
regarding fair terms and conditions, and undertakings from LOGOG to the MU that
professional musicians would be paid for their services, the MU uncovered
countless examples of its members being asked to perform for no payment at
events connected with the Games".
And then on Sunday on to the closing ceremony for the Paralympic Games in the Olympic Stadium in Stratford. The Festival of The Flame kicked off with a parade of weird and wonderful cannibalised and recycled vehicles from Joe Rush's Mutoid Waste Company and was followed by an extraordinary show that featured a set from Coldplay and special guests Candoco Dance Company, the seventeen piece British ParaOrchestra - and my old friend from Canterbury, Mat Fraser, as a guest drummer with Coldplay! Congratulations to show director Kim Gavin - for once the show actually involved people with disabilities - Candoco and from Rio's Corpo em Movimento both mix able-bodied and disabled dancers, and the Paraorchestra features disabled musicians. In the Rio section, visually impaired ballet dancers performed a samba na ponta - actress and model Viktoria Modesta played the snow queen with a beautiful prosthetic leg on show (there was sort of a four seasons theme), Lissa Hermans, who is blind and autistic, sang the National Anthem and narrrator Rory Mackenzie from South African was serving as a medic with the British Army when he was blow up and lost a leg . 
Organisers
of this year's ill-fated Creamfields festival, which finished a day early after
severe flooding, have confirmed that day ticket holders for the Sunday of the
two-day dance weekender will be given a full refund while those who had tickets
for the full weekend will receive half of the original sums paid.
The Isle of Wight's Bestival will be live streamed to a dedicated YouTube channel for fans around the World covering both the Main Stage and Big Top on September 7th, 8th and 9th. Music fans will be able to watch headline performances from Florence + the Machine and New Order, a UK festival exclusive appearance from The xx and live sets from Friendly Fires, Two Door Cinema Club, Emeli Sande, Bat for Lashes, Orbital, Miike Snow, Azealia Banks and many more. The detailed daily program of the live stream will be available on the Bestival YouTube channel. Once Bestival comes to a close, individual songs from acts will be available on-demand for the next 90 days on the Bestival YouTube channel. 
Patrick Walker, Senior Director of YouTube Music, Europe, Middle East & Africa said: "As the premiere destination for music lovers worldwide, YouTube has been working hard to expand our offering of live gigs and festivals to satisfy the hunger for great original content. We're delighted to announce a partnership with Bestival, whose dream line-up of musicians including Florence + the Machine, The xx, Emeli Sande and New Order, will now be made available to anyone, anywhere with an Internet connection." And Bestival Promoter / Curator Rob da Bank commented: "I've been watching festivals such as Coachella and Tomorrowland on YouTube and loving the futuristic new angle on showing festivals in a different light via a medium that nearly everyone in the music and festival worlds is tuned into. We're really pleased that Bestival is the first UK festival to go down this route.”
Music Week has reported that Scott Rodger's Quest Management, which is home to Arcade Fire and Paul McCartney, has reached an agreement with the producers of 'X-Factor' giving it first option to take on the management of any acts which make it through to the final stage of the UK's major televised talent contest. Previously the post-X management duties fell to Modest Management.
