The Nashville Feed

Let's start the New Year catching up on some good music news shall we? Regular posts beginning again this week.

Facebook climbs the social scale - Guardian UK
The networking site continues to grow as a platform for building business, though Google has still seized the lion's share of online advertising

Sales of Music, Long in Decline, Plunge Sharply - Wall Street Journal
Rise in Downloading Fails to Boost Industry; A Retailing Shakeout

Ho-ho-horrible: album sales plunge 20 percent this Christmas -Arstechnica.com
To some music lovers, the fact that Josh Groban's Noel was the highest-selling album of 2007 is all the proof they need that major-label music is dying. To shareholders and label execs, though, the numbers are more important, and the numbers are grim: music sales are down 21 percent this Christmas season.

Speaking of digital...

The Death of High Fidelity - Rolling Stone
In the age of MP3s, sound quality is worse than ever

Aspiring radio hosts need only a computer & phone - Reuters
Anyone with dreams of being a talk radio star -- ranting about sports and politics, chatting with callers, sharing recipes or car-buying tips -- can play host on their own show, right on the Web.

Trent Reznor on Year Zero, Planting Clues, and What's Ludicrous About Being a Musician Today - Wired.com
Wired contributing editor Frank Rose interviewed Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor at his house in Beverly Hills on October 18, 2007.

It's about time for radio to pay.

Congress considers bill to make radio "pay to play" - Arttechnica.com
Radio has always had a strange exemption under US law: it doesn't need to pay the performers of the music it plays. Internet radio needs to pay. Satellite radio needs to pay. Digital music stations transmitted over cable lines have to pay. But not radio.